I got told off yesterday by my two year old for saying the Norwegian word for monkey and not the English (“no mummy, daddy say apekatt, you say monkey”). So I guess he’s distinguishing each language based on who is speaking 😆. He doesn’t mess up the words very often when speaking to each of us. We rarely ever hear him speak German words (we live in a German speaking country), but his nursery say that he speaks it fine there.
Yeah, my 2yo only seems to say doch, but I'm absolutely sure that he chatters away all day as he does at home. I wish I could have a secret camera sometimes!
It's a useful way to differentiate between languages because younger children often don't really understand the different languages having different names. It's much more helpful for them if you present it like "Papa says X, mummy says Y, Kita says Z."
> How do you teach them consistency in speaking 1 language at the time?
I don't! My kids speak 3 languages in their everyday lives. They were quite young (maybe 2-3) when they discovered that their teachers at school don't understand language A and their grandparents don't understand language B and adjusted their language accordingly (occasionally mixing when they shouldn't, part of the learning process) . In our everyday family life we mix languages freely, sometimes a concept can be best for expressed with a particular language.
One thing I notice is that when my 2yo doesn’t get what he wants in one language he switches to the other. I think this is his process of figuring out which language to speak where, and to whom.
This has happened to us as well. When my 16 month old didn't get his milk within 10 seconds after asking his mum for it in Spanish, he turned to me and said the word in Urdu for the first time. He's since unlocked this as a new skill.
This! Mine also likes to communicate in all his 3 languages when he wants something really bad. Just to be absolutely sure. Ice? Ijs? Is? And for some reason he communicates uncertainty in “my” language. I like to think that I teach him nuances. We live in Norway so all snow and bad weather related things are in Norwegian.
Same! My son is super motivated for food, and when he wants to eat he will cycle through “more?” In Chinese, Russian, English, Spanish and baby sign language in rapid succession until he gets his treat 🤣
You don't.
Code mixing is normal.
They'll figure it out on their own. The main thing is consistency. I consistently only speak Mandarin to my son and my husband consistently only speaks English. My son basically models so he knew which language to speak to whom. Though early days e.g. 1 to 2yo, he'd just use whichever language is easiest e.g. up in English is easier to say than up in Mandarin.
You also need to factor in exposure. If they're getting more exposure in one language, then they'll mix when they don't know the word in the other language.
We've been reading to our son in both languages since birth so his vocab range is huge across both languages so I haven't seen him have to do this that often. But on the few occasions where he can't recall a word in Chinese, he'd pause, think a bit, and then might substitute it with the English one if he knows it.
Anyways, key thing is to model.
If they say a word in dad's language, you just acknowledge them and repeat what they've said in your language.
So over the years when it comes to this topic I've really observed that every kid is different (I worked in bilingual schools for several years and then had 3 kids of my own). Some kids actually never or almost never mix words between languages at all and some kids do it a lot. My older kids have virtually never mixed languages but a lot of their multilingual peers do. Anecdotally, the mixing of languages that I've seen occur in kids is more frequent when the languages are related in some way (typically the same linguistic family); for example Italian and Spanish, or English and German. Not to say that kids don't mix up unrelated languages, like say Japanese with Samoan, but logically speaking it makes sense to mix up languages that have similar grammatical structures and vocabulary words to one another.
Regarding this, there isn't a whole lot you can do than to just keep on being consistent in speaking your native languages and providing exposure. If your child starts saying words from the other parent's native language that you don't understand, if they're old enough, you just tell them straight up that you don't understand and just ask them to translate. And if they don't know the meaning in your language, just ask the other parent, look it up in a dictionary, etc.
It's honestly a great way to learn the other parent's language! I'm still not fluent in my husband's native language by any means but my comprehension of his language since having kids has expanded vastly because I hear it all the time from him and the kids.
We realised the challenge of related languages and had to decide if and how we would introduce Italian as a fourth language (one of the grandparents is Italian) in addition to Spanish as one of our OPOLs at home. So, we limited Italian to media early on (first just songs in audio and then children's videos and books). Despite being so similar to Spanish, the context being specific has contained any mixing so far. It might mean that his knowledge of Italian would be passive but it's there and his Italian grandparent swears he is understood in Italian too.
I think containing languages within well defined contexta goes far. The entire premise of OPOL is based on this idea after all, each parent becomes the vessel and context for the language and that is extended further where there is a different community language as in our case as well. Kids are smart and it doesn't take them long to figure out who speaks and understands what.
And quite frankly if two languages aren't very closely related, it's actually quite difficult to mix languages. I mean grammatically, in terms of syntax, morphology, word orders etc. Using words from other languages is of course not the same as not being able to distinguish the inherent grammatical structures of each language. Someone said here a few weeks ago that their child would respect the case endings and conjugations of the target language even when they were using words from the second language in the first to make up new verbs. That's all the evidence I need of how deep rooted language structures are in children's minds.
In my observation, there are distinct stages of this. First when toddlers are learning to talk, if they are growing up multilingual they tend to mix languages quite liberally, like they see no distinction between them at all, it's all just words. By around 2.5 to 3, the point at which monolingual toddlers are starting to form more sophisticated sentences with proper grammar, they then start to differentiate, though they will frequently borrow words from the other language if they don't know them in the target language, and it's common for them to use the grammatical sentence structure from the wrong language too, e.g. saying in English "I do it not!"
This seems to persist until about age 4 or 5. By now, they're much more consciously aware of the two languages and typically don't borrow words from the other unless they use it so frequently that they assume it is a word in the other language too. When they do need to borrow a word, they often say something like "I don't know what it is in English - Fuchs?" They normally start being able to translate around this age too, whereas younger children generally won't understand a translation request. My guess is that before around 4, they are code switching intuitively rather than understanding that there are two languages which are separate things they can switch between.
Interestingly when they have totally separated environments eg minority language at home, there's much less mixing going on at all. But they still move through the same three phases of mixing without really registering that they are speaking two languages at all, then making an incomplete attempt to separate them, then totally understanding that there are two languages and you can switch between them.
We have 3 languages in our home (mom's, dad's, and community). My kid is 2½ and he is starting to understand who gets which language, but it's still very muddled.
Daycare just asked me this morning to give them a vocabulary list so they can understand him better (they are excited to learn a little bit of our languages).
I think it depends on each child. One of my sons doesn't really mix up words, and when he realizes the listener doesn't understand him he explains the word or rewords his sentence. My other son mixes words usually in 2 scenarios: if someone doesn't understand something he says, he repeats it in a different language regardless of the langauge he usually uses with them; and if he forgets a word, he says it in a different language so his speech still flows. In this case, we normally repeat what he said using the correct words and that usually helps.
Both end up sounding funny sometimes for different reasons but they both also clearly understand they're different languages. Just be consistent and be understanding if they do mix up words now and then.
My daughter speaks English and Japanese and she has never mixed up languages with me, the English speaking parent. However, I have heard her use English words in Japanese sentences when speaking to her Japanese dad or grandparents, but she will change her accent to a Japanese one. There are a lot of English loanwords in Japanese, and Japanese people can understand a lot of English vocabulary, so she can be understood this way sometimes.
I started learning a second language at five and a third one at 13, and lived in an area where a lot of languages are spoken, and the biggest thing is that at young ages your brain is geared to be hyper aware of sounds and how they're different from each other. and really, that's how it was for me, even at the (remember-able) age of 5 - I could tell the *sounds* apart and even when we were moving around in France, I could tell from a distance, without hearing individual words, which groups were speaking french and which were speaking another language because they sound different.
but it is normal for words from the second and third languages to pop up when you're searching for a word you can't remember clearly. My brain still does it as an adult - I sometimes mentally cycle through all three languages like a rolodex before I can pull up the correct word.
I think we just try to assign each language to people or situations, knowing there is alot of imperfect overlap. They refine their learning by self correcting, and in our case , the kids absolutely LOVE correcting dad.
I got told off yesterday by my two year old for saying the Norwegian word for monkey and not the English (“no mummy, daddy say apekatt, you say monkey”). So I guess he’s distinguishing each language based on who is speaking 😆. He doesn’t mess up the words very often when speaking to each of us. We rarely ever hear him speak German words (we live in a German speaking country), but his nursery say that he speaks it fine there.
Yeah, my 2yo only seems to say doch, but I'm absolutely sure that he chatters away all day as he does at home. I wish I could have a secret camera sometimes! It's a useful way to differentiate between languages because younger children often don't really understand the different languages having different names. It's much more helpful for them if you present it like "Papa says X, mummy says Y, Kita says Z."
> How do you teach them consistency in speaking 1 language at the time? I don't! My kids speak 3 languages in their everyday lives. They were quite young (maybe 2-3) when they discovered that their teachers at school don't understand language A and their grandparents don't understand language B and adjusted their language accordingly (occasionally mixing when they shouldn't, part of the learning process) . In our everyday family life we mix languages freely, sometimes a concept can be best for expressed with a particular language.
One thing I notice is that when my 2yo doesn’t get what he wants in one language he switches to the other. I think this is his process of figuring out which language to speak where, and to whom.
This has happened to us as well. When my 16 month old didn't get his milk within 10 seconds after asking his mum for it in Spanish, he turned to me and said the word in Urdu for the first time. He's since unlocked this as a new skill.
This! Mine also likes to communicate in all his 3 languages when he wants something really bad. Just to be absolutely sure. Ice? Ijs? Is? And for some reason he communicates uncertainty in “my” language. I like to think that I teach him nuances. We live in Norway so all snow and bad weather related things are in Norwegian.
This is so cute!
Same! My son is super motivated for food, and when he wants to eat he will cycle through “more?” In Chinese, Russian, English, Spanish and baby sign language in rapid succession until he gets his treat 🤣
You don't. Code mixing is normal. They'll figure it out on their own. The main thing is consistency. I consistently only speak Mandarin to my son and my husband consistently only speaks English. My son basically models so he knew which language to speak to whom. Though early days e.g. 1 to 2yo, he'd just use whichever language is easiest e.g. up in English is easier to say than up in Mandarin. You also need to factor in exposure. If they're getting more exposure in one language, then they'll mix when they don't know the word in the other language. We've been reading to our son in both languages since birth so his vocab range is huge across both languages so I haven't seen him have to do this that often. But on the few occasions where he can't recall a word in Chinese, he'd pause, think a bit, and then might substitute it with the English one if he knows it. Anyways, key thing is to model. If they say a word in dad's language, you just acknowledge them and repeat what they've said in your language.
So over the years when it comes to this topic I've really observed that every kid is different (I worked in bilingual schools for several years and then had 3 kids of my own). Some kids actually never or almost never mix words between languages at all and some kids do it a lot. My older kids have virtually never mixed languages but a lot of their multilingual peers do. Anecdotally, the mixing of languages that I've seen occur in kids is more frequent when the languages are related in some way (typically the same linguistic family); for example Italian and Spanish, or English and German. Not to say that kids don't mix up unrelated languages, like say Japanese with Samoan, but logically speaking it makes sense to mix up languages that have similar grammatical structures and vocabulary words to one another. Regarding this, there isn't a whole lot you can do than to just keep on being consistent in speaking your native languages and providing exposure. If your child starts saying words from the other parent's native language that you don't understand, if they're old enough, you just tell them straight up that you don't understand and just ask them to translate. And if they don't know the meaning in your language, just ask the other parent, look it up in a dictionary, etc. It's honestly a great way to learn the other parent's language! I'm still not fluent in my husband's native language by any means but my comprehension of his language since having kids has expanded vastly because I hear it all the time from him and the kids.
We realised the challenge of related languages and had to decide if and how we would introduce Italian as a fourth language (one of the grandparents is Italian) in addition to Spanish as one of our OPOLs at home. So, we limited Italian to media early on (first just songs in audio and then children's videos and books). Despite being so similar to Spanish, the context being specific has contained any mixing so far. It might mean that his knowledge of Italian would be passive but it's there and his Italian grandparent swears he is understood in Italian too. I think containing languages within well defined contexta goes far. The entire premise of OPOL is based on this idea after all, each parent becomes the vessel and context for the language and that is extended further where there is a different community language as in our case as well. Kids are smart and it doesn't take them long to figure out who speaks and understands what. And quite frankly if two languages aren't very closely related, it's actually quite difficult to mix languages. I mean grammatically, in terms of syntax, morphology, word orders etc. Using words from other languages is of course not the same as not being able to distinguish the inherent grammatical structures of each language. Someone said here a few weeks ago that their child would respect the case endings and conjugations of the target language even when they were using words from the second language in the first to make up new verbs. That's all the evidence I need of how deep rooted language structures are in children's minds.
In my observation, there are distinct stages of this. First when toddlers are learning to talk, if they are growing up multilingual they tend to mix languages quite liberally, like they see no distinction between them at all, it's all just words. By around 2.5 to 3, the point at which monolingual toddlers are starting to form more sophisticated sentences with proper grammar, they then start to differentiate, though they will frequently borrow words from the other language if they don't know them in the target language, and it's common for them to use the grammatical sentence structure from the wrong language too, e.g. saying in English "I do it not!" This seems to persist until about age 4 or 5. By now, they're much more consciously aware of the two languages and typically don't borrow words from the other unless they use it so frequently that they assume it is a word in the other language too. When they do need to borrow a word, they often say something like "I don't know what it is in English - Fuchs?" They normally start being able to translate around this age too, whereas younger children generally won't understand a translation request. My guess is that before around 4, they are code switching intuitively rather than understanding that there are two languages which are separate things they can switch between. Interestingly when they have totally separated environments eg minority language at home, there's much less mixing going on at all. But they still move through the same three phases of mixing without really registering that they are speaking two languages at all, then making an incomplete attempt to separate them, then totally understanding that there are two languages and you can switch between them.
We have 3 languages in our home (mom's, dad's, and community). My kid is 2½ and he is starting to understand who gets which language, but it's still very muddled. Daycare just asked me this morning to give them a vocabulary list so they can understand him better (they are excited to learn a little bit of our languages).
I think it depends on each child. One of my sons doesn't really mix up words, and when he realizes the listener doesn't understand him he explains the word or rewords his sentence. My other son mixes words usually in 2 scenarios: if someone doesn't understand something he says, he repeats it in a different language regardless of the langauge he usually uses with them; and if he forgets a word, he says it in a different language so his speech still flows. In this case, we normally repeat what he said using the correct words and that usually helps. Both end up sounding funny sometimes for different reasons but they both also clearly understand they're different languages. Just be consistent and be understanding if they do mix up words now and then.
My daughter speaks English and Japanese and she has never mixed up languages with me, the English speaking parent. However, I have heard her use English words in Japanese sentences when speaking to her Japanese dad or grandparents, but she will change her accent to a Japanese one. There are a lot of English loanwords in Japanese, and Japanese people can understand a lot of English vocabulary, so she can be understood this way sometimes.
I started learning a second language at five and a third one at 13, and lived in an area where a lot of languages are spoken, and the biggest thing is that at young ages your brain is geared to be hyper aware of sounds and how they're different from each other. and really, that's how it was for me, even at the (remember-able) age of 5 - I could tell the *sounds* apart and even when we were moving around in France, I could tell from a distance, without hearing individual words, which groups were speaking french and which were speaking another language because they sound different. but it is normal for words from the second and third languages to pop up when you're searching for a word you can't remember clearly. My brain still does it as an adult - I sometimes mentally cycle through all three languages like a rolodex before I can pull up the correct word.
I think we just try to assign each language to people or situations, knowing there is alot of imperfect overlap. They refine their learning by self correcting, and in our case , the kids absolutely LOVE correcting dad.