Can You Raise Bilingual/ Trilingual/ Multilingual Kids as Non-Native Speakers? Part I

[@slava7445]

Thank you so much for valuable info and your experiences! Currently learning more languages to raise my future children as polyglots and thought i need to be fluent to teach them😊

[@themultilingualfamilyhub]

Thank you for your reply, @slava7445! Wishing you all the best 👍 I'll make more videos like this in the future so stay tuned! 😊

[@SA-or8lr]

Me and my partner are italian and we live in UK. We would like to teach our baby italian (in this way our origins don't get lost and he'll be able to understand and speak with us and our families) english (so he'll be able to communicate his needs and understand others when out and not feel left out when starting nursery/kindergarten) and maybe some french (I've studied english, french, german and a little bit of russian). Your videos are interesting and different from others. Please keep creating video giving useful advices on how raise bilingual/trilingual kids 🙏🏻 I'm looking forward to see your next video! Thanks a lot 😊

[@themultilingualfamilyhub]

Thanks so much for your lovely comment!! That sounds amazing - it's definitely doable, and I wish you and your family the best of luck :) I aim to post a new video every week, so definitely keep an eye out for new videos! 😊

[@themultilingualfamilyhub]

What are some of the main challenges you've faced as a parent raising bilingual kids? Share in the comments below!

[@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh]

There is a big difference between a situation like these women's in Italy, where the children will all easily learn Italian, and the situation of, for example, immigrants in the UK who try to speak English with their children even though it's not their first language. The women in Italy will, if they ever don't have the right words in English, be able to express themselves fully to their children in Italian, because their children will speak both languages. But the parents in the UK, when they don't have the right words in English, are not able to express themselves to their children, because, they don't speak Greek (for example). This second situation, where the parents cannot ever truly express themselves to their children because their children don't speak the parents' native language, is the situation that experts warn against, as opposed to the first, although some do not bother to make a distinction.

[@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh]

You probably already know this, and I don't mean to talk about politics, but Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Mandarin are completely different languages. They are only called 'dialects' within China because of the government policy to diminish non-Mandarin languages, by using this pejorative term 'dialect' for them, suggesting they are somehow just 'colloquial variants' instead of full-fledged, unique languages with their own histories, literatures, and cultural nuances. I don't mean to try to tell you about your own languages and culture, but I really hate when people diminish the value of minority languages, whether by pretending they're not actually languages or other means.