Teaching newborn English/Spanish

[Zerk]

Hi everyone,

My hope joining this forum is that I will be able to teach my daughter both English and Spanish. I believe it will help her greatly in the future and also give me motivation to become fluent in Spanish.

I took Spanish in high school and loved it but the saying "if you don't use it, you lose it" took effect. So...5 years later, I am trying to remember everything I can and more to prepare to teach my daughter once she starts talking(probably 5-6 more months).

I am using Google Translate to help me form sentences but would like to use it less and less, the more I learn. Unfortunately right now it is a crutch since I don't remember very much(Verb conjugation, vocabulary, etc...)

The plan is for my wife to speak English to our daughter and me to speak Spanish to her. The idea came from a co-worker who has a nephew in a bilingual household. He is 3 and is fluent in both English and Portugese, with the dad only speaking Portugese and the mom only speaking English.

We are up for the challenge! Let me know your thoughts on this or if you maybe have done it yourself???

Thanks,

Joe

[Premium]

Originally Posted by Zerk

I am using Google Translate to help me form sentences but would like to use it less and less, the more I learn

Please do yourself a favor and stop using Google Translate. Nothing good comes out of it. You can find excelent online dictionaries that also provide conjugations and more.

I really don't want to discourage you but you should think this over. As long as Spanish isn't your native language or you don't speak it well-nigh perfectly I'd advise against it.
I know former school colleagues who were raised monolingual or bilingual but spoke 3 or more languages before hitting puberty. They were either extremely fascinated by languages or learnt it by other children in nursery.
An old friend of mine spoke only Albanian and German, but during nursery learnt Serbian as he only had friends who spoke Serbian to each other. Just by listening to language a young child can learn tremendously much

[Zerk]

Originally Posted by Premium

Please do yourself a favor and stop using Google Translate. Nothing good comes out of it. You can find excelent online dictionaries that also provide conjugations and more.

Thanks Premium, I will look into using another resource to help translate

Originally Posted by Premium

I really don't want to discourage you but you should think this over. As long as Spanish isn't your native language or you don't speak it well-nigh perfectly I'd advise against it.

Not quite sure if you are still referring to Google Translate here or if you are referring to teaching my daughter Spanish?

If you are referring to teaching my daughter Spanish as she grows up, I would disagree with you. Even if I do not speak Spanish perfectly by the time she is learning to talk, I see multiple advantages of her learning "words" or even having a keen ear to Spanish by the time she starts going to school.

Could you please elaborate on what/why you would advise against it? I don't see a negative to her being exposed to a second language, sooner rather than later.

[chileno]

If Spanish is not the native language spoken by one of the parents, I am afraid your daughter is not going to learn good Spanish.

She can go to Spanish classes as early as she starts speaking English, though. Or, you can get a Spanish nanny that will be most of the day with her, and she can teach your daughter directly.

[Premium]

Originally Posted by Zerk

Not quite sure if you are still referring to Google Translate here or if you are referring to teaching my daughter Spanish

To teaching your daughter Spanish.

Chileno said it clear and simple. Her Spanish would not be as good. Of course her ear will be accustomed to Spanish but she wouldn't necessarily unlearn the things she learnt wrong. Chileno also gave you some great examples. Privat tutoring at a young age can be very efficient.

[Zerk]

Thank you both for the information! I agree with you both to some extent, if Spanish is not taught properly from the beginning she will not learn "good Spanish" and as a result may run the risk of "not being able to undo the bad tendencies". However I must disagree with your first point chileno, I don't believe the person teaching Spanish must be native. For example, when I was learning/speaking Spanish regularly I could keep up a conversation with students who were fluent to a certain extent and I was learning from a teacher who knew Spanish as their second language, English being their first.

I appreciate the concerns however even if she only picked up a foundation for the language, that would still be better than her knowing nothing at all...as long as the foundation was good, to your point.

Has anyone on the forum done this with their children before? I would like to hear some experiences, do's, don't's, progress, what to expect..etc...

[chileno]

Originally Posted by Zerk

Thank you both for the information! I agree with you both to some extent, if Spanish is not taught properly from the beginning she will not learn "good Spanish" and as a result may run the risk of "not being able to undo the bad tendencies". However I must disagree with your first point chileno, I don't believe the person teaching Spanish must be native. For example, when I was learning/speaking Spanish regularly I could keep up a conversation with students who were fluent to a certain extent and I was learning from a teacher who knew Spanish as their second language, English being their first.

I appreciate the concerns however even if she only picked up a foundation for the language, that would still be better than her knowing nothing at all...as long as the foundation was good, to your point.

Has anyone on the forum done this with their children before? I would like to hear some experiences, do's, don't's, progress, what to expect..etc...

Understandable, however, think of the following:

Great that you could follow conversation with other non Spanish speaking people, but who knew if what y'all was saying was OK?

Sure, some will have a better Spanish than others, but all of you are going to be missing stuff, for not being native.

Don't you think so?

Besides, you might pick up some errors here and there, what about the baby?

I know, you will correct them, uh. The blind leading the blind type of situation.

[Zerk]

Originally Posted by chileno

Understandable, however, think of the following:

Great that you could follow conversation with other non Spanish speaking people, but who knew if what y'all was saying was OK?

Sure, some will have a better Spanish than others, but all of you are going to be missing stuff, for not being native.

Don't you think so?

Besides, you might pick up some errors here and there, what about the baby?

I know, you will correct them, uh. The blind leading the blind type of situation.

That's true . I agree

But I would like to point out I'm not trying to raise a Spanish expert, just try and teach her enough to be able to conversate.

Also, that is why "I'm learning how to see" if you will... . So the blind isn't leading the blind. I think 5-6 months is plenty of time for me to sharpen my skill set enough with the help of you all to be able to teach her little by little how to conversate in Spanish.

Don't you agree?

[Villa]

Zerk, I got to watch my native Spanish speaking wife teach our
two kids Spanish starting from when they were babies and I got
to learn Spanish right along with them. One of the many things she
did was to sing to them in Spanish every day a lot.
For example: Este niño lindo que nació de noche quiere que
le llevo a pasar en coche.
I can get you more lyrics to Spanish children songs
if you like. It's just something you can do amoung
others to teach your baby and yourself Spanish.

[chileno]

Originally Posted by Zerk

That's true . I agree

But I would like to point out I'm not trying to raise a Spanish expert, just try and teach her enough to be able to conversate.

Also, that is why "I'm learning how to see" if you will... . So the blind isn't leading the blind. I think 5-6 months is plenty of time for me to sharpen my skill set enough with the help of you all to be able to teach her little by little how to conversate in Spanish.

Don't you agree?

If you is OK with grammatical errors that most likely you are not going to catch, so most likely you are going to embrace them as "good Spanish" for her. Sure, why not.

Now, I will correct what Villa's wife must have said:

Este niño lindo que nació de noche quiere que le/lo llevo a pasear en coche.

My two daughters were taught Spanish at home, and that was their first language, as we knew once they would start school, they would catch up quickly. As things really worked out, they went into school with a lot of English, because they used to watch cartoons in English.