Teaching newborn English/Spanish

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

*"lo lleve/lo lleven", depending on the region where the nursery rhyme is sung.

[Rusty]

'Conversate' is a non-standard word, my friend. The commonly-used word is 'converse'.

Language acquisition begins with listening to those who raise us. After a good deal of listening, we utter our first syllables and then our first words. The words we learn at first are almost always the objects we can see, hear, touch, taste or smell.
Our first words will always be what our most constant guardian will teach us.

Teaching a child two words for every object encountered is impossible, unless the same moment, encouragement and recognition are ever present. Don't get me wrong, each language can be taught, but they will seldom be taught at the same time. The connection made when an English word is learned will almost never be the same connection made when the Spanish equivalent is learned.

For example, if your wife is at home when your baby sees a ball in the room, she might pick the ball up and hold it in her hand while saying "Do you see the ball?" Then she might isolate the word "ball" and point at it or wiggle it so that the baby is focused on just the ball. She may repeat the question several times. She might sit down in front of the baby and ask, "Can you roll the ball?" She will push the ball towards the baby. After this exercise is repeated several times, the child might say ball.
During this exercise the parent taught several mini-lessons in English grammar while trying to get the child to focus on and learn a single word.
To teach the same concepts in Spanish, the same kind of mini-lessons need to repeated, in Spanish, before your child can be expected to learn the word pelota. If you can't provide a very similar learning environment to the one already experienced in English, your baby will not make the right connection. It's just that simple. The child must learn the Spanish word in much the same way as she learned the English word. You can't simply provide the word in Spanish after the English word has been taught. We don't learn that way.

As was suggested, you'll need to hire a Spanish-speaking nanny if you want your child to learn both languages equally well. You should realize, however, that your child will not have the same English and Spanish lessons each day because the teaching environments will seldom be the same. One day the child will speak about the stars and Elmo playing with a kite y el próximo dirá que el cielo es celeste y que oyó cómo cantan los pájaros en los árboles.

I did not teach, nor would I try to teach, a language that weren't my mother tongue. There's little point in it, since you will not always speak in the foreign language you're trying to teach.

I know several families with bilingual children. Not one of those children acquired both languages at the same time. They spoke one language at first, and then the other as the need arose. The mother tongue of the one who spoke to the children the most was always the first language acquired. The second language, although it was also used in the home and heard through electronic media, was not learned until it was needed for communication of basic needs. The need for bilingualism has to exist before it can happen.
Think about it.

[Zerk]

Originally Posted by Rusty

'Conversate' is a non-standard word, my friend. The commonly-used word is 'converse'.

Language acquisition begins with listening to those who raise us. After a good deal of listening, we utter our first syllables and then our first words. The words we learn at first are almost always the objects we can see, hear, touch, taste or smell.
Our first words will always be what our most constant guardian will teach us.

Teaching a child two words for every object encountered is impossible, unless the same moment, encouragement and recognition are ever present. Don't get me wrong, each language can be taught, but they will seldom be taught at the same time. The connection made when an English word is learned will almost never be the same connection made when the Spanish equivalent is learned.

For example, if your wife is at home when your baby sees a ball in the room, she might pick the ball up and hold it in her hand while saying "Do you see the ball?" Then she might isolate the word "ball" and point at it or wiggle it so that the baby is focused on just the ball. She may repeat the question several times. She might sit down in front of the baby and ask, "Can you roll the ball?" She will push the ball towards the baby. After this exercise is repeated several times, the child might say ball.
During this exercise the parent taught several mini-lessons in English grammar while trying to get the child to focus on and learn a single word.
To teach the same concepts in Spanish, the same kind of mini-lessons need to repeated, in Spanish, before your child can be expected to learn the word pelota. If you can't provide a very similar learning environment to the one already experienced in English, your baby will not make the right connection. It's just that simple. The child must learn the Spanish word in much the same way as she learned the English word. You can't simply provide the word in Spanish after the English word has been taught. We don't learn that way.

As was suggested, you'll need to hire a Spanish-speaking nanny if you want your child to learn both languages equally well. You should realize, however, that your child will not have the same English and Spanish lessons each day because the teaching environments will seldom be the same. One day the child will speak about the stars and Elmo playing with a kite y el próximo dirá que el cielo es celeste y que oyó cómo cantan los pájaros en los árboles.

I did not teach, nor would I try to teach, a language that weren't my mother tongue. There's little point in it, since you will not always speak in the foreign language you're trying to teach.

I know several families with bilingual children. Not one of those children acquired both languages at the same time. They spoke one language at first, and then the other as the need arose. The mother tongue of the one who spoke to the children the most was always the first language acquired. The second language, although it was also used in the home and heard through electronic media, was not learned until it was needed for communication of basic needs. The need for bilingualism has to exist before it can happen.
Think about it.

Thanks for the videos Villa!

Chileno, during conversations...are you really concerned about grammar? How often have you stopped in the middle of a conversation to correct someone before you moved on to the next topic? Now writing is certainly different but learning how to communicate for basic needs, I'm pretty sure if you conjugated incorrectly during a casual conversation you would still be able to get your point across...used las instead of los...etc. These are also all things you can improve in time, I used to have horrible grammar before hanging around people who spoke correctly. Being immersed in people who used proper grammar made me realize how bad mine was and want to correct it

That makes a lot of sense Rusty, thanks for the input.

That is definitely something I was still trying to figure out...how/when to teach her. Do I wait until she has learned some words in English, then try and teach her the Spanish equivalent? You're exactly right, we don't learn that way so more often than not it's going to be confusing rather than helpful. I have also heard that same point many times, unless you are dependent on speaking the other language than most likely you will not become fluent.

Maybe the better goal would just be to focus on vocabulary and let her develop grammatical skills when she starts learning in school?

Thanks for the input everyone, I hope I'm coming off as accepting..it's hard to tell without tone but I really am taking these points into consideration.

[zuma022]

I admire what you want to do Zerk, but I also don't think it's going to work. Aside from the points made, you would have to speak Spanish 100% to her and unless you're a native speaker or have a near native command of the language that is just not going to happen. Think about it, if the baby or later on toddler does something let's say dangerous, I can guarantee you, you won't call out in Spanish to not do that. That's an extreme example of course, but even complementing a child or asking to do something, etc etc. If Spanish isn't like a mother tongue to you, you won't be able to keep it up, no matter what.

I have friends where the husband is perfectly bilingual and speaks mostly Spanish to their two year old and while she does understand a lot, she never replies in Spanish. As Rusty said above, there is simply no need for her. She will likely have the basics down if he keeps it up, but she's not bilingual. Another couple I know where the mom is Chinese, but not fluent herself have just decided to let her watch educational programs in Cantonese. She also has games and books in Cantonese and the plan is to put her into early immersion classes as a day care option. That to me is the best approach if you yourself are not fluent.

[Zerk]

Gotcha, well thank you all for your input. Maybe my wife and I will look into getting her into special programs or something as she gets older where she can learn and become fluent in Spanish. As for now...maybe I will just stick to learning it myself

I really appreciate all the responses and concerns with this. It's always good to get other peoples perspective

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Children do discriminate what is not right if they can compare; you can always speak to your child in the foreign language, but it's necessary that she also has native speakers nearby to talk to her too, so the risk of flawed input is minimized.

[pjt33]

Originally Posted by Zerk

I would like to hear some experiences, do's, don't's, progress, what to expect..etc...

Get a copy of http://www.cambridge.org/es/elt/cata...e_locale=es_ES . It condenses a lot more experiences than you'll hear from a handful of people on a forum.

[Zerk]

Thanks pjt33! I will look into it

[Villa]

There was a study done about how a 6 year old child could learn
a whole new language in 6 months and at the same time lose
their first language. Seems it was a linguist from Spain who adopted
a child from another country. So if you teach your child Spanish you
have to continue to do so. Here in California we have these double
immersion programs that teach the subjects in Spanish and English.

[chileno]

In my case, we, my wife and I, came from Chile and our two daughters were born in the US. We made the commitment to just speak Spanish at home, so their first language was Spanish and we always speak at home, even today. They know that when they are at home they have to converse with us in Spanish only. Today they are 32 and 26 y.o. respectively.