It’s perfectly fine to speak in any language you can with your own kid… I know someone who was raised in a household where each day of the week was a different language (e.g. Sundays was French, Mondays was Russian, etc.). Kids are amazing. If you live in an English-speaking area, you probably don’t have to give his English development much thought… if he doesn’t get it at home, he’ll get it the moment he starts school. (Growing up in Minnesota in the 1930s, my dad spoke German at home and didn’t learn English until he started school.) It’s the non-local language that you have to give more attention to, and it sounds as if you’re doing just that. Reading to your son in any language is more important, I think, than reading less in only a specific language. I realize now that Anthony is 5 that I didn’t read enough to him, so didn’t foster a love of storytelling, and now he has little interest in learning to read himself, in either language. Not sure how to handle this one myself…. —Jeffrey

Many thanks in advance.
Megumi

You might be interested in the website I recently created:

http://www.bilingualfamiliesconnect.com/

Many families have shared their successes and challenges and it has helped us learn a lot, too.

I’ll be interested in your feedback.

Best wishes.

Thank you for sharing your experience and approach in raising your child in a multilingual family. My husband is Turkish and I’m a Malaysian, and we are now staying in Istanbul. We are expecting our first child soon and from time to time I do wonder what could be the best approach for our child to master both languages. We are thinking Turkish & English since we are staying in Istanbul and most people can speak English in Malaysia (and worldwide in general). And we also converse in English most of the time at home since my Turkish is so-so.

I‘m doing some research now and that’s how I found your blog. Now I do have some ideas and I found comments from the other visitors helpful too. However, I will still continue with my research to find out what methods other parents are using. I guess it is also important to continuously evaluate the child’s reception to the current’s approach/method being used.

If you know of any good sites / blogs / books on this topic, I would really appreciate if you could email me. Thanks for your help and all the best.

p.s. By the way, I studied at Oita University and stayed in Oita, Japan for 4 years (91-95). Kyoto is a beautiful place and you are lucky to have settled there. I do miss Japan sometimes. (especially the food….yummy!).

Recently though, my friend’s cousin visited from Japan, and her mother is American, so she’s haafu, but I noticed that her English wasn’t perfect, and I could detect traces of a Japanese accent. She also said that she had trouble understanding most movies outside of things like Disney and Harry Potter. Of course, she is a native English speaker, but because her schooling was entirely in Japanese, her English and Japanese are far from completely balanced. However, she IS attending Sophia University (Jouchi daigaku), which is an international college..so maybe her English will improve there? I’m not sure..but I do know people at my college here who are Japanese citizens that attended international school who have perfect English, and they can also read and write Japanese on a higher level than I can. I think this might be another way that your son can become a fully balanced bilingual, as long as he pursues Japanese classes designed for native speakers, which I know they have at places like the American School in Japan. I guess this might be a different situation than the one you are in because Japanese won’t be spoken exclusively at home, but it seems like he’s already at a high level.

Another option that I just remembered is that I know someone here who attended Japanese school until finishing middle school and then completed high school at an international school. I haven’t heard her speak in English much, but she seems to be very proficient at both languages, especially Japanese. Anyway, just some other ideas to throw out there for you. Feel free to email me if you have any questions about growing up bilingual or anything. Gambatte!

I enjoyed reading your blog - interesting thoughts! I’m British and now live in Japan with my wife and 2 year old daughter. We have a policy (90% successful!) of only speaking English at home. My wife has a very good command of English. She has even mentioned that at times she finds it easier to speak English to our daughter than Japanese. I understand your comments about having a ‘native level relationship’ but I don’t feel my wife is missing any opportunities. Luckily her parents live nearby and are able to look after our daughter during the day. When we visit their house to collect our daughter the spoken language is mainly Japanese. I believe it’s equally important to create a realistic environment for speaking the language. One house, one language seems to be more natural than one house 2 languages. Generally, we try and use whichever language is the dominant one.

It can be interesting raising a bilingual child. My wife and I have taken great pains to ensure my two sons know Japanese even though they’re being raised almost entirely in the US. My wife pretty much speaks Japanese only with them, and I do my best (my Japanese is passable for getting by, but by no means fluent). My older son went to a Japanese pre-school for two years.

My 5-year old son is fluent in Japanese, and may even be more advanced than the average native speaker his age. He went to kindergarten in Japan for two months last year and generally impressed the adults there. Coming back to the US to enter kindergarten here, he was evaluated for ESL and it was decided he needed no special classes to improve his English (this disappointed my wife slightly — she thought it might be an indication he hadn’t learned Japanese as well as he could have). He also attends a Japanese school on Saturday from 9:30 to 2:30. I notice odd little gaps in his English at times, but he has no real trouble. I should add the caveat that he is quite bright, and I suspect if he had been raised only in English his English would be better.

We have a number of American-Japanese couples as friends, and have noticed their children generally speak fair to middling Japanese and fluent English, despite usually having Japanese mothers.

My 2.5 year old son speaks only Japanese so far (except for the requisite 2-year old English — “No” and “This is mine!”). However, we intend to follow the same model of aggressively teaching him Japanese and letting his English come through the school system.

In short, I agree with most of what you’ve suggested, though I don’t know about the assertion that you need to “worry” about language where one lives in the early years (in the Korean-German case, the German). The only real downside for us so far is my parents tend to lament their grandson not knowing English right away.

Oh, I’d also say a bilingual child often starts speaking a bit later (say, 6 to 8 months might be typical) than other children, and that usually it’s nothing to be concerned about.

Oh, and incidentally — if you’re the same Jeff Friedl who wrote “Mastering Regular Expressions”. . . I’m sure you hear it all the time, but very nice work. . .

Happy belated B-day to Anthony! Anything fun happen on his big day?

Say, I sent an e-card to an old email addy (whoops). Any chance you could please send me your current one? Thanks!