How old were your children when they began to use words in different languages for the same thing or concept?

[kairete]

I'm curious about other people's personal experiences with this. And how did it go for your kid(s) -- did they slowly start adding "extra" words in the other language one at a time (so one day they were saying only "dog", then the next they were saying "perro" and "dog" interchangeably)? Or was there some definite moment when things just clicked and they suddenly started translating and switching between two languages?

Our daughter is 25 months old, living in Colombia (so Spanish is the dominant language in the community). She has been raised in an English-Spanish bilingual home (mostly native English from me, mostly Spanish from her mother, and my wife and I constantly switch between languages). For now, though our daughter clearly understands both languages, she has decided that she will use only one word from each language for each particular concept and then stick with it. I wonder, is this a common strategy for bilingually developing toddlers?

There's no clear pattern in which language she chooses for a particular concept: e.g. she says "blu" and "puhpuh" for the English colors "blue" and "purple", but also "(r)ojo" and "pepe/verde" for "red" and "green." Cats are "gatas" (Spanish, and note we have only female cats at home) but bubbles are "bubbles," water is "agua" but she says "cheese" in English. But she clearly understands both the Spanish and English words for all these concepts (and much more).

To be clear, I'm not at all worried about my daughter, just curious about how the transition to being fully bilingual may go over the next year. For now it is very cute when she says things like "ot(r)o cheese" when she wants us to pass "the other cheese" somewhere else on the table.

 

[laxdax]

@kairete I've noticed my 19m old daughter uses different words for different contexts- her father is always "shhh dada eep" for "dada's asleep" or "dada's sleeping". But with her baby dolls, she uses "shh bébé dodo", presumably because she also often plays with dolls at her French language daycare. Just recently I've noticed that she will use both words for herself. Her French is still very much developing- her father and I are both anglophones but she attends a francophone day care and we live in a majority-French community.

 

[kairete]

@laxdax Interesting! Perhaps because of my daughter's particular upbringing, where it's clear to her that both her parents are bilingual, she's been slower to develop that kind of situational linguistic awareness -- maybe she's still assuming that *everyone* in her life is bilingual? But she's just starting at a Spanish-only preschool, and I imagine that after a couple more weeks there (confused looks when she says things in English) she'll get the point.

 

[lionheartiv]

@kairete You hit the nail on the head, the lesson she hasn’t learned yet is that not everyone speaks both… my son also learned this lesson at daycare

 

[barsomo]

@kairete My daughter has been exposed to three languages since she was born and another one was added to the mix when she started daycare at 1y. We speak Finnish and Portuguese to our kids and English between us parents, daycare is in French.

My daughter was pretty good with saying both the Finnish or the Portuguese word depending on who she was talking to since turning 2y. If she would be talking to my husband and say a word in Finnish, my husband would always “feed” her the Portuguese equivalent (“Oh, you want the me to pass the queijo?”) not to correct her but just to put the correct word out there.

She’s 4,5y now and fully quadrilingual. There are still instances where certain words come out in a different language (like colors or days of the week might come out in her daycare language), and sometimes we might quiz her and be like “How do you say noir in Portuguese?” and other times we don’t. The amount of stuff her brain can process is incredible and sometimes taking the path of least resistance is totally fine.

When you say you constantly switch between languages, do you mean that you sometimes speak Spanish and sometimes English to your child?

 

[kairete]

@barsomo Yes, both of us (her mother and I) speak both languages, though I have been trying to speak just English to her when we're having a private conversation to ensure she hears a lot of the minority language from a native speaker. Somehow speaking to her in English when there's non-English speakers around feels awkward to me, though I know I should do it more.

Between my wife and I we switch languages a lot and our daughter overhears this.

Congrats on raising a quadrilingual kid! I can't imagine the amount of effort that would have taken.

 

[barsomo]

@kairete That awkwardness is really common and for some people it’s so bad that it prevents them from speaking their language to their kid. Which is such a shame! Not saying this is your case. But hopefully with some practice and time the awkwardness will go away. The language you and your child speak together is the major building block of your relationship and it’s nobody else’s business. If it makes people uncomfortable it’s THEIR problem.

Raising a quadrilingual kid is the usual amount of effort because I’m only responsible for my own language, my husband for his and the community takes care of the other two But thank you!

Maybe if you always talk to your daughter in English it will help her remember the English words for things because she associates them with you?

Anyways, you’re doing a great job!

 

[eric2023]

@kairete My 24m old son started responding to my husband with YES and to me with JA. I thought that was cool. We tell him "Yes, Mama says x, Papa says y" when he uses the "wrong" language with one parent, though.

 

[seeker112]

@kairete Your experience sounds about like ours.

Same age & in a similar situation. Both parents speak & understand both languages. Mom natively speaks the “minority” language exclusively to kid while dad speaks mostly native English and some minority language. Community language is English & household is an unpredictable mix that leans English.

Our kid does seem a bit more comfortable in the minority language, which we chalk up to being an only-child Covid baby who had nearly 2 solid years of work-from-home parents speaking it from Day 1 and minimal other social interaction until rather recently.

There’s a clear preference for certain words in a certain language, but also no real pattern. When we ask, press, or repeat it in the other language often the other word comes out.

To this day, we’ve almost never heard “yes” in either language (it’s always been “unh” instead), but we hear “No!!” screamed in both languages constantly and interchangeably, often to the amusement of onlookers.

We’re also starting to move on a bit from earlier “baby talk” mis-pronunciations to closer to the “real” words in certain cases, which is helping to differentiate cognates that previously were fused in a single “close-enough” word.

Finally, now that we’re moving on from single words to short sentences, dad is sticking more to English to avoid confusion from code-switching mid-sentence. That seems to be helping w/drawing distinctions between which words belong where.

Edit: as to “when it clicked” …
Kid is starting to experiment with “my/mine, yours,” etc & this morning I heard “this MY toy” (English) followed almost immediately by “[this is MY toy]” (minority language). So, I guess it’s happening right now?

 

[kairete]

@seeker112 Thanks for sharing. Our kid is also just now beginning to learn to use pronouns, which is an interesting process. At first she would point to herself and say "tú" (which is "you" in Spanish) when she meant to say "me," but now she seems to have just learned to use "tú" correctly. She's producing some fairly long and complicated "sentences" but still mostly avoiding pronouns, e.g. "...es de papá" for "his [Daddy's]" and so on. Congrats on raising a kid who's already switching naturally between two languages!

 

[johnskat]

@kairete Ours is 26mo and has been using both languages (English and Norwegian) interchangeably for a while. He knows when he’s in a Norwegian environment (preschool) he needs to use Norwegian, and when he is among my English-speaking family, he uses English exclusively. We don’t tell him which language to use, he just does it intuitively. The funny thing is that if I tell him something like “no, you can’t play with the butcher knife” in English, he’ll just ask again, but in Norwegian!

 

[kairete]

@johnskat Ha! Well, no harm in trying to ask again in the other language just to see what happens, I guess. Amazing how kids learn these things so intuitively.

 

[kilroy59]

@kairete I took very incomplete notes on my son’s words and I think around 18 months was the first time he had words for a concept in both languages (anne/mom). It wasn’t until around two years (sometime after 21 months, probably around 22-25 months) he started getting lots of concepts in both languages with his real language explosions. He had a few more isolated ones just before that (baba/dad and like 1, 2 and maybe one or two colors) but really started getting lots around his language explosion, which was around his second birthday.

Through 19 months or so (end of March, 2022), he had about 50 words in total between the languages and then I got sloppy with my notes. I think I stopped taking good language because in the following months his vocabulary exploded. I have text message I sent to someone in early June, around 21 months, saying “I think his language explosion is beginning”. I noticed it not just because he got to three in English and Turkish, but because he started saying words like “people” and “bumblebee” (which he already had the Turkish word for) that we were making no effort to teach him. I don’t have exact dates but he had the start of languages and colors in the community language Turkish by the end of March (one, two, blue at least) and I was jealous because I speak our non-community language English and maybe 80% of his recent had been in Turkish, so I really worked consistently on colors and numbers through the summer and maybe into the fall. My memory is by the end of the summer, so around 24-25 months, he had all the colors and numbers up to ten (as well as a lot more vocabulary) in English, to the point where those were well ahead of Turkish. At the same time, there were somethings that took him a lot longer in English—for example, being able to consistently answer “How old are you?” in English seemingly came four or five months after he learned the question in Turkish, despite my actively trying to teach him the English as soon as he got the Turkish.

Now at around 30 months he can have somewhat real “conversations” in both languages.

I was always sure he learned by exposure (he learned “baba” meaning dad in Turkish first because she was the one saying dad more, and he learned “ball” in English first because I was the one playing ball with him more), my wife was always sure he learned based on which was easier. I haven’t made up my mind up vocabulary—I think it’s a mix—but with grammar, it does seem like he picked up the easier form first. English plurals are just “s” (usually) which is much easier than “-ler/-lar” in Turkish where you not only change vowels but you have to say two liquid sounds (l,r) which are always the last sounds to come in. Likewise, he started using the Turkish past tense, which has no exceptions, months before the English past tense, which has so many exceptions. Likewise, English possessive first, Turkish future tense first. Always the easier one first with grammar, but I didn’t see the same pattern with vocabulary (though, again, my wife claimed to).

Another note that I found interesting: one language affected the other only rarely it seems—like for a few months after his language explosion, his English word order was a bit wonky and sometimes seemed Turkish (subjects at the end of sentences, for instance, which isn’t technically what Turkish has but it can few like that when using pronouns). After the language explosion, I don’t think he particularly mixed languages either, unless he didn’t know the word for something in one language and was guessing (I’d say “Mom says X, but Dad says Y”, and then he’d repeat Y to me usually). I expected a bit more mixing. There was a little bit before that (his great grandfather is still “Big Dede, dede meaning grandfather), but after the language explosion, I didn’t see it so much. Which surprised me because from what I’d read this mixing was supposed to peak around age three. Maybe it’s just that Turkish and English are so different. Otro queso sounds a lot more like “other cheese” (especially without the r sounds and the th reducing to a d-like sound) than diğer peynir does.

 

[kairete]

@kilroy59 Thanks for sharing all this! Your son seems to have been learning to produce words a little earlier than our daughter but there's a lot of variation among kids this way. I also have been doing a "language diary" thing occasionally, but as a busy parent it's hard to find time to record all the new words except at night when the kid's asleep and you're also too exhausted to think about this. So I've been a bit flaky about that.

I realized our daughter understands much more that I first thought when recently I said a long sentence in Spanish intended only for my wife, something like "Amor, voy a ir al mercado por más queso porque se acabó...", and our kid overheard and picked up on one key word in the middle of the phrase and shouted "Cheese!" in English. So who knows how much else she's hearing and picking up on.

 

[kilroy59]

@kairete Half the time my wife is working and I'm with my son (which is most mornings), my wife will later ask me, "Did he ask where I was?", as in like, "Did he miss me?" Today, when she was giving him his nighttime bath after I had looked after him both morning and afternoon, my son asked my wife, "Mom, did you ask where I was?" Kids are wild man, what they observe and absorb.

Our language diary was just a couple big chunk entries where my wife and I sat down on a weekend afternoon and tried to brainstorm every word he used somewhat regularly. I bet we missed some. I think our kid was a bit early on language but but our kid was also born a full two weeks late, so gestationally, he could easily be a full month older than other kids his age (if that makes sense).

Once he hit the language explosion phase, I found the "Mom says X, Dad says Y" really useful for increasing his vocabulary. It's probably not necessary but it seemed to speed up his acquisition and production of the word in the other language.

 

[longroad]

@kairete Oldest daughter: somewhere between 2 and 2.5 years old. I think 2.5 is when she started doing it pretty consistently rather than a word here and there.

Second daughter: between 1.5 and 2. Her “translating” started sooner than my first, who used the community language more at that age.

Son: newborn. I’m curious to see how his language development compares to the girls, since they say boys often start talking a bit later.

 

[aldredian]

@kairete What you're describing is very common. My son basically picked the word he finds easier to pronounce so there's a mix between the languages.

For the life of me, I can't remember when he did start to say things in the other language. I'm pretty sure it was pretty early. Like around 1.5 but again, random and not frequent. It will usually be things he like. For example, cars. He only says it in Mandarin to me and then one day, I overheard him say it in English to my MIL. But yeah. It's not that many words.

When he is fully able to say in both languages is 1 week before he turned 2 when his language explosion happened. Literally, one night, he picked up one of his colour books and basically pointed at everything and said it in English. Then he did it again and said it in Mandarin. Just literally happened overnight.

I can't remember the first time he translated things for his dad was before or after his language explosion. I think it's after. Can't remember.

 

[kairete]

@aldredian Wow, that must have been wonderful to see that moment when he suddenly switched to being bilingual.

Just today our daughter started saying "kitty cat" (English) to complement what was previously her primary word "gata" (Spanish) for cats. Seeing how my daughter develops I suspect this will be a slow but steady road to bilingualism, not all at once, just because of her personality.

 

[aldredian]

@kairete I wouldn't call that suddenly switching. He was always bilingual. This "lag" is more them trying to figure out how to speak. The fact he did actually say "car" to his granny in English early on meant he is already bilingual. Not to mention, I'm sure you can tell your child understands both languages perfectly. She just can't form her words just yet. As early as 8 months old, we could quiz my son in both languages where's (insert word).

Comprehension and actual speaking ability seems to be 2 different things. I'm sure your daughter's already bilingual. She's just warming up to speaking. I remember my son used to mutter words under his breath as if he's practicing. It's like, he took some time to finally warm up to the idea. Quite interesting to watch.

 

[emmalove]

@kairete I'm convinced my son's very first words were agua/"wawa" (water) but would have a hard time proving it in court. But anyway, I'd say right away based on that experience!