Strategies or tips needed

[wrrydmom]

Hi! We have a one year old baby and we’ve been following OPOL since he was in my womb. I speak Spanish to him 95% of the time and my husband speaks Slovak absolutely all the time to him. We both speak English to each other and we live in an English speaking country. I feel that OPOL works fine, but sometimes if we’re with someone who doesn’t speak Spanish, I speak to him in English a bit. He goes to childcare and they speak English to him all morning. I’m really happy that he’s growing with a lot of exposure to the three languages and that he will learn all of them, but I have some doubts I need help with:

1- if in the future he speaks to me and says a Slovak word, do I correct him? Or is he gonna think he said a wrong word?

2- he started saying the word “this” every time he points at something, should I recast and say: “eso” in Spanish?

My doubt is that if I correct him, he’s going to think he’s saying something wrong, when in fact it’s just a different language.

Sorry if it all sounds stupid…

Also, all the books I find are about benefits of raising bilingual children, I know the benefits, I would like some book suggestions that actually help with these kind of stuff.

Thanks!

 

[jordanjds]

@wrrydmom My kids are eight and six, and have OPOL Danish (dad) and English (me). We live in Denmark. Now that they are well-established in both languages we have started correcting bits of their code switching. Of note, both of them had the habit of using the Danish ‘man’ as third-person-plural (‘you’) regardless of the rest of the sentence. Such as, ‘when man goes to the beach, man can bring goggles with’; replacing ‘you’ with ‘man’.

Personally I figure with time they will iron out the minor vocabulary and mechanics quirks, so we aren’t being too picky about how precise their language is in any form. They obviously understand both languages fully, and if anything are using both to expand their comprehensibility.

 

[nedu]

@wrrydmom If he says “this” then I would just reply in Spanish. (“Ahh, this? This is an apple!” Etc.) So you’re not necessarily correcting him, but you still communicate how to say “this” in Spanish.

 

[wrrydmom]

@nedu That’s what I’m doing, I answer by saying: ( this? Esto es una manzana) but I was wondering if it was wrong to do that