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Martin
  Reply with quote  #1 
Hi everyone,

What is your advice as to the best language system for our son? 

We are a couple living in Belgium (in a French speaking area) with the following languages mix: 
 
1. My wife is Hungarian and speaks Hungarian as native language. She also speaks English fluently and then a bit of French and Spanish (not really fluently). 
2. Myself, I speak Spanish as a native speaker, English fluently and a bit of French but not really fluently.
3. Our son is currently 1.5 years old.  He lives in a French speaking environment. He goes to a creche where they speak French to him and he will be going to a school in French in 1 year’s time when he is 2.5 years old.
 
What is your advice as to the best language system for our son? 
 
We try to follow some sort of “One Person One Language” system. I speak in Spanish to my son and my wife speaks in Hungarian to him. However, my wife and I speak in a mix of English and Spanish between us. My wife wants to improve her Spanish and that’s why we sometimes switch from English to Spanish when we speak to each other. 
 
Our son is therefore exposed to 4 languages at the same time. Is this unhealthy or may it cause speech problems later on? Is there a better language system that we should follow?
 
Thanks for your advice!
 
Martin
 
viviana
  Reply with quote  #2 
Hi martin,
I cant give u an answer but I can tell u my situation….and i will love an advice!!!!
Im native italian speaker and i speak fluenty english…..and my husband is from holland and of course a dutch speaker….we speak english between us….and we live in france….our son 3years old goes to french school…
we also use the way one persone one language…but now that our son start to speak a lot….his speech it is all a big mix of the four language!!!our big questions are about…in wich language he should speck to us if we are all toghether????dutch italian o english….hard for us because we always avoid to speck english to him…..we leave it just for us…so what he should be doing????
Viviana
 
daria
  Reply with quote  #3 
Hi Martin,

I cannot answer your question fully but I grew up with OPOL. Greek with my mother, Farsi with my father and Swedish in kintergarten/school. It worked for me and my brother. And my cousin who grew up in a similar situation in Canada. 


 
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