I am expecting my first baby in April. The question of which language(s) to speak to our child has been my biggest concern. Cantonese is my native language, Slovak is my husband’s, we communicate to each other in English and we live in Germany. We both cannot understand each other’s native language.
Even after reading and asking around, my husband and I still cannot make up our mind. Luckily enough we learn from this websit now about some principles about multilingual method and also not to confuse the child by mixing languages. Therefore, I think it’s important to make our decision as early as possible.
Our goal is to be able to communicate among us together as a family. That means, speaking English to the child is what we should do. However, we also want our child to learn Chinese which will be very useful for the future development of the child. So, the option could be my husband speaks to him in English, but I speak in Chinese. But then my husband will be left out when we talk in Chinese.
We would love to listen to your advices or experience. It would be very helpful for us to make our decision. Thanks a lot in advance.