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Categories > Your Questions — General > will i confuse my 3.5 month old baby? What is the best solution?
 
 


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anika
  Posted   Reply with quote  #1 
Hi,
I am polish, my husband is spanish and we live in UK. We communicate in english.
Since my son was born i decided not to talk to him in my native (polish) language and use only english. My husband has been speaking to him in spanish. Now, after doing some research i realized that it would be better for my son’s future if he speaks all three languages so i would like to start talking to him in polish. However i am a bit worried if it is not too late to do that? Is there a chance that i will confuse my baby if suddenly i switch to polish?
 
Or maybe it is better if i carry on with english and than introduce polish language when he is 3yo or so (when he is fluent with english? What is better? Please help me as i am really not sure what i should do.
 
Thank you
 
Helena
  Posted   Reply with quote  #2 
I personally wouldn’t wait.
Polish is such a difficult language for non Slavonic speakers to master, I think that if you wait you will have a real battle on your hands to try to get your child to accept it.
You really haven’t wasted much time at all.  3 1/2 months is tiny and your child will accept the change in language with no problems at this stage.
What an amazing gift to your child to make him trilingual!
 
Siya
  Posted   Reply with quote  #3 
NON Sense! Dont be absurd. You’ve never had a slip of the tongue in any language? You might say,”hand me the foon–I mean, fork”

If you do such a thing in front of your son he’s not going to grow up, forever struggling to remember if the object he eats pasta with is a foon or a fork. He will KNOW it is a fork. If he remembers you doing such a thing, he will also remember that mommy used to make mistakes some times because she was human.

You may feel awkward speaking Polish to the baby if you got used to using English, but just practice it. Replace 1 or 2 common sentences a day with their Polish equvalent if you have to so that you can “ease” into the linguistic change.

 Your son will not remember being 3.5 months old when he is 6 months, let alone at 2 years old. When he is grown, he will scarcely remember being a toddler at all. If your baby is not brain dead, he will have no trouble at all learning Polish and Spanish, or as he will think of them “Mommy-speak” and “Daddy Speak” and he will pick up “Friend-speak” easily enough when he begins playing with other children.
 
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