I need some help. Our family is a multilingual family. I am Hungarian, my husband is Lebanese. We are living in Lebanon. The common language between my husband and me is English but I speak Hungarian with our kids and he speaks Arabic or French with them. At the kindergarten they only speak French.
As the kids are getting older, we realize that we are facing a problem: we don’t have a “family” language. I only speak very basic Arabic and French and my husband does not speak Hungarian.
How can we introduce a family language? Would we confuse our children if we started talking to them English when we are all together?
Thank you very much in advance,
Monika
Read Madalena’s answer on the next page…
NEXT PAGE — 1 2
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
We are a multilingual family english spanish french m’y husband is french and speaks only french with our three children while i speak two weeks in english and two weeks in spanish with them because i am american with hispanic origins. i grew up bilingual and later also became fluent in french. we now live in Paris France and m’y husband and i speak english with each other. Our children are trilingual. mealtimes and family discussions are sometimes choppy awkward or very lively but we’ve learned to live with it! and it is just fine because our children 10 7 n 4 are truly trilingual, what a great tradeoff!
Very interesting indeed….
My wife speaks Italian, I speak English, we live in the Basque speaking area of Basque Country, so the nanny speaks Basque too and my father and brother speak Spanish (can’t communicate in Basque) to my son. I will eventually face that “problem” of not having a unify family language… Any comments on this topic are a blessing.
Thanks Maria
Hi! I realize this is kind of off-topic but I had to ask. Does building a well-established blog like yours require a lot of work? I’m completely new to operating a blog however I do write in my diary on a daily basis. I’d like to start a blog so I will be able to share my personal experience and thoughts online. Please let me know if you have any kind of suggestions or tips for brand new aspiring bloggers. Appreciate it!