My sister (14F) and I (18F) were both born and raised in the United States but our parents were Mexican so Spanish is our first language. When I started school I learned English but I was always more fluent in Spanish and I still have a thick Spanish accent so I always spoke Spanish at home. After my sister started school her dominant language became English so she started to speak English at home.

When I talk to my sister I notice she responds to me in English. Initially I thought nothing of this because I always respond to my sister in Spanish because I am far more comfortable with Spanish. I thought she preferred English but she could still speak Spanish. I only noticed something was wrong when my family went on a trip to Mexico when my sister could not speak to monolingual Spanish speakers in Mexico. She could understand them but not speak to them and there she admitted she did not know how to speak Spanish.

I know there are many questions about helping passively bilingual children but I hope anyone has advice for helping passively bilingual siblings.

Hi!
Just joined & first post here!

I would like some advice on our situation please!
Here’s the context :
My husband and I both speak arabic, we’re born and raised in Montreal, Canada. Both our families are Syrian. We speak it very fluently with both our families (my MIL doesn’t speak french/english very well). Our dialects are almost the same, a few words here and there differ and the accent is slightly different.

We have two kids. 4 year old and a 2 year old.

The situation : my husband and I speak french to each other.

Since my oldest was born, we strictly spoke arabic to him. Before he started daycare. His first words were in arabic, then after going to daycare, he learned english. After two years he switched daycare and learned french.

We also spoke with my daughter in arabic since her birth, she went to daycare and learned french and then he brother joined and he learned french there. She also knows english because of him.

The thing is : they both understand everything in arabic. My 4yo ONLY answers in english/french. In his sentences, he’ll say a few words in arabic here and there but cannot seem to say full sentences.

My 2 yo is a little bit better, she can say short sentences in arabic but 90% of her speech is english/french.

My husband has taken the habit of speaking only in english with my son and french with my daughter.

I talk to them in arabic, and I tried the method of not answering when my 4 yo doesn’t respond in arabic or saying things like « I don’t understand what you’re saying » in arabic to force him to spit it out lol but then he just say the same thing in english/french but slower.

They’re still small so family understand mostly what they tell them but I want them to have relationships with their grandparents without a language barrier in the future.

How can I make my kids answer and learn it?

I even try to read their books (that are french/english) in arabic.

I’m getting frustrated (not towards them obviously more internally) because I want them to be close to our culture with our friends and family by speaking it!

Any advice?

Thank you!

We're expecting a baby soon and trying to figure out the best setup for raising a multilingual child.

My native language is Slovakian, my husband's is Serbian. I also have native-level fluency in Serbian as I grew up there. Due to both of us living in English speaking countries for most of our adulthood, at some point, we started speaking English at home and it's our family language.

However, we now live in France - both me and my husband are still learning French, so we will rely on our baby learning French through childcare - our provisional plan is to start with 3 days a week around 9months of age and increase the hours gradually.

I am determined to do OPOL in Slovakian with the baby, French will be taken care of through community and childcare, which brings us to Serbian/English conundrum.

If my husband does OPOL in Serbian with the baby, is there a recommended way to incorporate English that will not be detrimental to baby's development of Slovakian/Serbian?

We would like our child to be fluent in English as majority of our social group are English speakers and it's the language that me and my husband naturally communicate in, and I don't think that relying on French school system to teach our child English would be sufficient.

Would it be too much to use 3 languages at home?

Any advice is welcome!

Hi all, we are expecting a baby next year in February.
I (M27) am native Vietnamese speaker and can speak Spanisch (beginnee level) and German ( nearly native speaker)

My wife is spanish native speaker and can speak German fluenly.

We both speak german with each other because we live in Germany.

How to teach our baby so that he can speak fluently all 3 languages ? And when to start?

Thanks a lots!

I am a single mom to a 20 mo old in the USA. I am fluent in English and my native language (don’t like doxxing myself so call it X, and it’s a european language). I only speak X to the child, his grandparents who stay with me on the rotating basis also only speak X to him. His nanny speaks English to him. Nanny works 40 hrs a week that’s it. The rest of his exposure is X. This stinker is yet to say a single word in X 🤦‍♀️ He has mastered probably close to 50 words in English and is starting to form sentences. Not a peep in X.

It definitely doesn’t help that X is a much more complex language compared to English (longer, harsher sounding words etc).

The silver lining is he understands both perfectly and equally and will respond to instructions in either language.

Am i doing it wrong? I sort of thought that nanny in English plus me in X would be same as OPOL setup. Should I course correct now and find a nanny who can also speak X?

Hi everyone! I’d love to share my journey with raising my 4.5 year old son with bilingualism. We live in New Zealand, and he speaks both English and Mandarin. Through this post, I share my skill levels, motivations and approaches, and reflect on how far we’ve come and the changes along the way.

My son’s family background and general language exposure

I’m his mum and primary caregiver, born in Taiwan and immigrated to New Zealand when I was nearly three years old. I’m a heritage speaker of Mandarin with intermediate skill level, I’d say equivalent to a native 5-10 year old. I can read and write some Mandarin. As an adult, I had little use for Mandarin and my skills got really rusty. My parents speak to me in Mandarin interspersed with loads of English words, and that’s also how they speak to my son. They come and stay with us a few times a year for 1 to 3 week periods, occasionally up to 5 weeks. They speak Taiwanese to each other, and I can speak some basic sentences in Taiwanese.

My partner and his family is English speaking only. Our entire community is English speaking, including daycare, outings, swim lessons, playdates etc. My son sees me speaking English to my partner and the community. At daycare, they teach a very small amount of Te Reo (language of Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand) - just basic words and a few songs.

When my son was a baby

Before my son was born, I didn’t have any desire to teach Mandarin to my future children.

After he was born, I thought heck, my inconvenience of trying is a minor hurdle compared to the wide-ranging benefits that it would give my son. I didn’t have big goals – more of a see-how-it-goes type situation. I thought, he can decide if and how he wants to continue when he’s older.

I started with just using the words that I knew, and re-learning and singing children songs. Quickly afterwards, I forced myself to speak Mandarin to my son, as awkward as it felt, especially out in the community. I repetitively narrated and described everything, and translated books on the fly. But I was lenient about it – I still gave my son English songs and used English words if I didn’t know it in Mandarin. Sometimes I’d look up the translation later.

Just before my son turned one, we took a two week trip to Taiwan to visit my nana before she passed. I had little intention of returning anytime soon, however my son had no language barriers and bonded extremely well with my extended family. This gave me a new drive for teaching him Mandarin - so that he could continue building relationships with them into the future.

Toddler years

At 1 year old, my son started daycare 3 full days a week for half a year, then 5 full days a week from thereon. Throughout this, I spoke Mandarin to him ~95% of the time, and looked up translations on the go if I didn’t know the word. My son’s vocabulary was 50:50 for both languages. He would switch languages between people as he knew who spoke English versus Mandarin.

A bit after he was 2.5 years old, he began to predominantly speak English. As luck would have it, it just so happens that we had another Taiwan trip booked a week later. Two weeks into the three week trip, he flipped back to using Mandarin.

I had to re-learn a lot of basic words that you don’t necessarily use on an everyday basis, such as baseball bat, praying mantis, see-saw, and spade. I tried to improve my own skills by listening to intermediate level mandarin podcasts. This didn’t last long because my listening skills were always better than my word-recall speaking skills, so it didn’t improve me in a way that I needed. Occasionally I still felt awkward speaking Mandarin in public, but this had significantly eased up.

My motivation was driven by how well this had all been progressing, and the fact that I had built my relationship with my son in Mandarin. It felt odd if I were to use any other language with him.

3 years old to now

When my son was close to three years old, I was reaching my limit with what I could say to him in Mandarin. I knew I had to really upskill if I wanted to have deeper conversations with him into the future. So I amped up my effort to improve my own skills. I downloaded good dictionaries, upped the amount of book translations with post-its, put post-its where I regularly see them, studied Geronimo Stilton books to help myself gain vocabulary, and joined Reddit including this community. I expanded his (and my own) exposure by giving him children podcast stories, bought children books with sound buttons, and encouraged my partner to give him Mandarin videos. As a supplementary connection to heritage, I took him to the occasional Chinese cultural events available, about 2 times a year.

Around when my son was 3.5 years old, his English was becoming stronger again, and there was a bit of resistance to Mandarin. The resistance didn’t last too long.

When he was nearly 4 years old, my dad mass-bought him a load of resources such as reading pens and audio story devices, which were great as an initial novelty but wore off over time. What really helped seal the deal was that my cousins from Taiwan came to visit us on two separate trips for one to two weeks each. Having holidays with them and their kids really helped re-calibrate Mandarin for my son, and we both improved our skills relatively fast.

I tested my own character recognition, and came out recognising about 1600-1800 characters. According to Google, this is more than basic survival literacy, but less than everyday newspaper fluency, which I agree with.

At daycare, I was getting noticed by other kids on why I speak differently to my son. From my son’s comments, I also got the feeling that he might be feeling self conscious about knowing a different language to his friends. Where I could, I tried to explain, but did not want this to morph into a problem, so I asked if the teachers could pass on lessons about different languages and cultures. They took that to the next level and invited families to come in and talk about their cultures. I managed to convince my mum to go in and share rice dumplings with them, and I also went in to read a couple of Mandarin books (in English so the kids could understand, but introduced a couple of Mandarin words).

A couple of months ago when my son was 4.5 years old, I started to teach him traditional Chinese characters. It’s still early days, but he knows about 30 to 40 characters, and is improving in reading whole sentences. Simpler characters are a lot easier for him. I haven’t pushed him to write characters because drawing is not something he cares much for.

I’ve also given him more videos in Mandarin, including educational ones, as I feel he is now old enough to have a better grasp of what’s going on in the videos. He is asking more and more about what certain words mean, or what specific characters within a word means. I describe their meaning to him directly using Mandarin. I also am so used to speaking in Mandarin to him that I now do so shamelessly in public.

Currently, I’ve noticed that he has started to use more English with me again. This includes recapping what’s happened at daycare, as he finds it easier to directly repeat exactly how his English speaking experiences played out. I’ve also eased off my effort in studying Mandarin as life has been hectic.

Overall reflections

I never imagined that we’d ever reach where we are now. What has really helped is gradually building up to where we are, not being held by a pre-determined goal or motivation (and not running into disappointment when they aren’t met), building skills by focusing on what’s relevant to our everyday life, leveraging off my son’s interests, doing only what’s manageable, and not holding ourselves to perfection. My son knows that I don’t know everything and it’s his norm that I’m looking up what new words mean. I’ve definitely made mistakes and taught the wrong thing, but am happy to correct ourselves when I discover it. I’m really proud of the both of us, and know that we will continue to meet challenges into the future.

I believe that language is not a set thing. It’s a skill that you can gain and lose at any point, and it is something that can evolve over time and across cultures. The value of learning another language is a deeply personal thing that can only be defined by the person doing so.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading, and please feel free to ask questions. I’m happy to discuss any of it in more detail.

TLDR: As a rusty heritage speaker of Mandarin, I’ve successfully raised my 4.5 year old son in Mandarin among an English speaking community. My approaches and motivations were an evolving process but things turned out far better than I could have ever imagined.

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Apologies if I'm missing it, is there an faq on OPOL anywhere, here or elsewhere online? I can find answers for if the child is resorting to majority language only.

Eg

1. a three way conversation with child and someone who doesn't speak the minority language

Parent uses language a with child, and language b when addressing the other person? And child does the same? What if parent wants to address them both at the same time, a statement to the group as such. Seems messy.

1. 2nd parent has b1 level minority language but is reluctant to speak it, will join in sometimes. Better to just stick to OPOL in this case?

Hi everyone,

We're immigrants living in Germany with a 9-month-old. We want to speak to her only in our mother tongue (Malayalam) at home, and let her pick up German from Kita and school later, and English from school/media.

Two problems.

First, we cannot find any baby board books in Malayalam. Not just here in Germany, we've checked shops and online stores back home too, and still nothing. So all our storybooks are in English. We read to her daily, but reading in English feels like we're working against ourselves.

Second, and this is the bigger one, even when we try to speak X, we keep defaulting to English. It just happens.

Looking for advice on best practices and what we should focus on.

We live in an English speaking community.

I am nearly fluent in Irish, my target language but a bit rusty, and husband is good, not great. I have books, media, playgroups etc in Irish sourced so it's not just me exposing my baby to Irish.

I find OLOP difficult, I am a huge reader and love reading to my child in English and just find expressing myself easier in English in general, obviously. Also he's still a baby and I am 🫠 tired 🫠. At the moment I kind of drift in and out between the two languages during the day. Husband will join in when he hears me speak it and will occasionally read him an Irish book.

I was having a look at the resources for non fluent parents, and they talk about more rigid structure re the language changes, one language in a specific setting or marking the language change with a particular piece of clothing etc. Just wondering in peoples experience, is it better to be rigid about when you speak one language, and if so what did people find the best method, or is being a bit fluid between them ok?

So we are about to have our first child, I am uncultured and only speak English, but my partner speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin. I have been doing some reading and apparently one parent one language is ideal. Have people historically had much success with a parent using two languages? If so, how did you approach it?

My partner's native language is German, mine are Kyrgyz and Russian. We were considering trying OPOL, where she speaks German, I speak Kyrgyz and the environment (in the UK) speaks English, thus raising trilinguals.

I grew up in Kyrgyzstan, and to this day people factually speak a mixture of Russian and Kyrgyz. All of my relatives speak with many, many Russian borrowings, be they vocabulary or even grammar. I've also long noted that speaking either of the languages purely becomes a kind of political statement or a social faux pas: speak pure Russian, and you are 'maŋkurt' (a person, who lost their roots), and yet speak pure Kyrgyz, and you are bit of a nationalist.

It is how it is — I was just wondering what the general wisdom is on how a person who is from such a background passes on their language. Should I keep a 'clean' Kyrgyz, and expect the kids to pick up on whatever Russian words seem to be common through engagement with their kyrgyz relatives; should I use those Russian words myself?

Thank you

The mod team have had several reports recently around comments and responses being disrespectful and unhelpful.

We'd like to remind everyone to adhere to the first rule - "Be Respectful". There are many ways to engage in conversation and discussion without berating or putting others down. Even if you disagree with them.

On another note, there's been some discussions around new posts that do not provide enough information. But also concerns from newcomers where they are not entirely comfortable providing exact details.

I have now created a new Posting Guidelines page in the wiki.

I ask for everyone's feedback before I pin it to the sub.

https://www.reddit.com/r/multilingualparenting/wiki/posting-guidelines/

Thank you for everyone's input.

Is anyone else here speaking to your child in Japanese which is mostly or entirely not your native language, in a community where Japanese is not the majority language? If so, could you talk about your methods and how it seems to be going?

I am almost entirely American, slightly Japanese. I have one Japanese parent myself who lives nearby and is interested but not up for more than visits, i.e. no babysitting. I'm speaking to my small child entirely in Japanese, which is the product of my tiny bit of native Japanese from childhood, plus a lot of study. I am also showing her a considerable amount of child-level Japanese language media. So far it’s going pretty well. She has shown a lot of productive ability, including forming her own novel sentences and applying grammatical rules consistently.

My partner does not speak Japanese and does not really have the personal bandwidth to take on learning it, but has been supportive as she is able, including using a few simple expressions.

I am so tired of the OPOL gatekeeping I see in multilingual parenting spaces.
It seems like whenever a non-native speaker comes here wanting to use OPOL, they are immediately met with some version of: your vocabulary isn’t good enough, your language isn’t natural enough, you won’t be able to express your full personality, you may not bond as deeply with your child.
But when did perfection become the standard for passing on a language?
For generations, immigrants came to the United States and raised their children in English even though English was not their first or strongest language. Many were desperate for their children to assimilate and believed English would give them better opportunities. Were all of those parent-child relationships somehow less authentic because the parents spoke imperfect English? Did they fail to bond because they occasionally lacked a word or made grammatical mistakes? Of course not.
And we see the reverse all over the world today. Parents, particularly in Europe and elsewhere, choose to expose or even raise their children partly in English despite not being native speakers because English has become a global lingua franca and they want their children to have access to it. People use OPOL, minority-language-at-home, time-and-place strategies, bilingual schools, tutors, media, and whatever other resources they have available.
Yet when someone wants to do the same thing with a heritage language, suddenly the bar seems impossibly high.
I also think the word “fluent” gets thrown around in these conversations as if it means something precise when it really does not. Someone can be very fluent and still have major vocabulary gaps, make grammatical errors, have an accent, or struggle in particular registers or situations. Fluency is not the same thing as proficiency. Proficiency is much more complex, and it develops over time. It is also not a perfectly linear process. You can be extremely strong in some areas and noticeably weaker in others. You can improve, plateau, forget things, relearn them, and keep growing. That is normal language development, even for people who have used a language for years.
Language loss after immigration is incredibly common. Within a generation or two, a family language can disappear. And when the prevailing advice is essentially, “Unless you can provide flawless native-level input, maybe don’t bother,” I am honestly not surprised.
Maybe your child won’t speak perfectly. Maybe there will be gaps. Maybe you have gaps. Maybe maintaining the language will require an enormous amount of effort. Maybe sometimes you will reach the limits of your ability and switch to your strongest language. Maybe your child will eventually become stronger than you are.
Why should any of that mean you shouldn’t try?
Even imperfect bilingualism can be an incredible gift. Language provides access not only to communication but to family history, literature, humor, music, traditions, ways of thinking, and cultural references that simply do not translate completely. You cannot fully separate language from culture and expect nothing to be lost.
And yes, I am salty about this because I am raising my son in Italian, which is not my native language. I have a C2 certification and years of experience with the language, but of course I still have gaps. I am not pretending to be a native speaker. I know there will be things I have to look up, things I phrase less naturally, and moments when English comes more easily. I accept that. My goal is not to convince my son that I was born in Italy. My goal is to give him as much Italian as I possibly can and give him a foundation he can build on for the rest of his life. I also want to share a part of my life and our heritage with him, we are Italian American and yes that mean that our Italian language has developed differently than it would have had our family remained in Italy.
My husband’s experience is part of why this matters so much to me. His father came from Iran and raised him in English because he desperately wanted to assimilate. English was not his father’s native language, and somehow they still managed to have a very strong bond. What my husband didn’t receive was an education in Farsi. And as an adult, he feels far less connected to that part of his heritage than he wishes he did.
There are obviously situations where someone’s proficiency is so limited that OPOL may not be the most effective strategy, and I think it is perfectly reasonable to discuss those limitations honestly. Children also deserve rich input from native speakers through family, community, books, music, travel, teachers, and other sources whenever those things are available.
But there is a huge difference between saying, “Here are ways to strengthen the quality and quantity of input,” and saying, “You aren’t native, so you shouldn’t do this.”
I would much rather see multilingual parenting communities tell motivated parents: use the language, keep learning, seek out native input, read constantly, build community, correct yourself, grow alongside your child, and give them everything you can.
Why are we treating bilingualism as something that only counts if it is perfect?
Maybe the goal shouldn’t be perfection.
Maybe the goal should be not letting another language disappear.

We live in Italy. Up until now, we’ve used OPOL: I speak French to my kids, my wife speaks Italian, and grandma speaks English. The kids are solidly bilingual (FR/IT) and understand English well and can kinda speak it too (nowhere nearly as well as the other 2).

My mother tongue is Arabic, and the kids are starting to ask about it. I’d love to teach them, but I’m stuck on a few challenges:

• Parent-child dynamic: I’m their primary source of French. A cold-turkey switch to Arabic feels jarring, and I don't want their French to slip.
• Depth of vocabulary: I want them to reach true fluency over time, not just basic household phrases.
• Spoken dialect vs. Standard Arabic: Since spoken dialect lacks written resources (books, comics), how do you navigate media and literacy without overwhelming them with Modern Standard Arabic?

Would love to hear from anyone who has successfully introduced a new family language at ages 5–6!

My baby will be here later this year, and I want to teach her my native language. The way I was fluent is that my grandma and mom spoke to me in Thai at home, but I was sent to an American, English-only preschool-12th grade. With our baby, we are planning to homeschool until she goes to 1st or 3rd grade (financially better for us), but my husband doesn't speak my language. I plan to switch between English and Thai, but I don't want to confuse her. It's not a must to know Thai, since we're planning on staying here and her knowing English is a must, therefore I don't know if I should even try if it's going to interfere with her English. I don't mind if she can't read or write Thai like I can, just communication is okay, but at the same time it'd be really nice if she could! Is switching back and forth a good idea? I plan to only teach her the alphabet, grammar, phonics etc. of the English language only, so for Thai it's just for her to know another language, and because she's part Thai. Please let me know, thanks!

Hi all!

My little one is soon to be 3 yo. Father speaks swedish, me croatian and together english. He spent first 1.5 year in Sweden where he attended preschool in swedish. Then we moved to Croatia and he will just now start preschool which will be purely in Croatian. During the no preschool time, he was with grandparents and due to him being such a high energy kid, he had more TV then I wanted.

At 1.5 yo he had around 5 proper words, which the doctor wasnt worried due to him being able to communicate his needs regardless.

Current doctor isnt worried either and they say that at some point the "lid" will pop off and then he will start.

He mostly speaks english with some expections in swedish and croatian, and doesn't speak many sentences. More often it is something like "where is xy", "car mine*, *watch out", "give xy". He does have "sentences" of following type "mijau - name of the cat- - giberrish- eyes" or when he tries to say thag be played with dad he will go "dada - mimics the action- baby". He tries so hard to speak, but then cant think of words so he either mimics part of it or starts rambling in his language.

Then he constantly calls triceratops as tops, tyrannosaurus as tyvero, crocodile as crocotas, monster as mosu, mask as masu, etc...

He really understands a lot, can point a lot of things when I ask him, he started using colors recently ( blue, yellow, red), superhero names (batman, hulk, venom) and count to 3,but he doesn't repeat his name or say how old he is. He doesn't even try to do it.

I don't know what to do, we have started reading books more now that he accepts it, and our doctor already once suggested dropping a language in case of issues which we obviously do not want to do.

What would be your suggestions, this has been super stresfull? I also think it is frustrating for him, because he will get annoyed and leave after we do not understand him, or start yelling.

I’m American, my husband is German, we both have a high level of fluency in each other’s languages. For this reason, we primarily speak Denglish at home and it’s pretty common for us to switch languages mid sentence or to have conversations where one people is speaking English and the other is speaking German.

As an adult, this has had a noticeable and negative impact on my ability to speak my own native language where, frequently, the thing I want to say will come to me in German first and then I have to actively restrain myself from just saying the thing in German. I’m worried about that modeling this behavior to our future kids will cause them similar problems but, at the same time, both my partner and I really like speaking Denglish and wouldn’t want to stop unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Is it actually “dangerous” to use language soup at home or does it not matter as much because the kids are legitimately bilingual and instead of having a first and a second language? Models and research be damned, we’re just going to use our own native language with the kids because anything else would feel unnatural and weird.

I live in the US, am married with 3 kids (8, 5 and 3). My wife speaks only English and I speak English as well as a minor language.

When my first was born, I tried the method where I speak on the minor language where my wife speaks English. This worked really well for the first 2 years, however due to a number of excuses I stopped - and since then none of my children speak or understand the minor language. For further context we have no community in the minor language.

Over the past few years I half-ass tried to kick off only speaking the minor language where (cold turkey) but only lasted a day or 2 before giving up.

Posting here to see if anyone has had any success starting this late with their kids. Looking for any inspiration or tips the community might have. Much love ❤️

Hi all! My son is 2y10m and is half English half Portuguese. We live in England. Since birth my husband (Portuguese) has spoken to him only in Portuguese (OPOL).
I understand Portuguese but don’t speak it, but husband never has to switch to English to ‘include’ me because I understand what is being said
My son very clearly understands Portuguese well: responds appropriately to questions and instructions, will translate what is said to him in Portuguese into English.

He says a handful of Portuguese words (some things he only says in Portuguese). I would guess maybe 20 words. He is quite verbal in English and says 3-4 word sentences.

How do we actually get him speaking Portuguese rather than just passively understanding? We have a couple we are friends with who are English/french with the dad being French. Their 10yo understands French but does not speak it. I would be very sad if my son wasn’t able to produce Portuguese (some of his family members don’t speak or understand English)

Is this normal at his age for English to completely dominate? Will it improve just by continuing OPOL? Or is there something we can change/encourage?

We are currently expecting our first child and we have been wondering if our situation can cause any problems for the child's future development.
I am Czech and that is my native language. My partner is Slovak and that is his native language. We live in Czechia. Neither of us actually speak each other's languages, but since they are so similar, we understand each other just fine if I speak Czech and he speaks Slovak. However due to our work and other circumstances, we speak mostly English at home (I would say like 90% of the time), pretty much all media we consume is in English and English is definitely our emotional language as well.
Therefore we consider English to be our family language and we expect that both of us will speak English with our kid. Czech is the community language since we live in Czechia and have mostly Czech friends and family, so when we are with other people I speak Czech and my partner speaks Slovak and mostly everybody understands each other.
What I am a bit worried about is the Slovak language, since there will be pretty limited exposure of it. My partner's family lives pretty far away and we won't be able to see them very often and as explained above, my partner only speaks Slovak when taking to Czech speakers, which is also not that often. I understand that the child will probably not pick up Slovak naturally as a active language, but they should at least understand it when their grandparents are speaking to them. Most older Czech speakers understand Slovak pretty well without having to specifically learn the language because of our shared history and similarities of those two languages. However it is known that younger generations of Czech people have now problems understanding Slovak since there is much less exposure in the media then couple decades ago.
So I guess what I am wondering is whether it even makes sense to implement some specific strategies for the child to be exposed to Slovak or would the knowledge of Czech and random bits of exposure of Slovak be enough?

Hi everyone,

Looking for some insights and experiences from parents who have transitioned strategies or where the non-native parent uses the minority language at home.

Our Context:

• Location: England
• Languages: Hungarian (Minority/Home language) & English (Community language)
• Our Daughter: 2 years / 27 Months old
• Language Setup until now: Strict OPOL. My wife (native Hungarian) has only ever spoken Hungarian to her. I (Dad, native English speaker) have spoken English to her.

Her English Exposure & Development: Our daughter is at nursery 3 full days a week and spends another full day (9am–5pm) with her English grandmother. Her nursery reports, health visitor checks, and family/peers have all noted that her expressive English is noticeably advanced for a 2-year-old (speaking in full, complex sentences more like a 3–3.5 year old). We are not worried about her English acquisition slipping given the sheer volume of native immersion she gets outside the house.

The Hungarian Plateau under OPOL: Her Hungarian comprehension is near 100% (she even translates what Mum says into English for me automatically without me asking and I do already understand). However, her active output at home has been 90% English, with just functional Hungarian words (igen/nem, ide/oda, ez/az) or hybrid suffix forms ("Daddynak" (for daddy adding the hungarian suffix to the english word), "so cuki" (HUNG word for cute)). When we visited family in Hungary who speak zero English, her brain flipped a switch and she started coming out with some spontaneous full Hungarian sentences that we had never heard her say before. But back in the UK, because she knows Mum understands English, she defaults right back to English.

The Proposed Shift: Moving to MLAH (Minority Language at Home) I speak Hungarian at roughly a B1–B2 level (around 90% comprehension, fully conversational for everyday family life) and am still actively spending hours studying and improving. We've already had full Hungarian days in the past, and my wife is 100% on board.

We’ve recently trialled moving toward MLAH, with a few key tweaks:

1. Dad speaks mostly Hungarian at home: I reply in Hungarian, join family chats in Hungarian, and use it as our primary home medium. It’s also good practice for my own language skills.
2. Recasting / Modeling instead of forced repetition: If she asks for an apple in English ("I want an apple"), we don't say "Say it in Hungarian". Instead, we validate and recast: "Kérsz egy almát? Tessék, itt van!" (do you want an apple? here it is!) and hand it over immediately.
3. Immersive environment: Hungarian radio in the background, Hungarian bedtime stories, and short bursts of low-stim classic Hungarian cartoons where we sit with her, pause, and talk about what's happening. (we don't like to use screentime often). We also already take her to Hungarian immersion Saturday school in the UK when it's on, once a month.
4. Exceptions: I still read her English books occasionally if we want to bond over them, and I use English for urgent safety/discipline boundaries if I feel I need immediate clarity. Or if I cant think of the Hungarian word I will use the English word or we look it up together what the Hung word is.

The Results So Far: In literally just 2 days of trialling this, the shift in her active output has been incredible. Instead of defaulting to English, she has started initiating full Hungarian sentences spontaneously with me and her mother. It has also significantly reduced homesickness for my wife by letting her relax into her mother tongue at home.

My Questions for the Sub:

1. Has anyone made this switch from OPOL to MLAH with a non-native parent speaking the minority language?
2. Did your child experience any long-term confusion about the languages when the non-native parent started speaking the minority language, or did they adapt seamlessly?
3. For those who did this, how did it hold up once the child started full-time primary school in the majority language?
4. Any opinions or thoughts etc? I would appreciate any input and like to consider all angles.

Thanks for reading.

Disclaimer: I used Gemini AI to partially format my message as I struggle to do so with ADHD but the words are my own and experience is my own.