Bilingual baby from a distance?

April 29, 2024 12:13 PM

I have a spouse who speaks Spanish natively, and I can speak Spanish at an advanced-ish conversational level. We have a new nibling on another continent, who we will see maybe a few weeks every year. We have Skype. Nibling's parents would be thrilled if nibling could grow up even a little bilingual, or even just with a head start on learning the language. Is there any scenario in which we can contribute to nibling's language learning, or is this just misión imposible?
posted by nanny's striped stocking to Education (7 answers total)

Parents are the main source of development with a second language. If they don't speak Spanish, then their best bet is to start working on the language themselves right now, and then when age appropriate, enroll nibs in a dual language pre-school/school. Even if they're not fluent, just knowing nouns and common verbs is a big thing. Send kiddo baby books in Spanish to start them being comfortable with the idea of reading in Spanish. Un pez, dos peces, pez rojo, pez azul is a riot when kids learn both versions. Of course, you Skype, and everyone gets to practice when they come for vacations and do their language immersion at your house.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:32 PM on April 29 [3 favorites]

Kids do not pick up languages magically. They have difficulty too, and it takes a lot of time and exposure. The best way is if there are people who only communicate with them in the second language, such as a relative or friends outside the house.

If the parents can set up such a situation, you can contribute by being another Spanish speaker to talk with.
posted by zompist at 2:01 PM on April 29 [4 favorites]

Young kids don't learn language, they absorb it, which is why those lucky ones who are fully immersed can grow up bi or tri lingual with zero effort vs. the decades those of us who started even around teen years have to put in.

For this reason, given the distance, you're not going to be able to make that much of a concrete contribution towards Spanish bilingualism in particular for the little one. But that absolutely doesn't mean it's not worth leaning into being "the family who can talk different" in your interactions with them.

Getting kids aware of and interested in other languages at a really early age is a great thing to do; regular early 2 way interaction, even if brief, has one huge benefit which is getting them over the embarrassment hump before they're even aware of it existing. Simple play-talk, point-and-name parroting, songs and nursery rhymes, picture books / noisy talking toys as gifts, down the line watching dubbed cartoons together... basically look for ways that you can maintain these kinds of interactions long-term, turn it into part of your relationship with the kid.

They'll have fun, and down the line that little spark will be part of how they think about / approach both language learning and speakers of other languages.
posted by protorp at 2:17 PM on April 29 [3 favorites]

I suppose that if the parents hired a Spanish-speaking caregiver who spent a lot of time with nibling, then you all could be additional conversation partners via video calls or something?
posted by bluedaisy at 3:32 PM on April 29 [1 favorite]

I highly recommend El Perro y El Gato! It's available on other services as well. Have nibling watch it with parents and then they can all show off their new words to you and your partner, and you can add some words.

When nibling gets older, encourage them to watch their favorite movies in both English and Spanish. My son's second grade Spanish teacher gave us the tip that you can switch to the Spanish language version of Disney movies on streaming, or mix and match subtitles (watch in English with Spanish subtitles, watch in Spanish with English subtitles, watch in Spanish with Spanish subtitles).
posted by erst at 4:55 PM on April 29

I can share some anecdotes. We are in Germany but speak only English at home and had our kinds in an English speaking school so they had zero German until about six when we needed them to learn- for reasons I won’t go into- they had had German as babies but had forgotten all of it from around 3 years old… they went into a German/Italian kindergarten and my older son was all morning in German school and German/Italian kindergarten for aftercare… they learned ZERO Italian despite quite a lot of exposure, like two years of it for my younger son, although he is autistic. But I would have thought my older son would have learned some. But no, just a few numbers. Now they are almost and 8 and 9 and can speak German. This is irrelevant to you except to say there is a little boy who comes to my house and can speak quite a bit of English just because of his iPad games and YouTube being in English…. His parents aren’t supporting this at all because they want him speaking German to a high standard, and their home language is Romanian- so they’d rather be was focusing on German. So you’d be surprised, maybe some exposure to cartoons and games later on might make a difference… those were just two examples where different types of exposure has had different outcomes…
posted by pairofshades at 5:45 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

To learn a language, children need to be both exposed to the language and have a need to use it. Which is probably why the English too but the Italian didn’t in the example above. The kids did not need to use Italian, whereas watch high value cartoons creates its own need to use English.

I think your best hope is in being a reinforcing part of a need to speak Spanish that is motivated by real life interactions or high value (to a child) media.
posted by plonkee at 12:18 AM on May 1 [1 favorite]