Non bi-lingual, young kids mixing in 2nd language with 1st?

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

Without too many details I know a (former) homeschooling mom who told me that one of her children's every-day speaking vocabulary was 1/3 American-English, 1/3 British-English, and 1/3 Hebrew. (Using words from each language in the same sentence.) His parents and brothers and sister understood him, but most other people did not, and thought he had a speech/learning delay/problem. This caused a big problem when he had to be sent to public school (I think he was 8 (?) or 10 when he first went to public school.)

 

My kids are very interested in learning some Spanish. They love Go, Diego, Go, and ds3 says the Spanish words for "help me," "fruit," "climb," and others that he picked up watching instead of the English word. What happens if they learn more Spanish vocabulary, and use it instead of the English words? I know in a bi-lingual family this would not be a problem. But we are not even close to that here. Is this a serious concern? Has this happened and been a problem for other people? Or was this just because of a bad homeschooling situation (which it was) and not a normal occurrence?

[...................]

Well I think that problem had more to do with his language delay than his exposure to foreign language.

 

My cousin came from Brazil. She married a Puerto Rican. Together they spoke Spanish to each other. Their children are tri-lingual.

 

At home those kids speak Spanish. 6 moontgs of the year they are cared for full time by their Brazilian grandmother. So they speak Portuguses, too. From TV, day care and school they learned English.

 

Both of them were late talkers (like not much talking until 3.5!!) but then they both popped out trilingual when they started talking and by 5 or 6 (about kindergarten age), each of them knew whom to speak with in each language.

 

My mom goes over and they speak in Portuguese. To my stepdad, they speak English and to some of their neighbors and their Puerto Rican grandma they speak Spanish. They just knew. No one had to tell them!

 

Now they of course mixed up a few words here and there but they would grope for it; saying, "Como se dice in Espanol? En English Es soccer."

 

Do not worry AT AlL about your dc mixing up their words so severely. That would be due to an LD, not early language exposure.

[MathGirl]

I've known several families whose children spoke more than one language. They all rarely mixed up the words between languages. My own children are mainly English speakers, but do know a decent amount of Russian and some Spanish. They do not mix up the languages. I wouldn't worry about it. Especially at your kids' ages, their English language is already pretty well established.