Language Confusion for 16mth old

he cried for his first day of kindergarten (in 2008). then i told him if he didn't cry, our helper would take him to mcdonald's for a milkshake after school... THAT did the trick. ever since, he's LOVED going to school! we just told him before he started that at his "new" school the teachers spoke chinese and at "mummy's school" we speak english.
he seemed ok with it from the start.

my girl will start in the coming september... we'll see how she goes...
 
@Ox Jess
I am the only one speaking German to him here in HK. He sees my parents on Skype every weekend, so that's another regular German input for him. He gets a lot of German as I spent most of the time with him. But he still sees his grandparents here in HK every day, so he is also exposed to Cantonese. English input he gets from English playgroup, Daddy and also because Daddy and I speak English, and I speak English with my in-laws. I couldn't say which language my son is particularly good at, he uses words from all three languages but maybe he knows more German words, and then comes English and then Cantonese.

I would imagine that with your son he will be better at speaking Cantonese than English but if he goes to an Intl' Kindergarten where they speak English, there should be no problem on his English. He will understand you nonetheless and speak in English with you.

@lesliefu
Of course you cannot make sure that your child receives the same amount of language input on a daily basis, but it is necessary for the child to know which language is spoken to him by whom in order not to be confused. (That's what I learned during my Linguistics Studies) But it's not only that. You want your child to acquire native like language and be good at it rather than adapt mistakes by somebody who got poor language skills, which might be difficult to erase at a later stage. That is why I speak in a language to him that I know of 100% ;)
 
I speak Cantonese exclusively with my daughters except when I read a story (as i"m illiterate in reading Chinese) and even when my English speaking husband is present I still speak to them in Cantonese. Its their language of choice to speak and they use it with each other too. They learn English and Mandarin at school and the teachers say they are doing well. My girls are 1/4 Chinese and 3 years and 4 months now.

I did not notice a delay in their speech, they have always (to me!) seem to talk a lot.... I think its a 'girl' thing though.

They KNOW I speak English but chat with me in Cantonese. They only use the English word if they don't know the Chinese word and vice versa. It's not really mixing up the languages though. Cause I know being bilingual myself....

They are pretty fluent in English too. I'd love to give them another language hahahahahaha :flower:
 
I wanted to add that I'm really comfortable speaking Cantonese to my daughters in ALL situations (even in 'english' setting situations) and I think they perceive that so choose to speak my 'comfortable' language. I've perceived (wrongly or rightly) that my Chinese friends who choose to speak more in English to their child, seem to give the perception that English is their 'preferred' language which I can see the child picking up (subconsciously).

I've seen my daughters talk to complete strangers - first using Cantonese and if the stranger didn't understand, switching to English, they DO NOT persist (in the wrong language) if it's obvious to them the person cannot understand. Kids do this naturally, especially with new friends of that age, they find out what they can say to 'communicate'.

OX Jess, I really would NOT worry but just keep increasing your child's vocabulary and enjoy your time with them, they really do grow up very fast!
 
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