Language dilemma

[imxtraordinary]

Re: Language dilemma

@amana

Define “comfortably”, because your child -can- grow up with fluency in spoken Arabic and Urdu, and the most effective way to do that is for both you and your husband to speak your natal languages at home.

That said, once he or she begins school, those languages will be replaced outside of the home with English. My children are comfortably conversant in spoken Arabic and Urdu and have no problems understanding adults. They even know quite a bit of mandarin because we had a Chinese au pair for a few years. (I define fluency as the ability to sit at a dinner table with about 7 conversations going on and being able to follow each one).

Once they became older, though, they tended to reply in English. It’s up to you to nip that, but if you choose to remain here English will be their dominant language and they will likely even speak with desi kids in English because that’s the language they learn to express their emotions, etc. in. All kids who are multilingual will have a language preference, and in almost every case it will be that of the country they were raised in.

Children are like sponges when it comes to language learning, they’ll absorb everything in their environment.

Comfortably= like a native