Multilingual families and words

[anna7602]

In general, I noticed that most words she had at the beginning were either in one language or the other. It was very rare before about age 2 for her to call something by the corresponding word in both languages.

To your specific question, Mami in Spanish and Mommy in English sound almost exactly the same, so I definitely didn't make a distinction there.

[Saudade]

Ditto Anna, but I do count "hola" and "bien" and "nina" as separate because he uses them and their counterparts appropriately.

He also signs "thank you" in English, Spanish, German, and Norwegian but doesn't verbalize any of those words, however I still only count that as one.

He is two and a bit slower on the verbal side of things.

[zeewifeandmama]

I did actually count it. I'd they did colors or counting in one language and then repeated in the other that was distinct enough for me to count it.

[Saudade]

Mar 19, 2014 13:40:10 GMT -5 spunbutterfly said:

Mar 19, 2014 13:34:50 GMT -5 Saudade said:

Ditto Anna, but I do count "hola" and "bien" and "nina" as separate because he uses them and their counterparts appropriately.

He also signs "thank you" in English, Spanish, German, and Norwegian but doesn't verbalize any of those words, however I still only count that as one.

He is two and a bit slower on the verbal side of things.

I didn't realize sign was that different from language to language! Good to know.

For us, mom in English is mama, and in Korean, it's umma, so it's actually distinct enough (the lack of starting with a consonant) that makes me want to count it separately. Then there's dada and appa, which are fairly different.

The Cantonese part is not going over well here ;p my husband rarely speaks Cantonese without a Cantonese speaking partner so I've been pushing him to repeat himself more in Canto lately.

Well there probably is, but he just uses the English sign for that. So I say "DS say TY/Gracias/Danke/Takk" and he does the hand to mouth sign. 

I personally would count your words as separate ones, esp if he is doing the Cantonese words because it's so tonal. And for me, since DS has a bit of delay, I try to take what I can get to make myself feel better.

[lilles]

I counted the words as two separate words as they would occur at different times. Some words got said in Spanish first and others got said in English first so I would count them as they appeared in their lexicon in the two separate languages.

[gibbinator]

I kinda count it as 2 words. He has to make the connection that that fun 4-5 legged creature is both a cat and a chat. I think of it like if he learned both cat and kitty.