Transition from English to Chinese

Question

A little of our background. We are of a mix family with chinese dad and malay mom here. My husband is hoping to start my boys kindy with chinese mother tongue as our prefferred language but we didnt expose him (3yr old) to chinese language at all as we speak mostly english and malay at home. Will he be having a rough time adjusting to new environment and new language at the same time? Anyone have any experience in the past to have the kids coping with different languages at kindy?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Im of mixed race, chinese + Malay. My family and I speak Malay at home and my siblings & I are not exposed to any chinese language but we all do understand when one talks Mandarin to us but for us to speak the language was difficult. We only know how to speak little. Was told during my sch time that it will be difficult for us to transition between English & Malay to Chinese as Mother Tongue so our parents made us stick to Malay as MT. And funny thing is our youngest sibling has a han yu pinyin name in her I/C except for the rest of us 🤷🏻‍♀️But for kids that age, their memory is very good so you try to to make him learn the language little by little.