Want to raise a bilingual child. Should me and my wife speak different languages to our newborn right from the beginning?

The best time to pick up a second (or even third or fourth) language for a child is before the ages of five to six years old. It is regarded as a "peak period" where their language acquisition skills are at their best. They can easily pick up the different phonetic pronunciations (believed to be at their sharpest before 3 years old). Like you have mentioned, having you and your wife speak different language to your baby will help. Be consistent with who speaks which language and it will minimize any confusion. It is also good to start early so that your baby will be exposed to the different languages (able to let him/her get used to listening to the sounds of the different languages). Here is a great link with some tips to facilitate your baby’s learning: http://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/language/teaching-second-language/

It has been proven that The One Parent, One Language Rule is effective in raising a bilingual child. http://www.raising-bilingual-children.com/basics/info/rules/ For me, both my husband and I can speak Mandarin and English. However, we practise to speak Mandarin only at home. Since my kids are attending English stream preschool, they pick up English very easily in school. Sometimes my kids will prefer to speak English to me and husband, however we will encourage them to use full Mandarin at home to nurture the interests in Chinese. So far this works very well for our family. There are some books to explain on how to raise a bilingual child. You may want to read up more from the book and put them into practise. Whichever method you are using, be consistent to use it and you can see the results.

@darius your questions speaks your answer. You see benefits in raising him bilingual. Studies and personal experience shows that babies learn things way faster then adults. So if you even start teaching him 6 different languages, the baby will learn really well. Provided the support of listening those languages around on regular basis. If you speak just 1 language at home, that would become his prominent language. Also, it is interesting to know that babies start learning well before they start speaking. So if they don't tell you doesn't mean they're lying :) Ref: http://www.human.cornell.edu/hd/outreach-extension/upload/casasola.pdf

Five to six years of age is too late. The most critical period is between 6-8 months. This is the critical period for sound development. At 6 -8 months, babies are listening intently to us, and they're taking statistics on the language that they hear as they listen to us talk. Watching TV and hearing audio does not help much. The most critical thing to do is to have a human being conduct lessons for about 12 intensive sessions. Watch this Ted Talk to learn more: https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies

Yes - I have several friends who have done so. I also have a set of friends whose children learn three languages this way. One parent speaks french, the other Spanish, and they live / school in an english speaking environment. You may go through a period where they balk a bit, but with persistence, it will keep the language alive until they rekindle interest.

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thanks