We are planning to get married and start a family. My partner is Japanese, and she will likely communicate with our child in Japanese, despite working on improving her English skills. What are your thoughts about it?
**Background**
I am fluent in multiple languages, having achieved proficiency ranging from C1 to C2/CEFR levels in most of them. I have lived and worked in countries where these languages are officially used. Also, despite having good Japanese skills—enough to converse with lawyers about Japanese laws and having strong speaking and writing abilities—I don’t feel a deep connection to Japanese as part of my identity. So, I don’t feel inclined to speak in Japanese to my child.
There are specific reasons why I am not inclined to speak in my mother tongue either:
a. Limited resources are available, such as books, streaming services, and YouTube videos (or any SNS in my mother tongue).
b. I haven’t used my mother tongue in over 7 years, making it practically unused and less beneficial.
I’ve been reading papers in linguistics that suggest you can have a much lower proficiency level than I have for multiple languages and still successfully raise your child in that language. For instance, I could speak in Spanish all the time, encourage the child to interact with other Spanish-speaking children, travel to Spanish-speaking countries every summer, and make use of various resources available in that language.
Most of the posts I read on Reddit, it suggests that depending on the personality of the child, they may start answering you back in Japanese, as it will be the main language of instruction at schools (and not planning to send them to any international school either).
27 comments
Like yourself, people can study languages as they get older too. There is plenty of time.
But if you want to raise a child in a bilingual household, then just speak and form a relationship with them in the language you feel most comfortable with. Japan, your wife, and school, will take care of the Japanese language.
Just be aware that some children who are raised in multilingual households start speaking a bit later than monolingual households. Don’t worry about it though. It’s not a developmental delay, their brains are just processing a lot more information.
What language do you and your partner speak to each other?
Pick a language and keep going with it. The kid will pick up Japanese from your wife and from living in Japan. If you don’t feel inclined to speak in your native language, and have native-equivalent proficiency in English then it’s probably going to be the most useful for the kid.
My experience:
I’m currently living in an English speaking country with my Japanese wife. We had our son 3 years ago.
She originally spoke to him in English. After a few months she changed her mind and switched to Japanese. Fast forward to today and my son speaks Japanese. I always speak English to him, but he usually answers in Japanese. We are now ‘one parent one language’. I’ll even interject into their conversation in English and it doesn’t seem to bother anything (he knows what comes out of my mouth is almost always English).
If we stay in the english speaking country this brings me zero concern because his English will quickly catch up.
I’d do exactly what you are doing. Consider what makes you most comfortable and go with it. I’d just be careful mixing languages as I have read that can cause confusion. I never realized how often my wife and I mix them until he came along and I started paying attention.
What’s your question? The more languages a kid learns the better. Expose the kid to as many languages as you can when they are young.
Your spouse is japanese so of course she will teach the child japanese. You didn’t create the kid by yourself so this is really a conversation you should be having with your partner.
Overthinking?
ur wife speak what she want. U speak what u want. The kid will decide.
My wife speak Chinese only with him, I speak English and Spanish with him, at school he use Japanese.
At the beginning he mostly answer in Japanese mixed Chinese , now he is 3 and a half and he start answering to match the language used.
When I was a kid (well just born) my parents only speak Spanish , but kindergarten and others were in Portuguese. No issues , my brother was older when we moved to Portuguese country and was more difficult for him. So speak all u can as early as possible.
What is your mother tongue? Answers can change entirely on that alone. Also, do you have family back time that you’d want your child to eventually have a relationship with? I assume not since you say it’s been years since you’ve spoken it, but I feel it’s important, nonetheless.
I have two children, my wife is Japanese and I am from the UK. We live in Japan. From the start we decided to use English as the home language. So that meant watching TV in English as much as we could, reading English books, etc and generally exposing them to as much English as possible. That has given them a good foundation in the language, however as they have grown up it has started to shift to more Japanese being used at home. I even had to enforce rules such as English use at the dinner table just to keep it relevant. They attend a school where half the classes are taught in English so that has helped but Japanese has slowly taken over.
Based on my own experience, if you’re in Japan with a kid and want to ingrain another language, you really gotta use that other language more or less all the time at home.
One good trick (made easier nowadays thanks to the internet): cartoons all have to be in the other language. Forces the kid to absorb the stuff.
In most cases kids get really tired of the bilingual life at home situation though (“why am I dealing with this other language only for my parents”), unless they’re using the language with friends or at school. But you don’t want them to end up being stunted in Japanese if you’re in Japan! Bit of a hard decision to make.
There are a lot of factors that go into language acquisition, but probably the biggest is exposure time.
Who will be the primary caregiver and what language(s) do they speak? What is your home language? Will daycare be involved and what language will be spoken there? Will the child have regular contact with family members who speak the minority language(s)? What language will the media be that the family/kids consume? Will the parent with the minority language(s) read to/with the children regularly? What language(s) will be taught at school?
In my case, I’m the primary caregiver and native English speaker. Husband is Japanese with meh English so most of our conversations together at home are in Japanese. We have two kids.
Media at home is largely English but especially when dad is home there’s a lot of Japanese on TV. No daycare, but kids are/will attend Japanese-only yōchien (kindergarten). We regularly video chat with my family and the kids have occasional extended chats in English with my family members. We also visit my in-laws regularly who only speak Japanese. I’ve been reading English books with both kids and the older one has started to develop an understanding of phonics and can sight read simple words.
So far this has resulted in two kids who are very comfortable speaking English and the older one can communicate effectively in Japanese, especially after starting yōchien.
Ultimately though my end goal for my kids isn’t perfect 1:1 bilingualism. I’m hoping I can get them both to a point where they’re literate enough in English to read simple books and websites and able to communicate in written text. I want to encourage hobbies/interests that involve English and bring them to my home country annually so they can be exposed to native speakers.
I’m not expecting to send them to a prestigious university in English – long term our family plans to stay in Japan. So if/when during their education in Japan they wind up feeling more confident in Japanese vs English, that’s ok with me as long as they don’t abandon English entirely.
You should speak your mother tongue to your kids, because it’s the language you have emotional connection to in relevant language usage ie. parent-child relationship and kids language.
Source: My kids speech therapist cousin and my experience seeing lots of non-native English speakers screw up their kids language acquisition by trying to speak English and ending up with monolingual Japanese kids. My born and raised in Japan 7 year old writes, reads and speaks my language well for her age. My mother tongue has 5 million speakers.
English you can learn later because it’s easy and the world is flooded with it.
Are you estranged from Spanish-speaking relatives, or do they all have fluent English?
To be honest, I’d wait until the kid was born before you decide for sure, and go with the language that feels most loving. However, it would be best if your wife has some proficiency in that language so she can understand the conversations.
There have been some really good threads about fostering trilingualism here, so please google for those.
My family has successfully raised EJ bilingual kids, but it doesn’t quite feel like it’s enough. One girl is fine with just English and Japanese (graduated from a US university, too.) The other majored in French and is picking up Korean, and works hard on her English as well. She picked up her third and fourth languages after high school, so it is possible. Not native level, but the interest is there.
Go for it.
I speak only English to my kids. My wife only in Japanese.
My eldest girl didn’t speak as well as the other kids in her Kindergarten for the first year. We knew that would happen but the teacher keep trying to force us to speak Japanese only at home. We told her to piss off.
My Kids are already bilingual. Me and the wife are planning out the third language, probably Spanish. It was relatively easy for English. Made the kids listen to children English songs and cartoons. Read to them in English books. Everything inside the house was English.
Outside the house is when Japanese is okay for everyone, or when friends & family that only speak Japanese visit. Worked out very well. Oldest can translate between the two like it’s nothing. And she’s only 7. Only issue is accent…she copied my NYC accent. 😭
What are you trying to aim for? For your child to be proficient in Japanese +English, +Spanish, or both?
Your child’s “primary” language will probably be Japanese. Whether they develop Spanish/English skills will depend on resources they have access to, and their motivation to learn.
I was a Japanese American kid and am now business-level bilingual in both languages. Both parents were Japanese, and I moved to US when I was six. I had to make a lot of effort in my childhood and adulthood to develop my Japanese skills, but fortunately I also had a lot of exposure and resources. Below are some things that helped the most.
– Parents speaking Japanese, to me and to each other
– Summer trips (2-3 months) to Japan to stay with my grandparents most summers
– Lots of Japanese books lying around the house, from picture books to literature ([like this](https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C%E6%96%87%E5%AD%A6%E3%81%AE%E6%A3%AE-%E5%85%A840%E5%B7%BB%E3%83%BB%E3%82%BB%E3%83%83%E3%83%88A-1%E3%80%9C20-%E5%AD%90%E3%81%A9%E3%82%82%E3%81%AE%E3%81%9F%E3%82%81%E3%81%AE/dp/4082749012), and others)
– Strong interest in Japanese culture, manga, movies
With all of this, my spoken and written Japanese was still pretty poor by college (listening/reading was great). It took me working for a Japanese company and deciding to use only Japanese in all of my email/phone communications, to fully develop my business Japanese capabilities.
Use your natural language as much as you can. My parents could not speak my mother language when they came to my mother country and I was able to speak all languages. I can’t write their mother language but I can perfectly speak and listen to it while I learn the local language at school.
It made me and my siblings way stronger at learning other languages.
OP must be Chinese. What the point of hiding your originality, teach your kid chinese since it’s pretty useful worldwide
I’d suggest you raise the kid to never speak Japanese to you. Pretend you don’t even speak a word of it. If your wife speaks English, use that for the two if you to communicate together. And speak a different language (or more) with the child. Invest in a nanny/helper that speaks another language also, and insist they only speak to the child in that tongue. They’ll learn that in order to communicate with papa they have to use a, b or c language. With mama, Japanese or English. With helper, x language.
Re: school, would strongly suggest regular Japanese school or a bilingual Japanese/English private school at least for elementary and JHS so they get that necessary solid *native* foundation in Kanji and reading/writing.
Then maybe send them to non-Japanese senior high like the French international school etc for the last couple of years, plus juku for kanji kentei to keep that skill high/improving. Or if you can afford it, send them abroad.
They’ll grow up learning to effortlessly code switch between multiple languages based on who they’re speaking with if you’re strict and disciplined about it from the very beginning, setting them up with a truly invaluable life skill of being native-level multi-lingual.
A lot depends on the child. Some thrive with multiple languages; others pick the most convenient (Japanese if child goes to local kindergarten) and stick to that.
It is a good idea to talk to your newborn in your native tongue. The reason is that with all your amazing language skills, you’ve never been a child in, let’s say, English language environment, and most likely you hadn’t had younger siblings in that environment either. In other words, your mother tongue is the only language in which you know your goo-goo’s, boo-boo’s, choo-choo’s, baba’s, gaga’s, nana’s, etc.
Anyway, experiment, mix and match, and most importantly enjoy the time with your child and give them your time. If it doesn’t work out naturally, you can always try OPOL.
There are obviously many benefits to being bilingual.
However, I strongly advise that you let it happen organically – stressing out about ‘raising your child to be bilingual’ will only create undue pressure for everyone. Your focus when raising your kids should be on getting them to love learning, *regardless of the language.* Being able to speak multiple languages isn’t beneficial if you don’t have anything to say in any of them..
You should also note that having multiple languages going on early on can sometimes lead to a slower pace of learning at school.
I didn’t speak a word of any foreign language until I was 18. I’m now fully bilingual in Japanese and proficient in Chinese, French (and Cockney <g>). My kids are mostly bilingual – my son moreso than my daughter – and we’ve done nothing particularly special. My wife and I use 100% Japanese when speaking together, I speak to my kids in a random mixture of English and Japanese. They both watch movies / Netflix / Youtube in English and Japanese. On a whim, my 12-year old took the Eiken 2-kyu and passed easily.
I know some families that obsess over how ‘bilingual’ their kids are, and honestly, the whole family seems stressed out about it. We have spent very little time on it – if the kids want / need to speak a language, they’ll pick it up without us fussing over it.
Anyway, my 2 yen.
I’m British, and my darling is obviously Japanese. We use a combination of Japanese and English at home.
Both of our boys are verbally bilingual. Reading/writing takes a hell of a lot more effort. They have access to a lot of English media, as well as my ramblings.
Your children will learn Japanese by osmosis.
You’ll need to work to get their second (maybe third) language installed.
English would be most useful for them. Spanish would be pretty damned useful too, outside of Japan mostly, as that’s also spoken by plenty of people. If your darling also speaks English/Spanish, she needs to use these with the kids too.
Being bilingual is a good advantage later in life.
I wrote [How To Raise a Bilingual Child](http://regex.info/blog/2005-10-22/88) (a post on my personal blog) when my son was three years old. 18 years later, I can say that the approach worked very well. So, that might give you some ideas.
The most-important aspect is what language do you want to interact with your children with? For most people, this is their native language, because anything other than native-language interaction creates a huge personal barrier. If you are native-level with multiple languages, then you can choose one depending on which you feel best with, or think will be best for their future.
At the same time, encourage your partner to speak Japanese with your kids, so that she, too, has a native-level relationship with them.
qué the hell? Are you…asking *us* if you should teach your child Spanish or not?
You’re leaving out the most important thing, which is which one of you will actually spend more time with your child as a result of your work schedules and division of labor. Given you live in Japan, your child’s main language is likely to be Japanese unless you spend significantly more time with him/her than your wife. That is, unless your child inherits your apparent talent for languages (which is rare even among direct relatives, something you likely understand from comparing yourself to other exisiting family members), in which case he/she may naturally become fully or nearly bilingual.
Don’t do it. Don’t get married to a Japanese like I did. It’s a bad idea.
Some questions to help you with your decision:
If your child grows up only speaking Japanese, is your Japanese native enough to fully understand them and be fully understood? (It sounds like this is a yes)
Do you have other family you would want the child to be able to communicate with and have a relationship?
Do you want your child to have the advantage of that language as they grow up?
Is there a chance you will move back to your home country?
Do you want them to be able to visit that country and interact with its people?
Are there any other speakers of your language they could interact with and see you interact with in that language, or would it just be you?
If you are the only one, would you be willing to commit to being their sole teacher of that language? Understand that it is less confusing for the child if you choose one language and stick to it WITH THEM, not switching back and forth–at least when they are little.
Day care teach my daughter japanese and I teach/speak in English and she watches YT for kids in English at home. She speaks both right now at 2 1/2 years old.