My partner is Portuguese, I am Romanian and we speak in English to each other. We are currently based in Denmark, we can speak basic Danish and are actively learning. We are thinking of having a baby here in Denmark and we are discussing our approach on teaching our kid how to communicate with us. What is your advice on this? Do you think it would be possible for him/her to learn to speak all 4 languages (Portuguese with my partner, Romanian with me and English when we are both present, plus Danish outside of the family)?
The rule of thumb is that the parent speaks with the kid the language of its origin. and at school the local one. so I would say skip the english or do as you wish but be consistent
I’m also in Denmark, but from the US. My kids speak Danish at school/sometimes at home, mostly English at home with me and their dad and German with my dad and his side of the family. I think it’s absolutely doable.
I’m German, husband Indian and we live in USA. We speak to each other in English and teach our son English only. We felt like we would be missing out speaking to the child in a language the other parent can’t understand.
Only if you and your husband both stick to it. I had a Spanish colleague who lived in France and also speaks French fluently. The father is French. The children speak French fluently obviously. The kids knew the mom understands French, so it’s of course very tempting to just respond in French (this is the language they are most comfortable with) even when the mother speaks in Spanish. So, what she did was that whenever the children would start speaking to her in French early on she would point to her ears and basically make them understand that she didn’t understand them. So later on they really only responded in Spanish to her mom. She once told me that in school one of her sons would stand in front of her teacher and speak in French, then he’d turn around and speak in Spanish to her, while his mom spoke French to the teacher.
I grew up with two languages and when I got more comfortable with one I would tend to respond in the 2nd language that my parents weren’t good at but understood. They hated it. :)
My kid is 18 months and we speak English at home and French outside of it. Nanny speaks Portuguese and we were considering adding the local minority language but that’s probably too much, so we will focus on the first two for now.