My husband and I talk in Marathi (our mother tongue) and are teaching it as the primary language to our 2-year old. We try to limit speaking in English at home as we were told by our experienced friends that kids eventually learn English in school and tend to forget their mother tongue.
Now that my daughter is starting to have more and more contact with the “outside world”, she seems to be picking up English quite fast. And then she has some Hindi-speaking friends who try to talk to communicate with her in Hindi. And of course being recently introduced to the world of “Dora the Explorer”, she has gotten to know some Spanish words.
It is one thing that my daughter is picking up all the 4 languages in her own ways, I am more surprised by the fact that at home she speaks Marathi, with American friends she tries to speak English and with Hindi friends she makes it a point to use the 2 or 3 Hindi words that she knows…relevant or not!
Now “Dora” provides relief for me when I have work to do and I put on the videos for my daughter, but also is mostly the reason for her tantrums because I don’t let her watch it too often…so lets not go there!
They say that languages evolve with time. In the diverse environment that we live, that our kids will grow in…it will be interesting to see today’s languages evolve!
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there are some interesting book on how we learn language and how connections are made in our brains! you will continue to be amazed how fast they learn language at that age.
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