3 ways to increase exposure time to minority language

How do I make sure my children have enough esposure time to their minority language? Make sure it’s fun!

When do you know you’re bilingual?

Dutch – Italian “My experience as grandmother of bilingual grandchildren is great! I’m so proud to see Julia develop. About a year ago, she didn’t know she had to speak Italian with her Italian family, so we had to remind her. Now, she knows perfectly how to express herself and she naturally switches from Italian […]

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Quando capisci di essere bilingue?

“La mia esperienza di nonna di bambini bilingue è entusiasmante. Vedere i progressi di Julia mi riempie di orgoglio. Fino a poco meno di un anno fa, lei non riusciva a comprendere che con i nonni e zii doveva parlare in Italiano e quindi, spesso dovevamo ricordarglielo. Adesso sa perfettamente come esprimersi e passa con naturalezza […]

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One magic word

Yesterday, my son (1,5) said ‘sì’ for the first time. Finally! It’s probably no surprise he already said ‘no‘ and ‘nee‘ for a while. We also managed to get him to say ‘ja’ with a lot of applause. So, now we’re complete. Still, he has a huge preference for any variation of the word ‘no’. […]

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From one language to the other

“Mama, are there any ‘zanzare’ here?”, my daughter asked when we were at the beach a couple of weeks ago. “No, there are no mosquitos here”, I said. “Oh, OK, but I see there are ‘formiche’”, she said – pointing at some ants marching across the sand. Code-switching: switching between two languages during a conversation […]

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