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I'm Dutch, my girlfriend is Croatian, we speak English to each other, we live in Costa Rica where my daughter goes to school as well. I speak Dutch to my daugh

I'm Dutch, my girlfriend is Croatian, we speak English to each other, we live in Costa Rica where my daughter goes to school as well. I speak Dutch to my daughter. My girlfriend speaks Croatian to her. My daughter goes to school in Spanish. Setup with grandparents is the same as with me and my girlfriend. We're mostly consistent (though occasionally my daughter asks me to read something to her in Spanish or Croatian, and similar for my girlfriend). It generally just works, my daughter speaks Dutch, Croatian and Spanish well - she plays in Spanish, and sometimes answers in Spanish as well even if we speak our own language to her, but mostly she switches language based on context. Surprisingly (to us) she has absorbed a lot of English as well and generally understands what we're talking about, though we've made no particular effort to teach her that (she gets basic English in school, but it's not much, she's 3). Occasionally she uses a word from one language while speaking another, which can be funny because she does adjust the conjugation, so she'll apply Croatian cases to Dutch words and things like that.

TacticalCoder 2y ago
> ... Occasionally she uses a word from one language while speaking another, which can be funny because she does adjust the conjugation Yup all parents of multi-lingual kids experience that. It's funny and yet, to me, it's precisely what statistical learning TFA mentions is about. Our kid used to do the same and still does (but very rarely now that she's 9 y/o): they borrow a word from another language and adjust it in a way that, statistically, makes sense. At times they can, by "chance" (probabilities really I guess), create a word that is actually the correct word even if they didn't know it. She could take "labyrinthe" (in french) and then transform it to "labyrinth" (in english) and pronounce it properly. Now of course people would use "maze" instead but, still, "labyrinth" is "accidentally" proper. BTW there are studies about just that: how language is acquired by analyzing the made up words that multi-lingual kids do create. Kid is totally fluent english/french and can definitely play with spanish kids, speaking spanish. P.S: we spent quite some time in Spain (in Zagreb too FWIW but we don't speak croation): wife speaks spanish fluently, I understand it and so does the kid... We contemplated moving to Costa Rica. We may still do it... How's the pura vida there?
- samvher 2y ago
  It has pros and cons, like anywhere :) If there's specific things you want to know, feel free to email me at the address in my profile.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

> ... Occasionally she uses a word from one language while speaking another, which can be funny because she does adjust the conjugation Yup all parents of multi-lingual kids experience that. It's funny and yet, to me, it's precisely what statistical learning TFA mentions is about. Our kid used to do the same and still does (but very rarely now that she's 9 y/o): they borrow a word from another language and adjust it in a way that, statistically, makes sense. At times they can, by "chance" (probabilities really I guess), create a word that is actually the correct word even if they didn't know it. She could take "labyrinthe" (in french) and then transform it to "labyrinth" (in english) and pronounce it properly. Now of course people would use "maze" instead but, still, "labyrinth" is "accidentally" proper. BTW there are studies about just that: how language is acquired by analyzing the made up words that multi-lingual kids do create. Kid is totally fluent english/french and can definitely play with spanish kids, speaking spanish. P.S: we spent quite some time in Spain (in Zagreb too FWIW but we don't speak croation): wife speaks spanish fluently, I understand it and so does the kid... We contemplated moving to Costa Rica. We may still do it... How's the pura vida there?

samvher 2y ago
It has pros and cons, like anywhere :) If there's specific things you want to know, feel free to email me at the address in my profile.