Hello everybody,
I am here seeking some advice and help.
I am a mother of a 13 months old child. As much as I was excited about the fact of raising a bilingual child, having read about its benefits on the child's cognitive and intellectual development, as much as I am growing worried about confusing her with our multi-lingual communication.
I am from Morocco, therefore I speak an Arabic dialect called Darija. Being a kind of mixture between Arabic grammar, French and Spanish vocabulary and some influence from the native language of north Africa "Amazigh / Berber", It is one of the furthest dialects from the classical Arabic language. That makes Darija and Arabic my native languages in addition to French because I have been to a French school since kindergarten. I also speak fairly well English and I have majored in English linguistics. I currently live in Germany, so I do speak German. My husband is Greek therefore I am also learning Greek, I can already have not too complicated conversations and can without problems read and write it. Also, my husband and I communicate with each other only in English.
With all that being said, when it comes to daughter, she hears us speaking English, her father speaks to her in Greek, I speak to her in Arabic, when the grandmother is here, we speak to each other in German. I do talk to her sometimes in English or Greek or German, I even go too far sometimes and sing to her in French (because I only know french songs for children). I try to expose her to German through some songs and toys.
The one side of being an expat in Germany, is that I don't have family here so my daughter's only exposure to Arabic is though me and when she hears me on the phone, the other side of it, is that she gets neither enough exposure to German as we just moved to a new city and we have no friends.
I will be looking into play groups where my daughter can be exposed to German before she goes to Kindergarten because Ia m not sure how good it is to send her to one that early.
Do you think this diversity of languages could confuse her and cause her some issues with learning to speak?
Does anyone maybe have a similar experience, or just an opinion, a new perspective or an advice.. I will be grateful.
Hinda