Passing two heritage languages
Hi everyone! I have a 4 month old daughter who I want to pass my heritage languages. I speak Filipino (born and raised) and Japanese (fluent, raised in Japan and attended university; I also passed N1 test but that was a while ago) although admittedly a little rusty! I left Japan 13 years ago but I have family there and nieces who speak Japanese as their primary language.
I’m based in the US now. I met my husband in Japan and he speaks Japanese but he’s forgotten quite a bit. He doesn’t speak Filipino but knows some words and phrases. He is very supportive and wants our child to be trilingual also.
We speak English to each other. I speak to our daughter only in my heritage languages. I encourage my husband to speak Japanese as much as possible as well. I go on video calls with my family to expose her to other people speaking my languages although to me it’s not ideal due to screen time. I try to limit to 30 minutes when possible and definitely not every day.
I’m doing a variation of OPOL but I wonder what is the best situation to maximize her exposure to my languages? I will be going back to work next month and she will be in daycare part time (3 days) and 2 days at home with my husband.
I used to do time based (Monday to Thursday: Filipino, Friday to Sunday: Japanese). But felt it didn’t provide enough exposure to both so I switched to using both everday except I would have a “focus” language that I use the most during that day. I thought this set up would work better once she’s older perhaps but since she’s so young, I’m thinking using both and if switching on a “focus” language I would do MWF or TRS type of switching.
So for example, I’m teaching her the word for “poop” (for purposes of early potty training). I use both at the same time or I would switch it out sometimes like morning (Filipino) and evening (Japanese).
Is my approach okay? I could also do morning vs evening but switch it up some days so that she can get exposed to different vocabularies at different times of the day.
My main priority is Filipino language - she will have more exposure to speakers of this language (my family) but I find less books and media in the language. Japanese she can get exposure through family also but limited but I find more resources in this language. We hope to visit my family in Japan sometime next year so she will have exposure to both.
For input, I utilize the following resources:
- Books: I translate English books but also have a few books in Filipino and Japanese. I have the hungry caterpillar in Japanese and some vocabulary books. I’m hoping to get more story books so she can hear the rhythm of language. But I do my best to use vocabulary words into sentences.
- Songs: I sing to her, play music in heritage languages. She recognizes a lot of the songs!
- Narration: narrating what I do, pointing out colors, shapes, lots of adjectives and verbs.
- I live in a diverse area and can find Filipino and Japanese events and speakers. Community building is on my to do list as she gets older.
I want to have minimal screen time but thought about just playing something like Bluey (in Japanese) in the background or playing podcasts in heritage languages. For the most part I just have a playlist of songs I know and like and play those or I sing or narrate what I’m doing to her. But I would like to expose her to multiple vocabularies - any feedback is appreciated!
A side note: do you tell people that you speak to your child in your heritage language?
Thanks for reading this post! So excited to be on this journey with our family.