Teaching two alphabets to children

[Dayhiker]

Hello all!!!
I am a native English speaker, learning Spanish. My wife is bilingual bicultural. We are raising our daughter bilingual bicultural. She is exposed to both languages and is 14 months old. We are teaching the abc s in both English and Spanish, but this seems like it may confuse her. What Has been other people’s experience with this.? Did you teach just one and the other later or both at the same time?

Thanks

[Random Review]

Hello all!!!
I am a native English speaker, learning Spanish. My wife is bilingual bicultural. We are raising our daughter bilingual bicultural. She is exposed to both languages and is 14 months old. We are teaching the abc s in both English and Spanish, but this seems like it may confuse her. What Has been other people’s experience with this.? Did you teach just one and the other later or both at the same time?

Thanks

I teach kids English in China and most of them learn to decode English words with us at the same time as they learn pinyin in public school. There is both synergy and interference. On balance, it helps them; you just need to be alert for the obvious things they will confuse like "j" or "u" for example.

On the whole she should learn the Spanish system fairly quickly; she'll still be studying the English system for years to come.

14 months old seems remarkably early to start teaching her either, though!
Are you sure you really want to do that so early?

Edit: unless you literally do mean the abecedario/alphabet, which on a second reading makes much more sense at that age. In that case, ignore what I wrote above.

[harikishore]

There should be no issues in teaching to speak or understand both English and Spanish at the same time. At 14 months, your child will only associate a shape with a sound (Alphabets). In my opinion it would confuse your child if you try to teach her two different sounds for the same picture/shape/character.

On the other hand, what would happen if the mother teaches one language and the father teaches the other. Will the child respond based on who is asking??

[yong321]

what would happen if the mother teaches one language and the father teaches the other. Will the child respond based on who is asking??

Indeed! Children will experience much less interference between languages if they speak to different people in different languages. Most bilingual people grow up speaking one language to parents at home and the other in school or daycare. If the same adult kept switching languages, that would cause confusion.

[Ani]

If the same adult kept switching languages, that would cause confusion.

So far, this is not my experience. I speak French to two children, mostly English to the other three, and correct both the English and French of my three year old. It all seems to be working out fine.

OP -- I think when you get to reading age, you'll want to choose one language for literacy first, but otherwise a b C's are the same as counting, animal names/sounds.. just do it in whatever language you are currently speaking in. It will work itself out. 14 months might be a touch early for the alphabet .

[harikishore]

So far, this is not my experience. I speak French to two children, mostly English to the other three, and correct both the English and French of my three year old. It all seems to be working out fine.

They are all of "speaking" age. The original question was about a 14 month old. I believe it would not be the same in that case.

[Ani]

So far, this is not my experience. I speak French to two children, mostly English to the other three, and correct both the English and French of my three year old. It all seems to be working out fine.

They are all of "speaking" age. The original question was about a 14 month old. I believe it would not be the same in that case.

To each their own but they were all 14 months at one time... (Except the baby whose 1st birthday is today)
They don't get confused, IMO, they just learn the language on top of the other and are more prone to mixing until they can straighten it out.

[Cainntear]

I'm not sure why anyone would teach ABCs other than as part of teaching literacy -- unless you're looking at letter shapes, ABCs are just a string of arbitrary, meaningless sounds. I cannot see why this would be useful.

When it comes to teaching literacy, the advice I remember from uni was that it was best to do it exclusively in one language for about the first two years. After that, literacy in the second language is pretty easy. Where both languages use the same alphabet, reading and writing in the second language will be learned in a very short space of time.