Key Points
Like Enrique and his 8-month-old sister Alice, who live with their parents near Madrid, more and more children around the world are growing up with two or more languages at the same time..
"French and Spanish are simply the languages that feel most natural to us respectively and in which we speak to the children quite automatically," says Koers. "Turkish is the language in which we can best express our feelings," says Gcmez...
Scharff Rethfeldt suggests that families be flexible and switch between languages as it suits them, thus taking the pressure off parents and retaining the fun of learning for the children..
Experts now agree that mixing languages is perfectly permissible because children know which word belongs to which language..
Another advantage is that when children already speak two languages, it is much easier for them to learn other languages..
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