| Both my hubby and I are British chinese though I cannot read or write chinese whereas hubby can. We both speak 50% english, 50% cantonese at home and sent our children to an English kindergarden that also teaches 50% cantonese.
My daughter (7yrs) now attends Intl school, is bilingual and is also learning mandarin. However, the Intl school my daughter attends only teaches reading and writing in mandarin and not cantonese (which means her cantonese reading has suffered, but I have no problem with that).
Whereas my daughter soaked up the languages with no problems, my son (2yrs) seems to have trouble distinguishing between the languages and hasn't been very vocal, so I've now decided to just speak english with him. He seems a lot better now and I've just started him at the same English kindie preschool my daughter attended and hopefully his speech will improve over time.
I think what works with one child doesn't always work with another but make sure you are comfortable with whatever you decide.
I think my daughter was very comfortable with both languages because she had a wide variety of english and cantonese speaking friends who she played with on a regular basis and was able to switch from one language to the other better than I could!
Also if you want your child to be able to read and write cantonese, you may need to send him/her to a local school as majority of Intl schools only teach mandarin.
I hope I've helped, but really, we kind of just went with the flow and never had a real strategy planned. It just so happened that what we did worked for my daughter but not quite for my son.
Hopefully you will find something from this forum that will help you too!
Take care!  |