| I am from the UK and speak no chinese. My husband is chinese. From the time both of our children were born, we have used the "one parent, one language" approach. My husband only ever speaks to our children in Cantonese, and I, of course, only ever speak English. We speak English to each other.
My son will be 3 in October, and he is fluent in both languages, he knows which language to speak to which person, including the guards etc. We think his English is probably slightly better than his Cantonese but not very noticably. He was slow to talk, not really saying his first word until 20 months. But by 2 he knew lots of words in both languages, and by 2.5 he knew which language was which. He will now ask things like "how do you say *** in English?"
He is now at a bilingual kindy and has both an english teacher and a chinese teacher - he has no trouble knowing who to speak which language to, unlike some of the other children who seem to mix up their languages quite a lot.
My daughter is only 5 months so no words yet!!! I guess what will be interesting is what they will speak to each other!
I would definitely use the one parent, one language approach if you can, they may start to speak a bit later than children with only one language, but they soon catch up.
I now use my son to translate for me - very useful!  |