Welcome

Hi everyone,

I’ve just decided to start writing this blog about the adventure of raising our baby bilingually. First of all I’d like to apologise in advance to those of you that are native or native-like English speakers. You may find my writing short of plain and far from flawless, since I don’t master the art of English idioms nor phrasal verbs. Don’t be surprised/disappointed if you don’t see many frills in my sentences. As English is not my mother tongue, I’ll respectfully say: C´mon! Give me a rest; I’m trying my best…

Having said that, I think setting the objectives of this blog is a must:

-          It’ll be some short of diary for my son/s: I have always been curious about how my parents´ life was and what they felt or thought when I was born. I have some old pictures, but I consider a blog a much wider experience to document this wonderful time.

-          I’ll directly or indirectly find more resources to expose my baby to.

-          It’ll help me improve my knowledge of English. I know this one sounds quite selfish, but it’s also true. If the best brain workout is trying to speak a language, in my opinion trying to write in that language would be the second best. It also has an indirect impact in the quality of input for the baby.

-          It’ll hopefully help us find more “rare” cases around us. I’ve devoured about a dozen books on the subject and most of the examples are about American immigrants trying to keep their language in the USA, or native speakers passing their language onto their children. Few cases of non-native speakers with no native family support (relatives) have been reported in detail, or I haven’t been able to find them!! The only similar case that I have found is the one of George Saunders (I consider his book as a “must have” in the bookshelf of every parent immersed in this journey). I’ve recently discovered some blogs relating a similar family scheme and language approach, but what we could really use are experiences of other Spanish parents doing the same! I’ve only met 2 of these parents (accidentally) in Spain, and after my thousand questions, I think my interest and curiosity led me to act like an intrusive freak! But it’s just that I don’t have many references to learn from and I feel a bit lost!

Let me say I have the firm intention to consistently write about the evolution of our family speech patterns, share our experiences and throw high quality questions that hopefully lead to interesting debates. And if I don’t get to do this, I’ll just write here once in a while…J Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my blog.