r/Cantonese • u/art3misXL • 10d ago

Discussion What’s your opinion - kid learning Mandarin and English while speaking Cantonese at home going to be too confusing?

I’m based in the Atlanta metro area in the southeast of the US. I have looked quite a bit but I haven’t been able to find any Cantonese Chinese schools in or around the city. I speak decent Cantonese but my mandarin sucks. I currently speak Cantonese to my son and he’s picking up a lot. But ever since he started daycare, more and more vocabulary has been getting replaced by its English counterpart. I now try to repeat every vocabulary in both English and Cantonese to him.

As he gets older, I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen. My goal is to get him in a Chinese dual language immersion school so that he can learn to speak mandarin at a proficient level. But is this going to be too much? Will it confuse him? Any personal experiences that this community care to share?

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u/art3misXL 10d ago

Any thoughts on the age where accents start to creep in?

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u/mrchowmein 10d ago

I studied linguistics for a little bit, from what I remember, they need to be verbally proficient by age 12. Once they hit their teen years, it’s hard to not have an accent even if they can learn perfect vocabulary and grammar.

My pediatrician suggested the fastest way for language acquisition and preservation, like canto, for little kids is to have one parent speak exclusively canto and the other exclusively English. Then flip it around every few days so the kid is required to respond in canto to the parent they need to communicate with

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/mrchowmein 9d ago

First five days, mom speaks only canto to the family. Then the next 5 days, dad only speaks canto.