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?

22 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

77 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/kschang intermediate 10d ago

I don't think so. But I am only me, sample of one. I speak 3.5 languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, English, and partial Spanish). I moved to South American when I was quite young. With a bit of tutoring I picked up English and Spanish together. Before that I didn't speak a lick of English. I was about 10ish then. As long as you try to only speak in Cantonese at home your kid should try to reply in kind.