... is a book written by Una Cunningham-Andersson and her husband Staffan Andersson, which I can recommend to anybody who is in a similar situation as we are. It was recommended to me by a Brasilian friend who lives here in Henndorf with her Austrian husband and her two children (3 1/2 years and 2 months). For us it is immensely important that Hanna will be able to understand and speak English very well. Firstly obvious because we want her to be able to communicate with her grandparents, aunts and uncles etc. who are English-speakers and secondly because we hope it will give her an advantage in our society where it is almost necessary to speak English fluently.
As you can probably guess from their names, the authors are a couple living in Sweden, he is Swedish and his wife from Ireland. They have collected many reports from parents who are trying to bring up their children with 2 or more languages. And it seems like there is no perfect solution. The solutions we came up with is that we are trying to give Hanna as much English input as possible and as there is mainly German input as we leave the house we only speak English to her when we are at home and of course no other non-English-speaker is around. We are not worried that she will not learn how to speak German, she will pick it up in kindergarden, school, from her grandparents and while playing with her friends. To learn English will be the challange but I don't think we have to be worried. Of course it might be the case that she will understand English perfectly however won't speak it until she is 4 or 5 years old, which is often reported with kids in a similar situation as Hanna.
Hanna proves to us every day that she already understands a lot - doesn't matter whether we talk English or German!
I wish you a great day!Christine
