Hi, I’m Kathleen, and I have a 16 month old daughter. My husband is Italian and a psycholinguist, so discussing how our child will grow up linguistically is an interesting matter for us.

We want our daughter to be able to communicate with her grandparents, as one side speaks Italian and the other side speaks both Mandarin and Teochew. Growing up, my parents wanted my Mandarin to be good, so they did not speak to me in Teochew. Because of this I was not able to communicate smoothly with my Teochew-speaking grandparents, and I missed out on having a closer relationship with them. This is a common phenomenon in Singapore.

These days, many parents in Singapore are worried that hearing more than two languages might be too much for a baby. My parents fall into this category. Although they speak to each other in Teochew, they only speak in Mandarin to my daughter. But when we look at the science, we know that around the world, many babies grow up hearing many languages at the same time, and they do just fine! There is no scientific evidence that hearing more than two languages is bad for a baby. It is still an effort to convince my parents that it is alright to speak to my daughter in Teochew, but we are doing our best!

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At BLIP Lab we’re launching a series of investigations into how different families decide which of their languages they will speak around their babies, and how the different combinations influence language development. You can find out more about our Singapore talk-a-thon, or sign up and express an interest in joining our 500 families!