This is a blog about our family: a Kazakhstani mom and a Turkish dad, with a two-year-old boy and a girl who is just one month old. At home we use three languages: Russian, Turkish, and English.
Born in a bilingual family, I didn't become bilingual in childhood. My father is a monolingual Russian speaker, so my Kazakh-speaking mother used only Russian with me until I was about 8. Then we moved near our Kazakh relatives, where I learned just enough Kazakh for everyday conversations. Later I learned English at school and spent one year in the US as an exchange student.
My husband is trilingual, his mother tongue is Turkish and he learned Russian and English as an adult.
After having kids we researched how we could share our languages with them, and decided to use the OPOL (One parent-One language) strategy. I speak to the kids in Russian, my husband - in Turkish. Between us we also use Turkish, which is also the community language here in Turkey.
For now this strategy is working well. Our two-year old son understands both Russian and Turkish, the latter being his stronger language. And our one-month old daughter likes to listen to all our languages :) Later we also want to introduce the third language, English.
5 years ago
