For those of you raising or who have raised a bilingual child

What did that look like during early stages of language development? Did they prefer one language over another, mix words and phrases, etc? I'm just curious to hear about your experiences.

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ninalanyon · 61-69, T

We made sure they were fluent in English first then sent them to barnehage aged three and half. Six months later they were indistinguishable from the natives. They rarely mixed up the two languages (English and Norwegian).

I on the other hand being 30 years older took five years to achieve my fluent bad accent and am now able to be simultaneously tongue tied in two languages and even more often only able to bring to mind a word in the language I'm not speaking.

Throwing an English word into a Norwegian sentence doesn't bother most Norwegians but dropping a Norwegian word into a conversation with an English speaker tends to derail things.