those of you with spouses with a different mother tongue..

I'm a Cameroonian and my Husband is an Italian.We speak 5O percent of both languages.I personally thinks both partners should put in some effort to learn their partners languages because  when you get married to somebody , you equally get married to his/her culture, even his/her language

I speak English with some scottish words if annoyed
My husband speaks Urdu and i know a few words but would love to speak it more. Been apart 2 years and should have learnt by now

we both speak a third language perfectly (english) , but it's always fun to try eachother's languages , Tagalog and Arabic are such interesting languages!

Went to arabic class and was the only one who could not get head round it.....I need to learn to to read quran and prayer.

Generally, we speak in English, it's a compromise. It would be unfair to speak in her or my mother tongue, even though we both speak our mother tongues.

We speak in Dutch because his Dutch is much better then my Arabic.

My wife is from Central Java so her first language is Javanese.
We did use English all the time but Indonesian, both our second language, is becoming more common now.
We use a little Javanese and, from time to time, a bit of Mandarin.

My ex-wife didn't speak French so we spoke english all the time. After 7 years, I even was loosing my native language. My current wife's native language is French, so I speak French at home and English everywhere else.

I am an English speaking Canadian, however I am fluent in Portuguese so I speak to my Brazilian wife and our son in Portuguese most of the time.

I make a concerted effort to speak English with my little boy because I want him to grow up completely bilingual. He's five and already speaks much more English than his mother.

He makes me laugh because many times I say something to him in English and he will respond in either language, but he clearly has understood what I had said. He's a hoot!

Cheers,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog

Children learining very quickly.
I speak with them in Dutch and the speak with each other in Arabic en also with their father.
Furthermore they are also good in English.
I'am a lucky mother

I am Polish, my husband is Swedish. In the very beginning we spoke English. Later on we switched totally to Swedish and so it is. However, when I get furious about something, I speak Polish and he understands up to 75 per cent what I say. Recently we watched a program in Russian, which I am very familiar with, and my better half followed the context pretty well. So, I can say, our conversation evolves in terms of languages used .

I am Vietnamese, my fiancé is American (originally German). We communicate well in English only. Just wonder if I should start learning German to communicate with his family or he may need to learn Vietnamese to communicate with mine? :-)

Aquariusg wrote:

I am Vietnamese, my fiancé is American (originally German). We communicate well in English only. Just wonder if I should start learning German to communicate with his family or he may need to learn Vietnamese to communicate with mine? :-)

I would say both.

red.onion wrote:

However, when I get furious about something, I speak Polish and he understands up to 75 per cent what I say.).

Sounds very familar!

haggishunter wrote:

Went to arabic class and was the only one who could not get head round it.....I need to learn to to read quran and prayer.

same proble here.....

i am from indonesia my husband from bangladesh he can speak bahasa n english everytime he is angry hes talking in bangladesh language.

I am English,my husband is Algerian so I speak English and Italian,my husband speaks Arabic,French and Spanish,our children can speak mostly Arabic and English....

Emman Lopez and  haggishunter,me too.....I went to a government funded class in my son's school(Algiers) to learn Arabic and Quran...after awhile I found the letters are not that many and it's just practice at sounding them...good-luck to you both!!!

sistersue wrote:

Emman Lopez and  haggishunter,me too.....I went to a government funded class in my son's school(Algiers) to learn Arabic and Quran...after awhile I found the letters are not that many and it's just practice at sounding them...good-luck to you both!!!

goodluck to us.....

I'm Filipina but grew up Singaporean...I had to learn how to speak Tagalog coz I had nannies for my kids and the nannies did
not know much English. My Singaporean accent made me stick out too much here,so I really wanted to blend in and sound like a local.I dislike unnecessary attention poured to me,pple always asking me about Singapore,this that...

My husband is no help to teaching me Tagalog coz he's always pranking me,so I never know if what I'm saying is correct,sigh!

I decided to speak to my children in Tagalog-EngLish.I put in some Singaporean words like,Don't Kepo...Hey,kemas-kemas around herelah..Haiyah! why you so like dat....from time to time...

Boy,I sure miss speaking in Singaporean!! The only one that I can speak Singaporean to is my dog,Pepper!!

Anyways,all is good:)  Yamseng!!