Tips on teaching a child 2 languages?

Children can absorb two or even more languages with little confusion. As they will be growing up in Greece, they will get a full exposure to Greek, but if they only use English at home, they won't learn a full command of the language... they will be fluent, but their vocabulary will be a bit limited; so I would suggest that getting English-language TV would be a good idea at some point. Also, you will have to teach the child to read English as well as Greek. Good luck!

No, it is not at all confusing for children to grow up bilingual. On the contrary, it is very good for their mental development and their life chances. And you won't need to teach them at all - if you each speak to them in your own native language and use both languages at home, they will acquire both quite naturally. People only need to be taught foreign languages when they are over the age of about 7 - children younger than that have a pre-programmed, super-fast, auto-didactic language learning capability which far exceeds anything that an adult can achieve or impart by teaching. The brain extinguishes that capability in pre-pubescence so that the child who has by then fully acquired their native language(s) can concentrate on other survival skills. Good luck to you and your family - I too will bring my children up to be bilingual if I ever have any!

It is important that the baby hears both languages before the age of one - we all have the capacity to make the sounds we hear before that age - we then lose the ability to make the other sounds so easily when we get older - a good example would be the difficutly that chinese people have in pronouncing the letter r

We live in Spain and my grand daughter is bi lingual, her mother is English and her father Spanish. We speak to her in both languages and she understands perfectly well. She speaks more Spanish as she's at school all day and is reluctant to speak English, but understands everything we say and has many English books and films. I have been told by others with the same experience that later she will automatically start speaking English fluently when she's ready. I think it's an advantage for a child to grow up with more than 1 language, and now she's even learning Valenciano in school (local dialect for this area) so she will know 3.

My Wife and I are native Spanish speakers and when my daughter was born, my wife instantly started speaking in English to her. I wanted her to speak Spanish too, so I only speak to her in Spanish. After 7 years, she speaks perfect Spanish and English and she never got confused.

well you never talk greek and your husband never talks english. she will be forced to learn both. then get a tutor.

It has been suggested that each parent speaks their own mother tongue to the child.. It isn´t confusing to the child providing both parents stick to it and don´t use both languages. Obviously one language will seem more dominant than the other due to the place you live and that they are more exposed to it. But having a dual language family myself, i can assure you that the child will understand both languages but will opt to speak the language of your place of abode. There is no general rule as to when the child will speak both, but it will come later if not sooner.

Well speaking to them in both language, they will learn it faster, plus as you might know children under ten have a faster time learning languages, also exposure to more than one language actually builds a more powerful brain. I recommend Baby Einstein this is for babies 1-18 months old -- This video streams together visually stimulating objects, toys, and scenes in a lovely way, with a soundtrack consisting of mothers singing and speaking in their native tongue

actually kids are much smarter than we give them credit for, lol the child will not have a problem with you speaking english and your husband speaking greek to him/her because the child will associate language with the person and will be able to acquire both languages without a problem... you might consider at one point (when the child starts going to school) to intensify the use of the language that is not used in school i.e. if the kid attends greek school try speaking more english at home - but i am sure that kid will turn out to be a genius anyway - they all do these days (it's almost scary)