Preface

Parents often ask me for advice about exposing their children to two languages in the home. Typically, one of the parents speaks some language other than English and they are concerned that their linguistic decisions will have consequences for the child's development. The requests come in many forms (although e-mail has become the channel of choice) and from people with obviously different levels of background knowledge, education, and experience. The motivation for their questions is usually the same – will the child learn English and will the experience of learning two languages lead to either cognitive or linguistic confusion?