Growing Up With Two Languages ─ A Practical Guide for the Bilingual Family

The lives of many families involve contact with more than one language and culture on a daily basis. Growing Up with Two Languages is aimed at the many parents and professionals who feel uncertain about the best way to go about helping children gain maximum benefit from the multilingual situation.

This best-selling guide is illustrated by glimpses of life from interviews with fifty families from all around the world. The trials and rewards of life with two languages and cultures are discussed in detail, and followed by practical advice on how to support the child’s linguistic development.

Features of this third edition include:


a dedicated website with new and updated Internet resources


a new chapter giving the perspective of adults who have themselves grown up with more than one language


a new chapter presenting research into bilingual language acquisition with information about further reading


new and updated first-hand advice and examples throughout.


Una Cunningham is an Associate Professor in Modern Languages at Stockholm University, Sweden. She and her husband, Staffan Andersson, have raised their four children to speak English and Swedish in Sweden.

1. Families with Two Languages 2. Expecting a Child in a Bilingual Home 3. The Family Language System 4. Language Development. 5 The Child with Two Languages. 6.Practical Parenting in a Bilingual Home 7. Competence in Two Cultures 8. Problems You May Encounter. 9. Keeping It Up.10. Looking Back on a Bilingual Childhood 11. Research and Further Reading. Appendix A: Organising a workshop on raising children with two languages. Appendix B: Ways to support a child's development in two languages. Appendix C: Documenting a child's linguistic development. Appendix D: Internet resources