Should You Speak English to Your Kids If You're Not a Native Speaker?

Speaking English to your child at home sounds like a perfect plan: the kid grows up bilingual and you get free practice. If you're not a native speaker and your level sits somewhere between A2 and B2, the research says to rethink that plan.

The short answer: being a native speaker matters less than your level and how rich the language you give your child is. Talk to your child mainly in the language where you're richest, which for most readers is Spanish. If you live in the US or the UK, swapping your home Spanish for limited English puts your child's Spanish at risk and barely helps their English. If you live in Spain or Latin America, their Spanish is safe. The problems there are thin English input, routines that don't last, and emotional moments when the English just won't come. English works best in bounded, fun, interactive slots. And your own English needs its own training.

Your level matters more than being a native speaker#

Children learn from the English they hear, and its quality depends on the speaker's level. In a study of 29 bilingual 25-month-olds in the US, Silvia Place and Erika Hoff found that the share of English the children heard from native speakers predicted their English vocabulary. It's a small, correlational study.

The adult's level carries more weight than native status. Sharon Unsworth and her team studied 50 bilingual preschoolers in the Netherlands and concluded that "what matters is not how much exposure bilingual children have to native rather than non-native speakers, but how proficient any non-native speakers are." The same paper points out that non-native input isn't harmful: it's less beneficial than native input.

With limited English, you talk just as much, but with fewer different words. Erika Hoff, Cynthia Core, and Katherine Shanks recorded 29 native English-speaking mothers and 31 Spanish-speaking mothers, eight of whom described their English as limited, speaking English with their two-year-olds. All of them talked about the same amount. Those with limited English used fewer different words and shorter sentences, and the mothers with good English landed between them and the native speakers.

Speaking better English than a two-year-old isn't enough. Erika Hoff explained it in her university's press release: "Just because a parent speaks English better than their two-year-old, doesn't mean that they speak English well enough to maximally support the child's acquisition of English." And she added: "Children can't learn what they don't hear."

Where you live changes the risk#

If you live where English is the language of the street, Spanish is what's at stake. In US homes with two Spanish-speaking parents, Erika Hoff and Cynthia Core report that using English at home takes more away from the child's Spanish than it adds to their English. School and friends already supply English; only the family supplies Spanish. Their advice: "Immigrant parents should not be discouraged from speaking their native language to their children."

The field as a whole gives parents the same rule. "Researchers who study bilingual development agree that parents should speak to their children in the language they are most comfortable using," writes Erika Hoff in a 2021 review. ASHA, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, gives families the same advice.

In Spain or Latin America, the risk moves. There, English reaches your home almost only through you, and your child's Spanish isn't in danger: in a review of 46 studies of families raising children in a non-native language, none reports that language staying dominant. The real risks are English that's thin on vocabulary, a routine that fades once school starts, and emotional moments. Many parents report that it's hard to comfort or scold a child in a language that isn't theirs.

Non-native families who pull it off do exist. In 17 of those 46 studies, the children reach high proficiency in both languages. Irene Gassín and Adrián Granados sum it up: "Successful cases often yield high bilingual proficiency, though societal-language dominance generally prevails." Nearly all of that evidence comes from case studies and interviews.

English works best in short, live, enjoyable slots#

Most Spanish families who use English with their kids as non-native speakers don't do it all day. In a survey by Laura Lozano-Martínez, 425 of 571 families, or 74.43%, used a "time and place" strategy: English at specific times and in specific places. The most common habits were singing and reading in English, and many families needed their mother tongue for emotional conversations.

For babies and toddlers, live interaction teaches more than a passive screen. In an experiment by Patricia Kuhl, 9-month-old American babies learned to tell Mandarin sounds apart after 12 sessions with speakers in person, but not from the same people on video or audio. That study measures only sound perception in babies. Sarah Roseberry and her team found that 36 toddlers aged 24 to 30 months learned new verbs live or over video chat, and not from a video with no back-and-forth.

The practical move is to keep English bounded and make it fun. Set aside a few fixed slots a week: a picture book you read together, songs, a game, or a cartoon you watch together and talk about. ASHA recommends reading picture books together and watching children's shows in other languages. Outside those slots, speak the language you explain, joke, and comfort in without effort.

Your English needs its own training#

No study has measured whether speaking English to your child improves your English. The review by Gassín and Granados only notes that some parents mention that improvement in interviews; nobody has tested it either way. Speech aimed at small children also uses a smaller vocabulary and simpler syntax than adult conversation. Our own inference: talk pitched at a toddler won't stretch an adult's English on its own.

Your English improves when you train it separately. The study by Hoff, Core, and Shanks itself suggests helping parents become more proficient to improve what their children hear. Could you tell tonight's bedtime story in English without reaching for a word you don't have? That gap is what Tabla trains on a separate track: short sessions where you say phrases out loud and speech recognition scores your pronunciation, plus a personalized podcast built from what you just practiced.

Speak your richest language at home without guilt, and pick one English slot you can actually keep up.

Try this today: before you read your child an English picture book tonight, read it aloud once by yourself and write down every word you couldn't explain to them.