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Which language in the crèche? English or French?

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Pereira_Castro

We're moving in to Luxembourg this summer with our 3 month old daughter and the time as come to chose a crèche for her. We, ourselves, speak different native languages (Estonian and Portuguese) and between us English. Now that we have to decide on the crèche for the baby we are a bit lost on what would be the most intelligent path to take - either a French (a potentially later a Luxembourgish) speaking crèche so that she stars learning the language from scratch (betting on a better future integration) or the English for her to gain a good base of the language taking into account that that will be the spoken language at home in the future.

Neither of us is particularly fluent in French for now.

Finally, bearing in mind the stupidly high prices for the international schools in Luxembourg we totally imagine enrolling her in some year in the public school.

Thank you in advance for any wise advice you may give us.

BR!

RosemaryD

Hello. I have been here nearly a year (American) and my son went to local a school. I would recommend starting her in a French Crèche. French is the operating language in Lux, used most in business and general life. All children are taught Luxembergish at the local school when they start at 3 years, and while some will speak it at the start, it is the minority in classes. In my son's class only 1 of 18 had both parents who spoke Luxembergish. Nearly all the kids, however, spoke French. Is was easier on the playground and socially for those kids, much easier than for my English-only speaking son.

She can learn English at home with you, and perfect things like grammar and spelling in school later.

mairaw

Hi,

I think it all depends on your long term plans. It seems you want to stay here for the foreseeable future so it seems that putting her in one of the local ones might be a good idea. I visited one for my son that was both French and Luxembourgish at the same time - one teacher would only speak French and the other Luxembourgish.
In our case for example, we (parents) both speak Portuguese at home so my son only speaks Portuguese when he's at home. Since our plan is to stay here just for a few years and then go back to the U.S., then we wanted our son to be school ready for the US. So I think every case is different.

Good luck!

Pereira_Castro

Thank you Rosemary and Maira for your assistance on this! I was actually wondering about this French vs Luxembourgish issue. I read somewhere that some teachers would be particularly strict with children not speaking Luxembourgish at all and that would make the whole transition harder. That's why we're also considering a crèche that speaks French in the first 18 months and later switches to Luxembourgish. However, from Rosemary's words that doesn't appear to be a real problem.

Njabu

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