Is it common that 2 to 3 year old children use articles and plurals incorrectly?

Question

Ok, English is not my first language. My mother tongue is Vietnamese. There are 5 people in my family: my parents, my wife, my son and me.

I decided to teach my child bilingually. So, about 6 months ago I started speaking English with my son. He is 2 years and 2 months old now.

My parents and my wife speak Vietnamese to him while I speak English to him for about 3 hours per day.

In the beginning, he didn't speak any English words although he could understand some such as "pick it up, go to the bathroom, go to bed, etc".

However, since 2 months ago, he has been speaking English more and more using some phrases such as "where are you?, they're sleeping, I kiss the bunny, etc...", but the problem is that sometimes he uses articles and plurals incorrectly.

For example, he sometimes says "a Mommy's sleeping" instead of "Mommy's sleeping"

or "the bunnies" instead of "the bunny" (there is only 1 bunny in my house).

Maybe, she mixes up "a & the" ("the bunny sleeping" and "a bunny sleeping") as I sometimes say "give me the bunny" and other times say "that is a bunny" (show a picture of a bunny)

My question is

Is it common that 2 or 3 year old children use articles and plural incorrectly?

Note: I only use phrases that I found in textbooks or in dictionaries because it is safer due to the fact that my English is not as good as natives'.

Answer 1

On the question of if it is common, I would personally say "yes". I currently have 5 children (ages 2 to 6) in my life that I have close contact with and they all do it when speaking English (not their native tongue). Seeing as your child is already able to do full sentences in two languages, he rather seems more advanced than lagging behind.

Be proud of his accomplishments and don't worry about grammatical mistakes, it's normal :)

Answer 2

This sort of mistake is fairly common for native English speaking children. For 2 years and 2 months, he's doing pretty well.

He may find the syntax harder than normal if he's only learning from you, and you sometimes make mistakes, or deliberately limit yourself to avoid mistakes. It's difficult to teach anyone to do something better than you yourself can do it.

However, I wouldn't let that stop you. Even an imperfect language is still useful. More importantly, he's learning that he can learn another language, and can communicate even without being perfectly fluent. Even more importantly, he's hopefully learning how you handle making mistakes, correcting yourself, and being corrected.

Reading stories from books, and watching TV can help with grammar, but at 2 he's mostly building his vocabulary (for example, learning that 'bunny' is a specific animal, not the generic word for 'animal').

Answer 3

It is common to make mistakes, but the examples you gave would sound very odd and unusual coming out of the mouth of my almost-3-years-old daughter, and I can't recall either her or her older sister making mistakes in quite that manner. Suppose you had the statement, "The bunnies are sleeping." I would expect a young child to transition through the following over time, more or less in the following order:

• Bunny sleeping.
• Bunny's sleeping. (Or Bunnies sleeping.)
• The bunny's sleeping. (Or The bunnies sleeping, or Bunnies are sleeping.)
• The bunnies are sleeping.

I would not expect the child to go through a phase where they say "a bunny's sleeping" or "a bunnies sleeping", because "a" becomes an actual assertion of singular, while also using the plural for bunnies.

I might not be surprised for a child to singularize a plural, but I would be surprised for a child to pluralize a singular (in English, anyway). It seems unusual to me. That's more the kind of error that comes from learning a second language where you're changing the grammar rules, than a first language where you have a blank slate.

Answer 4

You should buy your kid a lot of bunnies!!! 🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰

I usually explain:

• this is a bunny
• these are many bunnies

then count:

• one bunny
• two bunnies
• three bunnies
• ..
• seven bunnies. wow, we have seven bunnies!

then let the bunnies do something:

• this bunny is sleeping
• these bunnies are sleeping
• all the bunnies are sleeping
• yes, they are all sleeping

if you don't want your house full of (stuffed) animals, try drawing them on a paper, or use some mobile phone/tablet with a drawing app.

so the kids not only learn a single word, but also how it is used currectly in many contexts. worked great so far with two kids, but it's really a lot of work.

Answer 5

This is extremely common for young children, even if English is the only language they're learning. My children grew up bilingual too, and I heard quite a variety of creative grammar. For example:

• My son spent many weeks mixing up his pronouns. He'd say to us "You're hungry" when he really intended to say "I'm hungry." "Are you hungry?" is what we said to him, so he'd parrot it back to us. Then at some point suddenly it clicked in his brain, and he started saying it correctly.

• My daughter had a very difficult time with the plethora of irregular English verbs. (She's 10 and still has trouble sometimes!) Both children would say things like "catched" and "goed" and "eated". They had learned that you add an "-ed" on the end to make a past tense, and now to their dismay they had to learn that this logical rule doesn't apply to many of the most common English verbs.

• Especially when they were little, lots of sounds were morphed into ones they found easier to say. My son liked to start sentences with "Actuawwy..."

Though my daughter still stumbles over points of grammar occasionally, both kids speak good English now.

If your son keeps practicing English and hearing you say things correctly, he'll gradually assimilate the rules and correct himself.

You should also read aloud to him in English as often as you can, as that'll give him more varied vocabulary and grammar to model from.

Answer 6

Given the limited exposure to English, I am impressed your child is speaking it at all. You are doing well! Keep doing what you are doing, and do not worry so much that your English is not good enough. It is.