I have a two-year-old myself too. I am bilingual but have been speaking English more at home as my husband and mum-in-law can't speak Mandarin. (My grammar is not as good though.)
So my son sorts of picked up English more and refuses to speak Mandarin at the moment. I'm quite amazed at his pronunciation with words ending with the "t" sound and his English is fairly good at the moment (though he doesn't know any complex sentence yet haha and uses "because" randomly). I was worried at first that his Chinese may not be as good but reading your experiment here, maybe I just focus on his English at the moment first and have to consciously eliminate all baby language :) I enjoy hearing a lil 'adult' speaking back to me these days with a lot of "oh my goodness". Thanks for this write-up @alvinauh !
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While living in Taiwan, I raised my oldest daughter entirely in French while the rest of the family (my wife is Chinese) spoke to her in Mandarin. She grew up fluent in three languages (she picked up English on her own because it is somewhat related to French).
As a linguist, I know that early childhood is a critical period for flawless language acquisition. I would strongly advise you to speak to your son entirely in your native language until it stabilizes. Chinese is very hard to pick up in an English-speaking environment. Multilingual Matters, a British publisher has several publications that can help you. I highly recommend reading books by Wang Xiaolei: Start with:
Growing up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven
http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?K=9781847691064
That's a great book, never came across it but will take a look. It's true, Mandarin is difficult, but once it has been picked up, especially the writing bit, it helps in other languages too
Oh thank you with this great wonderful info @wentong-syhhae ! Appreciate it :)
First read up on the subject. Don't forget to carefully explain to your inlaws what you're doing and why: it will make your son smarter and his thinking more flexible. Above all, don't treat your mother-son interactions as "teaching": kids (and many adults) hate to be "taught".
Just have fun in Chinese: simple cooking (kids love to help out), games, songs and play-dates with Chinese-speaking kids (esp. recent arrivals) etc.
Same thing! I speak cantonese to my kids from when they were born. Husb speak to them in hokkien. Along the way we speak a bit of english with them and later when exposed to cartoons on tv they somehow pick up english better. Their chinese be it mandarin or dialects are hopeless, even though all the adults at home do not converse in english among one another.
Definitely, culture and environment does play a party.. Or friends.. I was forced to pick up Cantonese because all my friends were speaking it.