Our son will definitely learn Cantonese and English since Barb and her parents speak Cantonese all the time and have every intention of speaking it to him! I fully support this. I love Cantonese's earthy, rich, organic tones and flavour. Lots of great expressions; a wonderful street language. And the grammar is very similar to Mandarin should he ever decide to learn that. As the kid's knowledge of Cantonese grows, so too will mine albeit at a slower pace of course.

As for other languages that I have some knowledge of, hmmm. I don't really speak Filipino but I do know the food words. So he definitely will learn the Tagalog (and Pampagueno, our Filipino dialect) food words that I know. And it goes without saying that we will cook all of the Filipino dishes we know for him!

I do speak pretty good German and have a large passive French knowledge and Barb's Mom speaks Mandarin.

So at the risk of linguistically confusing the kid (which I doubt) I will try to speak German to him and get Grandma to speak Manadarin to him. Please leave a comment if you know about German speaking pre-schools etc. in Vancouver.

And I will contact other parents who have a similar knowledge of German and see if I can get the kid into some sort of German daycare/pre-school.

Since this is Canada, we will, put him in French immersion if he shows a desire and the temperament for such a thing. Way too early to think about that!

But in the end if he doesn't end up being a polyglot, no big deal. I think it's more important to expose him to the different languages and get some level of fluency than to worry and obssess about him being totally fluent in any of the languages. The only language that he must speak well is English!