First off this articles doesn’t only apply to newborns but has extra potential when started as early as possible. When your child comes to this world completely without the knowledge of any language they have to learn everything that is going on around them. They see everything happen and try to adapt to their environment. So if you speak your mother tongue, they will learn this language. If there is a second language into the mixture they will do their best to learn it.
To be able to learn your child an extra language your language doesn’t need to be perfect. Yet trying to approach that level of language is advised to give your child the best potential for the extra language. Hence me writing these articles to improve my language to someday teach my newborn English.
My father barely had any education. He could hardly write or count. But his great pride was that he was peerfectly bilingual. In the household, he entertained this idea that we had to speak both languages. – Robert Leplage
For the best results in teaching your child 2 languages at the time is to have it constantly hearing both the languages. If you only speak English to it in the weeks and add some French in the weekend it will still learn, but not as much if you use both languages as frequent. The best way to do this is for your partner to speak a different language than you are when talking to your child. It will teach your child that both languages are equally as important. Be sure to think about the main language used in your country. Your child will need this language to survive, so be sure to use this language often. Yet if you use both languages you are giving your child an extra opportunity for later in life.
It does sound like a lot of work and it is. Yet it certainly is worth it. If your child happens to not to anything usefull with it for years it has the potential to use it later on in life. At the same time you can look at it as a great practice for your language skills. You are speaking the language, potentially reading up in the language while you have nothing to do and you start thinking in that language. It may even have some unexpected benefits, like creating the possibility to move to a different country later in life.