Guest Post: Why Your Child Understands But Won’t Speak (And What “Copying” Can Teach Us About Bridging That Gap)

ADAM’S NOTE: If your child understands your target language, but isn’t yet speaking it as actively as you’d like, read this helpful guest post carefully! It offers a useful framework for thinking about this challenge, and strategic ideas for taking effective action to address it. Nur Baysal’s rich personal and professional background enables her to write with keen clarity and insight, encouraging parents to make even more mindful and proactive efforts to advance their bilingual aim for their children. Thank you, Nur! 

I grew up in Germany as the child of immigrants, and for as long as I can remember, I lived between two worlds of language. At school and with friends, everything was in German. At home, my parents spoke their own language, and I understood every word. But for a long time, I mostly answered in German. Not because I didn’t know the other language, not because I didn’t care about it, but because understanding it and actually producing it felt like two completely different things. I could follow a full conversation, laugh at the right moments, pick up on tone and meaning, and still freeze when it was my turn to say something back.

Years later, when my partner Benjamin and I started working on a language learning app together, I kept thinking about that gap. It’s something so many families experience, and it goes far beyond what most people assume the problem is.

The gap between understanding and speaking

If you’re raising a bilingual child, you’ve probably heard some version of this: “They understand everything, but they just won’t speak.” It’s one of the most common things parents say, and it’s almost always followed by an attempt to solve the problem through more exposure. More books, more cartoons, more audio, more trips to the grandparents. And all of that is good, genuinely. Exposure is one of the two core conditions for bilingual development, the other being need, and most parents are doing a wonderful job of providing it.

But here’s the thing. A child can absorb hundreds of hours of French, or Turkish, or Mandarin, and still not be able to answer a simple question from a grandparent without switching back to the majority language. The input is there, the comprehension is there, but the output doesn’t follow. And when parents see this, they often double down on what they’re already doing, assuming that more of the same will eventually tip the balance. Sometimes it does, but often it doesn’t, because the issue isn’t a lack of exposure. It’s a missing step.

What babies actually do

If you think about how babies learn to talk, the process is remarkably clear. They don’t invent language. They listen, they absorb, and then they copy. A baby hears “mama” hundreds of times before they try to say it themselves, and when they do, it comes out imperfect at first, but they keep imitating until it sticks. Only after months and months of copying do they begin to form their own sentences, combining words in new ways, making little creative leaps. But that middle phase, the copying phase, is where the real groundwork happens.

Most bilingual families do an excellent job at the first stage. The child hears the language, recognises it, understands it. But then there’s an expectation, often unconscious, that they will jump straight from understanding to original speech. And for many kids, that jump is just too big. They know what the words mean, they can follow the conversation, but they haven’t had enough of that middle step where they practise producing the sounds and phrases themselves in a low-pressure way.

Structured imitation

I think of this middle step as structured imitation, and it’s not just a theory. It’s how all of us learned to speak as children. The reason babies get so much natural copying practice is that their entire environment is set up for it. Parents repeat phrases constantly, slow down their speech, celebrate every attempt. But as kids grow older, especially bilingual kids navigating two languages, that kind of patient, repetitive scaffolding often falls away. The minority language becomes something they hear but aren’t actively guided to reproduce.

This doesn’t mean you need to turn your home into a classroom. It just means finding small, natural ways to bring more of that “absorb, copy, produce” cycle into daily life. Here are a few ideas that parents can try without any special materials or preparation.

Practical ways to bring copying into daily life

Repeat and invite. When your child says something in the majority language, don’t correct them. Instead, say the same thing back in the minority language, naturally and without pressure, and then pause. Sometimes they’ll repeat it, sometimes they won’t, and both are fine. The point is to model the phrase and give them a low-stakes chance to try it.

Echo games. Turn imitation into a game. Say a phrase and see if your child can repeat it back, then let them say one for you to copy. Kids love the feeling of “teaching” a parent, and it normalises the act of repeating and imitating rather than making it feel like a test.

Narrate together. When you’re doing something together—cooking, walking, tidying up—narrate what you’re doing in the minority language and invite your child to say it with you. “We’re putting the plates on the table” becomes something they can echo in the moment, connected to a real action, which makes it much easier to remember.

Watch and copy. If your child watches shows or videos in the minority language, try pausing after a short phrase and repeating it together. It doesn’t have to be every line, just a few here and there. This turns passive listening into active practice, and it can be surprisingly fun.

Celebrate the attempt, not the accuracy. This one matters more than anything. If your child tries to say something in the minority language and it comes out wrong, that’s still a win. The goal is to make speaking feel safe and rewarding, not to achieve perfection. Kids who feel confident trying are kids who will eventually get there.

Why we built Copycat Cafe around this idea

This is also the thinking behind the app Benjamin and I built together, Copycat Cafe. The whole method is structured around this natural cycle: first you watch and listen to a real conversation, then you copy what you hear with pronunciation feedback, and then you chat freely with an AI partner. We called it Copycat Cafe because we believe copying isn’t cheating. It’s how humans have always learned to speak, and it’s the step that most language learning tools skip entirely.

But you don’t need an app to apply these ideas at home. The principle is simple: understanding is the foundation, but it’s not the finish line. Between comprehension and fluent speech, there’s a whole phase of practice that’s built on imitation, repetition, and the confidence to try. If your child understands but won’t speak, it might not be that they need more input. It might be that they need more permission, and more opportunity, to copy.

How about you? Have you noticed this gap between understanding and speaking in your own family? What strategies have worked for you? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments!