Does anyone here have direct experience raising multilingual kids? Specifically the situation where one partner speaks English natively and the other speaks two languages natively? For sake of example, let's say they're German and Spanish. (And you want the child to learn all three natively.)
My plan is to divide the languages by person and place:
- always talk to Parent 1 in English, no matter the location
- talk to Parent 2 in Spanish at home and German when outside the home, adhering strictly to this location-based method. The extended family mostly speaks Spanish, which makes the "home" association stronger.
This seems easier to me than dividing the languages by time (only speak Spanish on M/W/F, German on Tu/Th/Sat) or other divisions, but I'm open to any suggestions.
I'm Dutch, my girlfriend is Croatian, we speak English to each other, we live in Costa Rica where my daughter goes to school as well.
I speak Dutch to my daughter. My girlfriend speaks Croatian to her. My daughter goes to school in Spanish. Setup with grandparents is the same as with me and my girlfriend.
We're mostly consistent (though occasionally my daughter asks me to read something to her in Spanish or Croatian, and similar for my girlfriend). It generally just works, my daughter speaks Dutch, Croatian and Spanish well - she plays in Spanish, and sometimes answers in Spanish as well even if we speak our own language to her, but mostly she switches language based on context. Surprisingly (to us) she has absorbed a lot of English as well and generally understands what we're talking about, though we've made no particular effort to teach her that (she gets basic English in school, but it's not much, she's 3). Occasionally she uses a word from one language while speaking another, which can be funny because she does adjust the conjugation, so she'll apply Croatian cases to Dutch words and things like that.
> ... Occasionally she uses a word from one language while speaking another, which can be funny because she does adjust the conjugation
Yup all parents of multi-lingual kids experience that. It's funny and yet, to me, it's precisely what statistical learning TFA mentions is about.
Our kid used to do the same and still does (but very rarely now that she's 9 y/o): they borrow a word from another language and adjust it in a way that, statistically, makes sense.
At times they can, by "chance" (probabilities really I guess), create a word that is actually the correct word even if they didn't know it.
She could take "labyrinthe" (in french) and then transform it to "labyrinth" (in english) and pronounce it properly. Now of course people would use "maze" instead but, still, "labyrinth" is "accidentally" proper.
BTW there are studies about just that: how language is acquired by analyzing the made up words that multi-lingual kids do create.
Kid is totally fluent english/french and can definitely play with spanish kids, speaking spanish.
P.S: we spent quite some time in Spain (in Zagreb too FWIW but we don't speak croation): wife speaks spanish fluently, I understand it and so does the kid... We contemplated moving to Costa Rica. We may still do it... How's the pura vida there?
My wife and her parents live with us and speak primarily Spanish. My wife and I speak primarily English to our son. He is bilingual with some funny quirks:
* He speaks based on his listener. So Spanish to abuelita, English to papa, and dealer's choice to my wife.
* In the early days, he would mix-translate, e.g. saying "another more" since presumably that was how he translated "una mas" in his head.
* He picked up my non-regional accent that I thought I never used anymore.
* His understanding varies based on his vocabulary in a given topic. He understands science in English, but colors generally tend toward Spanish.
* I consciously spoke a lot of Spanish to him when he was young. He didn't fall for it and only speaks English back to me.
So, I wouldn't necessarily overthink it. The goal is to get her exposure to hearing the language and building the vocabulary, and secondly, to compell her to use it to express what she needs.
So, this describes both my and my wife’s situations as kids, and now my kid’s situation.
Let me tell you, three languages is a stretch. In both my wife’s and my cases, the languages which got used stuck - and I don’t mean our parents didn’t speak them all to us - just that in our respective cases the utility value of the third language, which was in both cases an ancestral tongue not related to where we lived or spoken by both parents, was not adequate to make it stick. We each acquired the family language and the local language.
Our kid, we speak English with at home, Portuguese in the public sphere. She’s acquiring both and not muddling them to any great degree.
There’s a notion we share that other languages we each speak fluently would be good for her to learn, but based on our own experiences we intend to take a different approach. Once the two languages which will actually present utility to her day to day are in place pretty firmly, it’s time to ship her off to her grandparents for the summer, where she will be immersed in a tongue that will in that circumstance provide her utility. It was how I ultimately acquired my third language - two months with cousins and their family, aged 7.
So in short, your mileage may vary, but each of us found learning a third language that only one parent and nobody else spoke a chore, and it did not stick via primary language acquisition mechanisms, but had to come later.
One language per parent works. The other approaches? It's already quite challenging not to mix language in simple bilingual families.
Your second rule sounds super weird. Are you going to change language as you walk through your door? Additionally, at some point the kid will choose a language. To me does not sound solid.
Maybe you can make a teddy bear use a third language. Not that weird (in the first 5 years, I guess, lol). And that would introduce the kid to it.
EDIT: also if you talk only at home you'll get limited to talk about sofas, order your room and stuff like that.
And if you get more than one kid, all this house of cards will fall. The kids will speak between them whatever they want and you can do very little to change that.
The thing is that Parent 2 already uses both languages on a daily basis, for work and for life. So in a worst case scenario the two just get mixed for the kid.
I think it's enough to use one to address to the kid. If the other is present in the environment the kid will learn it to some extent. But I think there is value in simplifying the first steps with language. It's a hell of a struggle. And scary if it does not go well/quick.
My SO and I were raised respectively in the UK and France. We both speak fluent French and English.
Our plan has been: we each speak our mother-tongue (French for me, English for her), and see what happens.
My first child understands english perfectly, but replies in French, and my second is too young yet to say any word, but she understands both languages.
Now we've moved to France and found ourselves speaking more and more in French to each other, and -unfortunately- our household is now speaking mostly French rather than keeping English in the mix. But this makes me think maybe we should all speak English at home now that French is acquired by my eldest... not sure!
I remember reading that for young children if you always speak the non-local language at home, they'll pick up the second language very quickly at daycare/school.
I can speak to my experience as the child raised multilingually, though not quite the same situation you are proposing. I was raised in the US to a an American dad and a French mom, and they both speak both languages. My parents decided they would only speak to me and my younger brother in French, assuming (luckily correctly!) that I would learn English by simply being in an English-speaking world.
My experience, and I think my parents and their multi-lingual friends would agree, is consistency. My parents even went so far as to pretend not to understand us if we spoke to them in English! Not even to ask for a word translation! If you speak English, you always speak English. If your spouse speaks Spanish, they always speak Spanish. My feeling as a recipient of this education is that its probably better if you both speak the same language to your children, but I know that splitting them up can also work. Again, the key is consistency, and the simpler you can make the rules about who speaks what language the better.
That actually sounds like a fun game for multilingual people.
Partner A picks language A, Partner B picks language B.
Now, have a conversation with each other where you only speak in your chosen language. The listener must listen and translate in their head and then respond in their chosen language.
First person to slip up and change languages loses.
I think this should work well though I might try and flip the Home language every few years since you want them to be tri-lingual. I don't have any kids yet, but my plan is to speak the less common language where we live at home and then the other language out in the world. That seems to be the approach many friends have taken as well to good effect.
Assuming these languages are actually English, Spanish and German, I would find a local club in the minority language and make some local friends where you can speak that language and your kid can come along for the ride.
My wife is from Germany, and I'm from Portugal, we both speak English with each other which is easier (DE is very hard for me to learn), but she talks DE with the little one and I talk PT with him.
He can speak perfectly DE, PT, and English depending on which language he listens to, which is quite impressive for me as a parent.
He can even maintain a proper conversation and do translations between languages.
Sometimes he adds a word from another language in a phrase but he seems to know what that word is in the correct language.
My plan is to divide the languages by person and place:
- always talk to Parent 1 in English, no matter the location
- talk to Parent 2 in Spanish at home and German when outside the home, adhering strictly to this location-based method. The extended family mostly speaks Spanish, which makes the "home" association stronger.
This seems easier to me than dividing the languages by time (only speak Spanish on M/W/F, German on Tu/Th/Sat) or other divisions, but I'm open to any suggestions.