Is it possible to raise a child in 3 languages?

[caywltz]

My friends, who are a russian girl and a spanish guy living in the US, try to raise their daugter in 3 languages: russian, spain and english.

Is it real to succeed in their goals? I'm really intrested to hear different opinions and reasoning

[Slache]

Absolutely. I've known several kids raised this way, though it's not common in the states. It should be.

"To have another language is to possess a second soul." -Charlemagne

[caywltz]

I know that bilinguals are a common case, but they still one dominant language. However, with 3 languages it's dubious that a child could be well in both non-dominant language

 

[lulalu]

I have several friends who do this. But I have noticed it takes a lot longer for kids to begin forming sentences. (more so than bilinguals) And there seems to be one language that is weaker, usually the one that is quite different. If some have similar grammar structures it is easier. 

But there really is no limit to the languages one can learn. I however, find it very important to give child a "heart" language. A language where deep deep things like love, religion, and so forth can be understood. 

[Slache]

4 hours ago, caywltz said:

I know that bilinguals are a common case, but they still one dominant language. However, with 3 languages it's dubious that a child could be well in both non-dominant language

Some will have Mom speak one, Dad speak one and society speak a third. So in America you could have mom speak Spanish, Dad speak German and society speak English.

Others will do one language MWF, one TThS, English on Sunday.

In Germany they speak one language in elementary, one in middle and one in high. The entire school is in that language.

[caywltz]

On 3/22/2020 at 11:43 AM, CuriousMomof3 said:

 

Sure, we live near a couple places that are destinations for international workers, and I've taught plenty of trilingual kids, including kids with disabilities.  It works fine, and sharing your language with your kids is a powerful thing.  

My suggestion would be to do just Russian and Spanish for as long as possible, and let English come from school.  If they work, then trying to find Russian or Spanish childcare would be great, but otherwise, just let English come from daycare.  

 

See your point, but parents can only communicate with each other in English as they don't know the languages of each other.

[caywltz]

4 hours ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

 

That's a pretty common situation.  Parents can talk to each other in English, and still talk to their kid in their native tongue.  Later, when the kid is older and there are more conversations, then obviously they're going to want to use English when everyone is talking, but when they're little it's possible to have almost all of the speech that's directed to the child in the native language. 

 

True! But as for reading and writing, is it sensible to learn the kid read and write in all 3 languages?

The thing is it's seen to be too much load on a child. She must be struggling learning so much, or at least often confused

[lulalu]

2 hours ago, caywltz said:

True! But as for reading and writing, is it sensible to learn the kid read and write in all 3 languages?

The thing is it's seen to be too much load on a child. She must be struggling learning so much, or at least often confused

That is normal to confuse in talking and reading between languages. 

I am glad we waited and did learning to read in one language first then moved on to the next. 

The family will figure it out. The brain can do a lot. The child will be fine and work it all out it just may take more time than a monolinguist. 

[caywltz]

31 minutes ago, lulalu said:

That is normal to confuse in talking and reading between languages. 

I am glad we waited and did learning to read in one language first then moved on to the next. 

The family will figure it out. The brain can do a lot. The child will be fine and work it all out it just may take more time than a monolinguist. 

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

[mumto2]

I have no idea how it all turned out but when my kids were young they spent a great deal of time with a little boy(he was around two) who was being taught, in his case living in, three languages.  He was a sweetie who happily gave me a new word for what he needed if he was using his Portuguese.  He went to school in the US for elementary then moved to Quebec for the rest of his education.  So I know he is fluent in terms of reading and writing in two of his languages.  His mother was a translator and worked using five languages.......

[caywltz]

15 hours ago, mumto2 said:

I have no idea how it all turned out but when my kids were young they spent a great deal of time with a little boy(he was around two) who was being taught, in his case living in, three languages.  He was a sweetie who happily gave me a new word for what he needed if he was using his Portuguese.  He went to school in the US for elementary then moved to Quebec for the rest of his education.  So I know he is fluent in terms of reading and writing in two of his languages.  His mother was a translator and worked using five languages.......

Wow! He inherited her brilliance)

[EmilyGF]

My close friends who raised their children fluent in three languages did something rather odd - the parents each spoke their own mother tongues both at home at to each other. So if mom and dad were talking about fixing the heater, dad would be talking in Dutch and mom in German. The kids learned English at school. I think they did this because they each loved their mother tongue and couldn't imagine life without speaking it. (Both clearly understood the other person's mother tongue.)

It is easier to do in a place where there is no dominant tongue. The kids in this family always spoke to each other at home in English, even with the parents absolutely never speaking English at home. The older kids went to school not knowing English, but the younger ones learned English at home just from the siblings speaking to each other.

Emily

[EmilyGF]

My close friends who raised their children fluent in three languages did something rather odd - the parents each spoke their own mother tongues both at home at to each other. So if mom and dad were talking about fixing the heater, dad would be talking in Dutch and mom in German. The kids learned English at school. I think they did this because they each loved their mother tongue and couldn't imagine life without speaking it. (Both clearly understood the other person's mother tongue.)

It is easier to do in a place where there is no dominant tongue. The kids in this family always spoke to each other at home in English, even with the parents absolutely never speaking English at home. The older kids went to school not knowing English, but the younger ones learned English at home just from the siblings speaking to each other.

Emily

[EmilyGF]

Just now, CuriousMomof3 said:

 

I think that model, one parent one language, is pretty common.  Not all the trilingual families I know have parents who speak each other's language fluently, or understand it completely, but in the families I do know like that, what you describe isn't uncommon.  Otherwise, the parents tend to speak to the children in their individual languages, and then switch to a shared language when talking to each other.  

I was familiar with OPOL, but not to the extent of parents having heated conversations in two languages. 🙂

[lulalu]

5 hours ago, EmilyGF said:

I was familiar with OPOL, but not to the extent of parents having heated conversations in two languages. 🙂

I have seen some fun family dynamics with heated conversations between parents using different languages! 😂 And I watched friends argue in front of the kids saying words that just don't translate to the other language. It can be a hoot! 

[gardenmom5]

My niece has.   She lives in Germany, her dh is Ukranian (from the era when all school children were taught Russian in school - now they're taught German in Ukranian schools.).

Her girls learned Russian, English, and German from birth.  (I still chuckle at the memory of her then two year old daughter crying "Nein, No, Nyet" while shaking her head during a visit to the US.  I do also recall her practicing writing both alphabets - cyrillic and  roman.  I've no idea how her girls' Russian is (I assume at least passable) - but they're fully fluent in English and German.

They had a German babysitter - and german is the common language for niece and her dh.

[Mabelen]

My dh grew up with three languages. At home, his mom talked to him in Tamil, the family’s mother tongue, a minority language in his home country. His dad used English, the ex colonial language. They lived in an area where Sinhalese, the majority language, was predominant. At school, he had subjects in all three languages. At the age of 17 he left his home country, and has lived in majority English speaking countries since. His entire university education and professional career have been carried out exclusively in English, but he can still speak his other two languages. He has obviously lost some vocabulary and fluency because he hardly uses them. He can still read both although with some difficulties, both have different scripts. And writing in either of them has not been tested for many years. 

[Arcadia]

On 3/24/2020 at 11:24 AM, CuriousMomof3 said:

In my area, the most common non phonetic language is Chinese.  In my experience many of those kids go to Chinese language school on the weekend.  I don't know the sequence whether they start Chinese reading first or not.  I do know that they also seem to do fine.  

Reading, writing and conversation  from age 3 (preschool class) with the aim of doing well in AP Chinese in 9th grade.

[Arcadia]

On 3/23/2020 at 9:41 PM, caywltz said:

True! But as for reading and writing, is it sensible to learn the kid read and write in all 3 languages?

It depends on the child. My kid who doesn’t have an interest in languages did German and Chinese in elementary. 
My kid who likes to translate was trying to learn Vietnamese off the public busses and light rail trains. It’s not the number of languages, it’s the interest and dedication.

My niece in Singapore started bilingual education from pre-k (English-Chinese), add a 3rd and 4th language (Malay and German) in 7th grade. She is now quite multilingual in 11th grade (Jan-Nov 2020).

I am strong only in two languages, weak in the rest. Still knowing more than two has been useful for daily life. 

[StillStanding]

Absolutely. 

I grew up bilingual (Catala/Castilan in Spain--home, school, tv, radio, etc), but I have relatives and friends with parents from other parts of Europe who also learned a third language while growing up (German and English--because the parent spoke the language at home).

It is OK for a child to mix the languages at the beginning, they will eventually learn what is what and who speaks what.

I learned English in school starting in the 7th grade and I am fluent now but speak with an slight accent. It is better to start early.