Raising Tri-Lingual Children
AdventureDad | January 14
Our children have been taught from birth to be tri-lingual and people are often curious about how that’s working out. Our daughter is now 17-months old, our son will be 4 years next month and from the very beginning we have spoken to the kids in three languages. So far results have been great with a minimum amount of effort. But what can a parent expect from a child who is learning three languages at once? Is it good for them or are their brains about the explode? And how long does it take for a child to learn a new language? I’m meeting many more couples today who are from different countries and speak more than one language, I figured a brief summary of where we are today might be helpful for those who will teach their kids more than one language.
The decision to speak three languages with our children was easy and something we did from the first day. My wife knows how to speak three languages (English, Swedish, and Spanish) and I’ve picked up four throughout the years (I speak German in addition to the previous three). Since we’ve spoken to each other in English since we met in U.S. many years ago we saw no reason to change this. For the kids to learn the Swedish and Spanish, and be able to communicate with relatives and friends, it was only natural that we use those languages as well. I speak only Swedish to the kids and my wife only Spanish.
Any normal child or adult can learn a new language. Our brains are not pre-wired for any special language, most would agree that a child learns languages much faster than an adult. Some believe that lessons and/or tutors are necessary but I would consider that extremely unusual, ineffective, and silly. It’s enough to simply speak to the children, as you already know they absorb new things with amazing speed. We do nothing special except chat with the kids as much as possible. Kids also learn languages by listening to the radio and watching TV. But research has shown that learning this way is much slower. Direct interaction is not surprisingly far superior.
Just as with monolingual children, it’s important to speak a lot and interact with the kids verbally early on. My experience is that being consistent with who speaks what language is also helpful. Me speaking Swedish one day, German on another, and then Spanish on the weekends might be confusing. However, speaking these languages to other people is no problem. When we’re in Germany during the summer I speak four languages at once. My son looked at me a bit funny in the beginning but quickly realized it was just another language. He even picked up some German words himself.
There is no risk of “overloading” the brain of normal children by teaching them three languages at once. Research and experience has shown that kids can learn more languages than that without barely trying. There are many times when our son mixes two languages. He might be thinking of a Spanish word but can’t remember and instead uses a Swedish word. But I often do that myself and don’t consider it unusual for a toddler to forget a word here and there.How fast the children learn a new language, when three are spoken at the same time, is a common question. It does take a little longer until the words sink in. We’ve experienced slower verbal development during the first three years but it has mostly been notable during the initial 18 months. Both our children have known few words at 18 months. Only about 5 basic words spoken. But it’s clear that understanding of the languages at this age is far more advanced. I assume that less words are understood compared to a monolingual child but the difference doesn’t seem to be huge.
We’ve known about the slower development from the beginning and it’s not something we care about. But if you’re one of those parents who is obsessed with constantly comparing your child with others, you might be disappointed in verbal progress early on. But you’ll be ecstatic after four years when your child speaks three languages.
Two other small issues are impatience and shyness. Our son was a little shy early on, we believe it was mostly because he didn’t speak much in the early stages. We’ve also noticed that our daughter is very impatient at this stage. She knows what she wants but she can’t say it. I think this is common among toddlers but probably a bit more when dealing with three languages.
Most children I know seem to learn in spurts. Suddenly, learning in one area explodes and then remain constant for a while until a new burst comes along. This is even more true with tri-lingual learning. Our son understood both Swedish and Spanish quickly but was hesitant to speak Spanish to my wife. But it all changed at age three after spending some time in Mexico. One day he just started speaking Spanish to her and Swedish to me like he’d been doing it all his life. After this all shyness disappeared and instead he became very social.
If you’re teaching your kids more than one language, have a little extra patience and don’t rush things. Don’t be sad during the first two years if your child speaks a little less than other. My daughter speaks few words but strangely one of the few words she can say is the Spanish word “Guacala”. It means “Yuck” or “Disgusting” and despite being a difficult word my daughter has mastered it. So far she has not mastered an easy word like “Pappa” despite me having been on paternity leave during the past 6 months and spent 24/7 with her. I’ve privately asked her when she plans on mentioning me and she always excitedly responds with “Guacala!” :-))
The advantages of being tri-lingual are many, we don’ think much of this since we’re basically just living our lives as usual. But the children are given a huge gift, they will know three languages before even starting school. Curiously, reactions to this are very different. Americans always point out how great this will be for high school grades, the awesome scholarships we will get, and how Yale must be knocking on our doors. The rest of the world simply thinks it’s a cool and helpful thing we’re doing since the extra effort is minimal. The last thing we worry about is school, especially college. Did I mention our oldest son is barely out of the diaper stage?
Our son moved from a Swedish only day-care to a bi-lingual (English-Swedish) about a year ago and progress have been good. I’ve discussed Spanish and Swedish much but not really mentioned English. The reason is it’s by far the easiest language to learn. It’s smooth with easy grammar and smooth pronunciations. We know our son will learn English quickly regardless of what we do so it has been a low priority so far.
But languages comes in spurts and during Christmas our son started speaking English to us. Our of nowhere he woke up one morning and spoke only English during breakfast. For him, it’s a fun thing to do but his vocabulary seems decent so far. The cool thing today is my son’s vocabulary in any language is as good or better as any monolingual kid. But he already knows how to speak three languages. My daughter is just getting started but like all women I’m sure she’ll be unable to stop talking as she starts:-))
Teaching kids three languages at once is a bit unpredictable at times but really fun. It requires almost no extra effort and it’s exactly as many say, a gift for life. Languages are becoming more important today because of easy and cheap traveling, multicultural relationships, and global workplaces. If you speak more than one language in the family, regardless of what it is, give this gift to your child. It’s something extremely useful which will be learned during the toddler years and most likely never be forgotten.
