How many languages are spoken in your household?

[lamii]

My partner and I are looking into moving to Berlin. We live currently in Sweden, we speak English at home and trying to introduce Swedish and French. If we move to Berlin we will have to learn German as well...

How realistic is that? Poor future kid who will have 4 languages to learn.

Do you think a neutral ground is better whether than living in one of our respective countries?

@Saciperere
I can see how home language and school language can be the most important ones, even if they understand 3 or 4 languages.
I wasn't raised bilingual and I had a very bad language education. People raised bilingual seem to be able to learn a third language easily and adopt the accent quite well.
When I say that I don't imagine myself having to deal with a 4th language it's because I have enough to improve in English and Swedish, not to mention that my mother-tongue feels poorer now. I am not specially skilled with languages...

Just place marking as this is an issue we will face!

Me neither, I feel hopeless sometimes. Even after years in another country I am not a language person. DH speaks 4 languages, three fluently and doesn't share my complications, which makes it worse. I'm dyslexic too so I have no problem speaking informally but become a ball of jelly when I have to speak formally or when I have to write formally in Portuguese, which I have to do everyday. I cannot read out loud in Portuguese at all either, I have a serious brain to mouth malfunction. Some people are not language people. I understand exactly where you're coming from.

@Saci oh ok, that sounds challenging. Your husband and you speak the same language right?
@Zaurak which languages and where?

To commit to German as a 4th language, Berlin will have to impress me big time!! Otherwise, I wish we could just go back to UK and speak French+Swedish at home...

I personally speak several languages and get to work and spend time with a lot of children who speak more than two languages on a daily basis.

A couple of years ago I was working with a family who was in the same situation you plan to be in within a couple of years, which mean that they had three children (all under 4) who had to be familiar with 4 languages on a daily basis as the mother was French, the Father Italian and they were living in Barcelona where people speak both Spanish and Catalan.
The oldest child understood the 4 languages perfectly but had trouble speaking them properly and often happened to mix the four languages into one sentence etc... which she found frustrating as it meant most people didn't understand her. The 18months old twins also understood the four languages perfectly and they were quite funny to work with as they definitely each had a preference for some of the language. The girl prefered French and Spanish while the boy would mostly speak words of Italian and Catalan. You really would be impressed by how easily children adapt to a new language and environment, I do think creating a great environment and sticking to a certain method (such as OPOL) is necessary though.

If you live in Germany it is likely that your kids' main language will be German though. They will probably speak to you in French etc... but they'll probably identify more as German as it will be what they know best. It's pretty normal.

Don't worry too much about it OP, children adapt easily to new languages so it probably won't even seem like an effort to them. :)

No lamii we have a different first language. We speak English together, it's my first language but not his. He is more or less fluent as we have been married for years and he has worked in English jobs or English speaking countries for most of that time.

I'm sure Berlin will impress you .

I wouldn't worry about children as they are they find languages a doddle. Have you tried duolingo? I found it pulled things together for me a lot in the early days. German would not be too difficult when you have Swedish and English knowledge. I remember my father (bilingual Swedish and English) learnt German very quickly and he was over 40 at the time. Good luck!

I don't think it's as easy for some kids to learn multiple languages as some people suggest. I have trilingual multiples. So although not statistically relevant I see a huge difference in their abilities. And in the stress it has created for them.
It was also a lot of work for DH and myself to step away from the language of love as pp has said and do opol. Then introduce English in school.

That said you could just go with the flow.

How old are your children Katsite? I've never done opol. I used to get stressed about that and people were so fond of telling me how we were damaging our children by not doing it or it was our fault that our oldest didn't speak until he was nearly 3. That child is is now 13 and doing really well in secondary school. He scores higher in his Portuguese language tests than most of his classmates do and it's their first language, he only started reading and writing in Portuguese when he was 9. He is also flying along in both Spanish and French classes, which he started two years ago. Some children just take longer than others, my 4 are all different, but I think children generally are better at dealing with languages.

I've lost the ability to stress or care now. Go with the flow is the best advice ever!

Mine are 10, saci. I would say it's easier to learn a language as a child than as an adult but it's not like they can sponge up any number of languages effortlessly. My observation was that learning a language just seemed to take up a certain amount of brain capacity and not all kids have the same knack for learning them.

Hi all, a little update after my trip to Berlin...
I'm relieved: we won't move to Germany. We weren't that much seduced by the city. So I am happy now with having 'only' 3 languages around. It seems less frightening!
Now the remaining question is: Sweden or England...
@Linning thanks for the story
@Saci I have basics of Swedish & German and I found that having to speak german during my trip was very confusing and everything mixed up in my brain
@Katsite introducing English at school sounds great. I know people who send their kids to some sort of mixed language pre-school (kids have one year in french, then one year in english, etc...) Kids are upset at the beginning of each year and then they adapt. But they don't seem to nail any language apart from their mothertongue.

I have friends whose family languages are French, English, Japanese, and Portuguese. I fully expect their kids to end up as UN secretary general