My kids sometimes get confused by all the languages they know!

[happyschoolrun]

Hi, very interesting reading all the posts about multilingual kids. My DS+DD have been brought up speaking Mandarin at home since babies. However as soon as they started school they spoke less Mandarin to me. They both learnt French for 7 years at school till they were 12, then learnt Spanish and took Spanish in GCSE, which at the same time they also took Latin in GCSE. DD studying Spanish A level now. Can you imagine how confused they must be! Apparently when asked a question in French, my DS answered in Mandarin which the teacher was most amused!keep up the effort and insist and continue speaking to your kids in your language, they will thank you for it in the future! P.S. Now they are older I am starting to teach other kids who wants to learn Mandarin. Really enjoyable!

5 foreign languages was the norm for people aiming at humanities when I was at school in Sweden in the 70's. I did English, French, Spanish, Latin and Classical Greek and was taught German at home. Didn't find it that confusing; it was quite common. Most of the people I went to uni with spoke 5 or 6 languages. It's only in a UK context that it seems odd.

Yes it shouldn't be too bad. I grew up speaking English and German at home. Then learnt French and Latin at school.

My main 3 are English, German and Greek now. But I can get away with basic French and Latin helped me learn other languages easier ( travelled trough eastern Europe a lot, so do know a few others but only enough to get by and have to brush up before returning so dont really count them

Greek as married Greek dh

At school I did English, French, German, Italian and Latin. At university I added Spanish. It's not a problem.