How can I bring up my child to be trilingual in London?

[MassiveMollyfloss]

I'm looking for some advice from mothers out there with multilingual kids. I am pregnant with my first child and would really like to have a go at having my child speak French and Spanish from an early age. I am Irish and my husband is American and we both lived in France for a long time and hence speak French. We have thought about trying to get our kid into the nursery at the French lycée because it is likely that we will talk to our child in English and when she goes to the nursery she would speak French. I've heard that it's better for adults to stick to one langauge with the child for it not to be confusing. If myself and my husband are conversing in English and then I for example only talk to her in french it may be confusing for her and weird for me anyway as although I am fluent in French it is not my mother tongue. Of course I wouldn't mind speaking to her in French from time to time. I just don't think realistically it would work if she were to learn solely from me. I have a niece (4) and nephew (2) who are both fluent in English, Spanish & German. Spanish, because their mother is Spanish and speaks to them all the time in Spanish and German because they live in Switzerland and go to a German speaking nursery a couple of days a week. At first when they moved there my niece was who was 3 and already bilingual didn't take to the german speaking nursery but in no time she got used to it and was babbling in German. It really is impressive and such a gift to give a child. That's why we would like our child to speak Spanish too, because she will have plenty of opportunity to use even at an early age in the family not to mention all the benefits of languages is future years. I plan to learn Spanish myself. Anyway I think the best thing is probably to send my child from an early age for a couple of days a week to a nursery where the speak both langauges or else one day to one nursery and another day to another. Has anyone any experience / advice on this? Our postcode is SW if anyone knows of any nurserys. Or would a nanny/au pair be better ? but then that wouldn't cover both languages... All advice welcome!

Read "Le Défi des Enfants Bilingues" by Barbara Abdelilah-Bauer. It will enlighten you.

I'm sorry, I glanced down the active convos list and I thought your title read 'How can I bring up my child to be triangular in London?'

No help but at least I've bumped the thread for you with my idiocy.

Merci Anna! Je vais l'acheter toute suite! and thanks anorak for bumping up my thread

Merci Anna! Je vais l'acheter toute suite! and thanks anorak for bumping up my thread

ca ne fait rien

anna 8888, would you happen to know if there is an english version? I am Catalan, Spanish married to an Enlgish boy! So very interested in enlightining books in the matterh x

A friend of mine is German, lives in London with
an English-speaking partner and has a (I think) Colombian nanny/au-pair.
Result: Her young lo speaks German, English and Spanish.

So it appears to be doable!

Another good book is 'A Parent's Guide to Bilingualism' by Pam Fitzpatrick.

barcelonababe - not to my knowledge but you could trying looking up the author on amazon.com or .co.uk.

Many thanks DaddyJ and Anna8888!

MassiveMollyFLoss, i am fluent in 3 languages(Catalan, Spanish and English) at home I speak only Spanish to myd dd and English to my dh.

I am gently introducing the Catalan moslty when we play/sing songs... and she seems very receptive and already says words in both Spanish and English- she is 18 months.

Hope you get some responses as it is a very interesting topic. Good luck!

x

I'm French, my partner is English and we speak both languages at home, although, since we live in England, we speak English 80% of the time. We speak in both languages (me in French and him in English) to our new born and intend to keep it that way. My parents spoke a Berber dialect and French to me when I was little and I don't remember ever being confused between the two languages. If anything, it helped me develop a certain ability and love for foreign languages. I often meet bilingual kids and parents on Eurostar and they all say that kids are like sponges and are able to absorb whatever is thrown at them. Of course bilingual or trilibgual kids tend to speak later than monolingual children, but that's only because they have more information in their brains to deal with, it does not mean that they're confused. Good luck with it all.

Hi MassiveMollyfloss
We are raising our son trilingually. He gets a language each from DH and I, and the third language in the nursery school. The situation is a bit different to yours because of course the community language is not one of his home languages, so the language associations he has are simpler to define. I just wanted to post to tell you it is possible. You'll have to work out which language(s) you want your DC to learn outside the home and take it from there. I would imagine that living in London would give you plenty of choices of schooling, toddler groups, language groups, and other support. Be patient though, it'll be a good while before you see the results. But it will be worth it .

Thanks for all the feedback. It's great to hear everypon'es experiences and I'm glad to hear it is possible! I think for our child to speak french should be easy enough because we can just send her to a French nursery and speak English to her at home. Also, we both speak French so even if she did speak to us in French from time to time it would not be a problem. We have a lt of French friends with kids in London too. For her to speak Spanish might be more difficult as neither of us speak Spanish (yet) and I do not know of any trilingual nursery schools... I'll keep looking. Maybe I could introduce her to Spanish a little later.

Hi, there is a spanish-english nursery in Fulham, check www.peques.co.uk
I don't know anyone who goes there as I live on the other side of London but just thought I'd share the link.
P

I read somewhere that introducing more than one language actually speeds up language development.

My son has three languages in his family. My dh speaks only in italian to him and I only in English. He appears to understand both. He speaks a bit and the odd phrases he produces is a mixture. I'm not going to push him to learn each word in both languages.

My mum then speaks to him in a third language. It's not European and you can tell by the look on his face that he knows it's a bit different. We won't be pushing this language as I don't speak it very well and my mum isn't around enough to keep up the momentum which I think is very important as he gets older.

My mum speaks 4 languages in total and I grew up speaking her native tongue but I lost momentum in my teens and now I struggle to speak it. However my mum doesn't pick up new languages and I in my thirties pick them up quickly (and then drop them!).

So my approach is going to be slowly slowly in the beginning and then turn up the heat!

Thanks Mumsville, sounds like good advice!

mumsville, we are in a similar situation and
I am curious to see how things work out with lo.

I suspect English will dominate as it is literally her mother tongue
and we live in England. Not sure to what extent the other two
languages will get a look in.

daddy

I'm just going to see how it goes. My father is part French (very multicultural family us!) and really forced French down my throat.I can say hand on heart I don't speak or understand it.Yet I lived in Spain for two years and spoke it like a Spaniard within a year with no lessons. Never had Italian lessons or lived in Italy but speak it much better than my dh's English (he's lived here for 16 years).

I guess everyone is different.

If I'm honest I'd rather ds learns an Asian language (my mum) as it is, in my view invaluable for the future.

But again, communicate, communicate and see how you get on. I would encourage two but not push for three, necessarily.

In fact, daddy, if one of your languages is non European, push that one. More of a broad base.

On a rational level I agree with you, it would make sense
to promote the third language (Asian in our case, too)
but unfortunately I am not too enamoured with my old home country.

I know, it sounds daft but politically, commercially, socially
I am just not very compatible with that culture.
Hence, I have a very poor grasp of my 'real' mother tongue.

Let's hope my parents do a good job then!

Hi,
It's perfectly possible but IMO the spanish bit is really far fetched in your situation as she would have no one to relate to if you do not speak the language.
The only way to do it would be a full time spanish/south american nanny. Kids need some sort of emotional rapport to develop language. They can't be "programmed" (well at least that is not my idea of education, but that's known to work tooo...)

As for french lycee that's a great idea but your french friends will tell you places are limited and long waiting lists and no guarentee if you are not a french national or transfering from french system.Do your reaserch and apply now.
The ecole bilingue in south Ken & Maida Vale my be a good alternative. The club petit pierrot is also good for toddler activities.

What I would recommend is to speak french at home as much as possible and speak English outside the home (because everybody else does and she needs to learn and communicate in the playground).

With DS, speak English-french-arabic. We lived 1 year in Amsterdam when DS was 18-30mths and he picked up some dutch (now forgotten).
We are now in Singapore and he's 3.8 and starting to say a few words in Chinese. I see the same in lots of expat kids.
Bottom line is yes, it can be done but the key is IMMERSION and consistent practice. I've yet to see another method that works.

Good luck

Daddy

I guess I hear what you are saying, but I'm trying to get my ds speaking Italian only because his family there can't communicate in English.

I just feel that for future prospects it would be better to have an asian language under his belt but as I'm useless at my dm's mother tongue, it's unlikely! But a bit of unstanding and a bit of speaking would be lovely.

Thanks Slim for the tip on the école bilingue and the club petit pierrot. i hadn't heard of them. Have you heard of a nursery called Les Chatons? It is true that the French Lycée is very difficult to get into particularly if neither me of DH is French. I'm hoping that the fact that we both spent about 9 years living in France & paying French taxes will help but I'm not sure it will... I can also speak French to my DS at home when needed. If she is at the school/creche in French 3 days a week though this may not be necessary. I don't mind either way. The important thing is that she will be able to converse with me if in French if she ever needs to. She will also have plenty of contact with French people as we have loads of French friends in London and go to France regularly. My MIL who is American is also fluent in French. My niece who is four goes to school in german but never speaks it to her parents (because they don't speak it as well as she does!). As for Spanish, it is true that it will be more difficult as my Spanish is quite basic... I'll have to think some more about that...

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