Too many languages????

[Jogolino]

Hi! My DS is only 8 mo at the moment, but soon I'll have to go back to work and he will need to go to daycare for 2 or 3 days a week. My problem (or maybe it's not?) is that my mother tongue is English, DHs is Greek and we live in a country that has 2 official languages. DS is being brought up as bilingual, though DH and I speak English to each other as my Greek is still pretty awful. Neither DH and I speak the local languages well yet. Is it too much to expect DS to go to a daycare where he will learn a 3rd language which DH and I won't be able to understand well? They have an international daycare here that use English but they won't take him until he's 2.

Is it ok to put him into the local daycare and just hope that it won't completely confuse the poor child?

Our situations is I speak English, DH speaks German and at the creche / school the DCs are spoken to in Luxembourgish. I don't think it is too many languages but don't be suprised if your DS speaks a little later than you would expect.

I don't think it will be a problem.

It may be confusing for you (trying to decipher which language a babble is coming from) but I think it wouldn't cause him any harm, more so if there is a slight chance you stay in that country for more time than planned, if so, he will need it.

He is going to learn English at home anyway, and although it may look not necessary to learn the local languages, it would be nice so he could communicate with the local kids, watch local TV and be immerse in the culture of what is going forever be his first country.

BTW DS has been managing well in three languages, and to our surprise, we have noticed that he is able to get an idea of what people are talking about when speaking in other languages that have the same root than his own. He was a late talker, but only for a few months.

They also said that early learning of multiple languages help them to gear their brain up for maths. There must be something true in that statement, DS was multiplying by 12 when he was 5. He is not a genious but is definitively ahead of his peers.

And yes... he is already correcting my English and pronunciation, so who knows? he may end up playing a key role in helping the family learn the local language

I don't think you'll have any problems as long as you are completely consistent in your usage, ie, you only speak English to him, your husband only Greek, agree on rules for family interaction (probably English in your case, but it could also later be the person who starts a conversation determines the language, etc), and the nursery is responsible for him picking up the local language. The only frustration you might have is when he becomes active in the local language you might have to remind him that you don't understand certain expressions and that 'we speak English/Greek at home'.

The only problems I have ever come across with three or more languages have been from parents who mix languages at random, and then the kids don't know where or who they are. One French woman married to an English guy, living near us in Germany, mixes all three merrily within sentences, as a result of which her son has enormous linguistic and psychological problems.

The book 'The Bilingual Family' is very good on this subject, can't remember the authors.

There would be some mix up of the languages by the child in the early years, but I was fascinated to see that at some point they become perfectly separated (about 3 yrs old?). Having said that, we are religious at not mixing them up, so that may have helped.

But that's the point, Mongolia - the children will inevitably mix in the early years while they're still sorting out which language is used in which context, and it's up to the parents to make that clear by demonstration. So I'm sure your 'religious' non-mixing helped enormously. And I agree that many children who are exposed to all languages early on will sort them out by three, although there's a lot of interference much later on (where, for instance, an idiom is literally translated into the other language).

We haven't found the great advantage with maths, maybe because the dc go to an international school where everyone is bi- or trilingual, so the general standard is higher anyway. However, dd1 started her first 'foreign' language last year at 10, and the whole class is learning amazingly quickly because they just accept a different language as natural.

I think the only issue here is a time one.. if your lo dosn´t spend enough time in an Englis/Greek speaking environment s/he won´t learn those languages quickly, and the third (creche) language will be the strongest language. You will need to make a lot of effort in terms of exposure to English/Greek for the child to become trilingual. Think about which family members can visit and plan holiday locations appropriately! Use DVDs (from 3 years), books etc as much as you can.