Anyone tried it with THREE languages? (French, Polish, English)

[blondecat]

Hello
DH and I still have a long way to go but we've been scratching our heads over the language thing.

His is French, mine Polish, we speak English to each other and we'd both like to keep the mother tongues going. If we drop Polish, DC will never learn it as it's so different. If we drop French... well, that's just inconceivable, considering I've been sent off to an intensive French course already. The respective families are getting intransigent. At least mine is. Les belles parents just assume it will be la francophonie all the way.

Has anyone done it with three languages?
Won't DC get confused? I am worried as a friend's daughter reached age of 3 and still doesn't speak in full sentences. She understands but doesn't talk save in her own language and with single words. And they speak Polish only at home with English coming in at the nursery.
Will we jeopardise DC's progress by bringing in too many languages?
Can anyone recommend some good books / approaches?

Frankly, I suspect it's Polish that will suffer. All but one of my friends are British and I use English more than Polish anyway.

BTW DH doesn't speak a word of Polish. OK, about 10 words and some Russian, which is to Polish what Dutch is to English. So he won't understand if I speak Polish only.

I have a friend who tried and it's sort of worked. She is trilingual - coincidentally in French, English and Polish! She is a single parent and lives in Paris, so her dd went to French medium primary school, the spoke English at home and Polish with grandparents and Polish relations. Her dd is now in the first year of Secondary in the International stream, so she gets a lot of French and English at school. My friend is thinking of trying to introduce more Polish once she's settled into ~secondary. The child is very nearly bilingual, although I think French is really her primary language and she speaks what my friend calls "family Polish"

Oh, and I have a bilingual nephew and neice as well, and they were both slow talkers, although they caught up very quickly. Don't know if it's coincidence or something to t=do with the bilingualism.

Hi BC, my dd is trilingual speaking German, English and Swissgerman fluently. She is 6 now. (Yes I count Swissgerman as a separate language because it is so different from Germand that I can't bloody understand it!!)

You will probably find that you instinctively speak your mother tongue to your baby anyway. It seems to be a very deeprooted thing to do. Maybe this is why it is called your mother tongue and not your father tongue.

Bi/trilingual children do tend to speak later but they catch up and then have a huge advantage over their earlier speaking peers. At home our family-language is English but in practice we speak a mishmash of the three languages and it works wonderfully.

Three languages is fine, and will certainly not confuse the child. I have found it incredible and beautiful watching my dd learn all three languages perfectly. It is normal to her and also helps her to understand that there are many different languages and in turn many different cultures.

Good luck!

I don't know a lot about the mechanics but I know a family where the children are mini Nick Cleggs - they speak 5 languages!

Mum Korean, Dad German, they lived for years in Laos where they had to speak both French and Lao, and now live in the UK where they speak English.

Its unbelievable listening to them!

Some children will cope with three languages fine, but others won't. I know a child being brought up tri-lingually who is now six and not fluent in any language and is struggling academically and socially at school. In all other areas she is intelligent and of normal development.

It's been hard enough bringing up my dc bi-lingually- it's not always so simple as speaking to your dc in your mother tongue as I have always done that but my dc's english is far behind their flemish. I feel like I am their language teacher and this is hard to reconcile with being their mother.

belgo, I agree that it is sometimes hard work to keep up the minority language(s) input, especially as the school/environment language is so dominant.

We are supplementing the children's English schooling with German Saturday School, lots of German books/dvds and trips to German speaking countries. At the end of the day it is the overall exposure children receive in the respective languages that determines whether they can become fluent in it.

Contrary to popular opinion, bilingugal (not sure about trilingual) children DO NOT speak later than monolingual ones. I've read lots of books on the subject and have also seen a big variation between my ds and dd's speech. Some children are just earlier speakers, some take a little more time. I don't believe bilingualism has anything to do with it.

i spoke 3 and a bit languages at age 5/6/7

i was born in holland to an irish mother and dutch father, we spoke english at home and dutch eveywhere else.

then when i was 5 we moved to germany and we spoke english at home, i spoke dutch to my grandparents and german out of the home.

while we lived in holland i also had an ndonesian nanny who taught me a little bit of her language.

Unfortunately the down side is that we moved to ireland when i was 7/8 and both my parents spoke english to me and i forgot all the dutch and german within a year i'd already lost the indonesian while in germany.

So my opinion is yes it is possible but kids need constant exposure to a language in order to retain it so set up a sytem (eg: french at home during the week, polish at the weekend and english out of the house) and stick with it, don't lapse once the child is fluent assuming that just because they can speak the language they'll always remember how.

annasophia... i agree, i was an early talker despite learning two languages at that age. my elder tow kids spoke early like me and my youngest is much later... i think genetics overrules external influences in this case.

Tulips - that's interesting - you have exposure to two languages until the age of 5 and when you were proficient in those languages, then you had a third language. I think it's important to note the difference then being tri-lingual from birth.

It's a shame that you parents only spoke english to you when you were back in Ireland.

To be fair on my dad, he worked in a job where he spoke up to 4 languages a day, 5 days a week and was abroad every other week having to work in one of those languages, often in a country who's language he didn't have making extremely important business deals which required him to get his point across with no 'misunderstandings'.

When he was hom at the weekends the last thing he wanted to do was speak one language to me and another to my mother, my mother wouldn't conceive of us being a solely dutch speaking household

It' s shame as in my grnadparnts later years i couldn't speak to them in dutch ... although i could understand them up to a point and they spoke and understood english so we could communicate, just not easily!

Tulips - did you relearn dutch later?

no, I plan on doing it soon though. I can get the gist of things said to me but can barely speak a word

Bizarrely my college german teacher told me i had a dutch accent speaking german though... and that was without me having told him i was dutch!

Interestingly, my neice and nephew, who's mother is Spanish, and who started life in Spain but who have lifed in England for 4 years still ppeak english with pronounced Spanish accents. It's not called a mother tongue for nothing!

"Contrary to popular opinion, bilingugal (not sure about trilingual) children DO NOT speak later than monolingual ones."

They do, actually. Your books are incorrect if they say additional languages don't lead to a delay in speech.

I live in a very multi-cultural place where there are a lot of bilingual and trilingual kids and it is very rare for them to say more than a few words at the age of 2. The few monolingual kids I know were speaking in sentences at this point.

Trilingual DD had under 5 words at age 2. Some of her friends spoke much later than her. One boy (8 months older than DD) who hears only English at home and French outside was practically mute at this time. Now (5) he speaks both English and French.

CoteDAzur, you may have had a different experience than myself and the author of the books I've read.

My bilingual dd spoke very early (more German than English at the time), in fact earlier than most of her monolingual peers. On the other hand, my ds spoke much later and has mixed the languages much more (and still does a little). In my experience, therefore, it seems that genetics (and perhaps gender?) have had a bigger influence than bilingualism.

I guess we may never be able to answer the question 100% because we don't know how early a child would have talked had it not been bilingual .

I wasn't only talking about my experience, though. This is a whole town of bilingual & trilingual children, with only a small minority of monolingual ones. Such that the paediatricians around here are well-versed in this phenomenon. At 1 yr routine visit, the first thing you hear is "Don't be surprised if your baby is not saying anything yet" and by 2 years, "As long as she says one word correctly, all is fine, don't worry".

Reference please annasophia - most academic research I've seen says a language delay is normal.

Research does say that a delay is normal but that is not a fast rule. Our son is almost 2.5 and speaks in sentences - sometimes his sentences are a bit funny but they consist of several words. He said his first word when he was 6 months (which I believe is early?) and was putting short sentences together before he was 2. English is (at present anyway) his strongest language but he also speaks Finnish and Spanish.

True it's not a hard and fast rule and genetics, parental interaction and the sheer amount of exposure to language plays a huge part. But research would suggest that a delay which cannot otherwise be accounted for is often present in multilingual children.

There have been differing research re the question of multilinguals speaking later. I have read both sides.

My DC were brought up speaking English and German and later added French (when DD was 6yo and DS 4yo) and they both spoke later than their peers. I do know other families where this was not the case.

IMO, the biggest myth with bringing up multilingual DC is "Oh, it is so easy, they are like sponges, just soak up the languages".

Perhaps when they are toddlers, but from school age it is hard work. Especially for the parents.

OP
You may find it hard at first to speak Polish with your baby, I know I struggled to speak English - even though it was my native language - because I was so integrated in German.

Stick with it, find out what it best for you. We did not follow a strict OPOL course, just made it up as we went along. DD is now 8yo, fluent in German/English, very good in French and learning to read in all three languages. That is a challenge.

If you google 'bilingualism' and 'speech delay' you'll find lots of results of various studies. The ones I've read (certainly not all ) suggest that bilingualism itself does not cause any speech delay or other language disorder.

Here are a few
www.bilingualoptions.com.au/consTXTDelay.pdf
www.bbc.co.uk/wales/schoolgate/your questions/content/helpfromhome_langdelay.shtml
www.cal.org/resources/digest/raisebilingchild .html

(sorry, I'm not good at linking the sites directly )

The reason I think it is important for parents not to view bilingualism as the cause for speech delay is that if there is a serious underlying speech problem, it must be treated early and taken seriously! It would be a shame to dismiss a serious speech problem due to bilingualism.

Bilingualism doesn't cause language disorder - no-one's suggesting it does. Bilingual children tend to take longer to verbalise, but develop normally babbling etc and often say words like 'Mama' and 'Dada' at roughly the same age as monolinguals, the comprehension is there and overall although vocabulary size in any one language is likely to be smaller, which in a monolingual would be cause for concern, but the global vocabulary size is usually the same as observed in a monolingual if not greater.

Overall, statistically, multilingual children speak (intelligibly) later. I can't remember which research paper it was but it suggested an average of 2 months later, excluding anomalies (who speak at 6 months or so and those with observed speech delay/GDD not related to bilingualism). The approach (OPOL or not) and relative exposure in both languages needs to be taken into account. So called 'balanced' bilinguals where the languages have equal weight (very rare) and those with a very pronounced bias (home language vs community language) tend to speak earlier but probably for different reasons. 'Balanced' bilinguals tend to have a few key words in both languages, those with a strong bias often develop in a way more akin to monolingual children.

Now may I have funding for my PhD, please?

I do remember my paediatrician saying that at that point DD should be saying 30 words, since she was bilingual she might only manage 15 German words, but will know them or another 15 words in English.

They have 2x the vocabulary to learn (or 3x) so it is not a great leap that they might speak later.

I am quite intrigued by the supposed speech delay in bilingual children. DD was a very early talker in French and English. She was very clear and had a massive vocabulary at 2 (I started counting and recording but it got tedious). This was remarked upon by paediatrician, nanny, friends and family. Not just us proud parents
She now goes to school and is learning a third language which she is picking up faster than average (according to the teacher).
DS who is 20 month old is less clear in his delivery but he also has over 50 words, maybe 100. He does make sentences of 3/4 words.

A good friend of mine has a bilingual boy who also was a very early and impressive speaker.

I bought quite a few books on the subject and they all mention a small delay, but this has not been my experience.

We too are raising our children bilingually (German/English) using the OPOL method in the UK.

My experience is also that bilingualism has not affected my childrens' speech as much as other factors. My dd (firstborn) spoke very early and has always separated the two languages very well. My ds was a much later talker, who has had slight speech issues (lisping) and who still (aged 5) 'englishises' some german verbs (e.g. let's make the light on).

I've also had a look at the academic research about bilingualism and most findings suggest that learning two languages from birth does not affect or delay their speech very much.

So good luck to the OP! I'd definately speak in your respective languages (Polish and French) and not worry about 'teaching' any English - he/she will pick this up at school.

Hmmmmm

Will see what I will actually do. But in the end I will probably end up confusing the poor mite by mixing languages. That's what we do in my family anyway. My sister and I would speak Polish, switch to English, then back depending on what we are saying. Some things just make more sense to us in one language than other.

Then maybe I will go Polish crazy when the baby arrives.
DH will probably stick to French but that's because he is not around much. I don't know if I could ever be dogmatic and stick to OPOL or anything else. Too ill disciplined.

Or it will depend on where we live. If it's in France I may put more stress on English.

Meanwhile I am back in French class. It's more to get ready for the francophone mummies at the nursery / playgroup than anything else.

But I am glad to hear there is little evidence of serious speech problems arising from languages. A delay of a month or two is fine. I was just worried about them not speaking.

my son speaks polish french and english we speak to him from birth .hespeaks english at school and at home hewatchestv in polish and french .it works it went to french saturday school and now wll go to the polish one and carry on his french wth the cned ..a success we livein south london .we make sure every year heis immersed in both countries.we nevr mix languages when we speak to him from birth ...we are very proud of our trilingual son