Did you grow up learning three languages at the same time?  My children 6 and 3 are learning English-Spanish and French at the same time.  They seem to be coping very well but I would like to hear about people who has done the same.

Princessa wrote:

  My children 6 and 3 are learning English-Spanish and French at the same time.  .

Wow, how can they manage to speak three of them without any problem, Princessa? how do you teach it to them?

dina

dinamars wrote:

Princessa wrote:

  My children 6 and 3 are learning English-Spanish and French at the same time.  .

Wow, how can they manage to speak three of them without any problem, Princessa? how do you teach it to them?

dina

It just happened naturally.  I speak to them most of the time in Spanish (my mother tongue).  We play in Spanish, I read stories to them and encourage them to read in Spanish.  They see Spanish cartoons and talk to my side of the family only in Spanish. 

As we live in France, their schooling is exclusively French.  They speak French all the time with their friends. And when they play just the two of them, they do it in French.

As for English... my husband is Scottish, so he makes a point of speaking mostly English to them (although he has been slipping the odd Scottish words now and then!).  To his side of the family, the children only speak English and they have plenty of books and videos in English.

Until recently, they did not realize that they could speak several languages.  Only now that the girl has learnt to read and write (in French, Spanish and English!) she realizes that she can speak three languages and she loves it !

That sounds very cool, and you are doing it the way linguists say is best. OPOL (one parent one language) That's probably why they are able to do well with it.

Princessa wrote:

It just happened naturally.  I speak to them most of the time in Spanish (my mother tongue).  We play in Spanish, I read stories to them and encourage them to read in Spanish.  They see Spanish cartoons and talk to my side of the family only in Spanish. 

As we live in France, their schooling is exclusively French.  They speak French all the time with their friends. And when they play just the two of them, they do it in French.

As for English... my husband is Scottish, so he makes a point of speaking mostly English to them (although he has been slipping the odd Scottish words now and then!).  To his side of the family, the children only speak English and they have plenty of books and videos in English.

Until recently, they did not realize that they could speak several languages.  Only now that the girl has learnt to read and write (in French, Spanish and English!) she realizes that she can speak three languages and she loves it ! 

wow..woww... (amazed and speechless )

totally a multicultural family!!

I think that's what is called learning by nature.

dina

My wife when she was growing up went to Russia with her father for about 2-3yrs and learnt to speak russian as the first language then german and finally english.

Pity she didn't keep it up could have been one hell of an interpreter.

That's very good.

That's excellent, Princessa!  You have no idea (or maybe you do) how great that is for their cognitive skills and the entire development of their brains.  Plus it's cool!

My best friend met a seven-year-old at the airport once who was trilingual.  She said the way she distinguished between the languages was: "One is mommy's words, one is daddy's words, and one is school's words."  Sounds like it's the same situation with you.

Try to keep it up; your children will be hugely better off for it!

As an adult I am trying to learn Portugese having learnt Spanish - a bit not bilingual - a few years ago. It does my head in because its similar but different! As an adult I keep on thinking oh thats the same - thats different! As kids they don't do the thinking so are learning much better than i ever will - try to keep it up so they keep the 3 until adulthood!

Children below age of 7 can learn upto 4 to 5 languages with ease.I learnt 4.My kids are coping with English,their mother tongue and the national language(Hindi) very well.

helenathegreat wrote:

That's excellent, Princessa!  You have no idea (or maybe you do) how great that is for their cognitive skills and the entire development of their brains.  Plus it's cool!

My best friend met a seven-year-old at the airport once who was trilingual.  She said the way she distinguished between the languages was: "One is mommy's words, one is daddy's words, and one is school's words."  Sounds like it's the same situation with you.

Try to keep it up; your children will be hugely better off for it!

That is exactly how they used to diferentiate between languages: mommy's language, daddy's language and French.  Now that they are growing they are understanding better the differences.  I think French is going to end up being their 'first' language as it seems to be the one they prefer (maybe because they play in French )

Funily enough, last year we had a long stay in Italy and the girl (5 at the time) seemed to pick up a lot of Italian, at least enough to play with other children.  She has already told us that she wants to learn Italian properly for the next time we go back!

Abhinaya wrote:

Children below age of 7 can learn upto 4 to 5 languages with ease.I learnt 4.My kids are coping with English,their mother tongue and the national language(Hindi) very well.

Anhinaya: Can you still speak fluently the 4 languages you learnt? and Do you have a prefered language?

It is not really advisable to learn three languages altogether without having one language settled first, i.e. the mother tongue. However, it also depends on the child's lingustic competency. Spoken language may be learned quickly but not writing and reading.

The exposure of the languages also influence their linguistic skill. I have a Korean student who speak Korean at home, learn English, Indonesian, and Chinese at school. He can speak fluently in all 4 languages but not reading and writing.

His brother who also learned 4 languages seem to have better linguistic skill so that he can cope with all 4 languages well. So, it depends on the child's cognitive skill too.

Ronald Daniar wrote:

It is not really advisable to learn three languages altogether without having one language settled first, i.e. the mother tongue. However, it also depends on the child's lingustic competency. Spoken language may be learned quickly but not writing and reading.

That was always a big issue in our family.  Thankfully it looks like the children are coping ok so far. 

The girl (6 years old) is learning to read and write in French at school now.  An despite being a "foreign" language for her she is top of her class.  Her writing and reading skills in Spanish are equally good, despite not being thought Spanish formally.  The other day she was even traslating a story to my mother (reading in French and telling the story in Spanish) I was amazed by her translating accuracy. 

Reading and writing in English is a bit trickier for her but I suppose that you could say that she reads and writes in English as well as many other 6 years old!

Princessa- great thread!

At one point my mother could speak English, Dutch, German and French fluently (she worked at the Dutch embassy!).  She could also speak some Japanese and Indonesian...

Boy I wish ANY of that rubbed off on us, but it didn't.

Teaching multiple languages is something that I think American schools are bad at.  I have family living in Europe and they all speak at least two more languages than me, and I think it's a little sad.  It's sad on my part that I don't know how to speak any other languages and it's sad that schools here in America don't do a better job of teaching languages.  It's typically 2-3 years of Spanish and you've passed your language requirements for your life!  I wish we'd do a better job of that here...

On a lighter note, I've studied lots of ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew!  Too bad neither of those languages are still spoken today!

WeddingConsultant wrote:

On a lighter note, I've studied lots of ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew!  Too bad neither of those languages are still spoken today!

I am curious why did you studied ancient Greek and Hebrew?

I took three semesters of Greek in college for my major (which was sort of a religious studies major and a minor in Bible)...

And I'm finishing up my first semester of Biblical languages for my Master's degree (Master of Arts in Theology).  That class has included both Greek and Hebrew.  Again it's all ancient Greek and Hebrew, so it's of little communicative value to me!

That's really interesting.  My daughter, who is about 18 months, is learning English and Japanese without a problem.  She'll be bilingual, but one language will eventually become the dominant language because of school, her peers, etc.  Assuming my wife and I continue to live in Japan, it will be Japanese.  As an English educator, it's interesting to watch language acquisition.

I'll take a guess and say that eventually, your daughters will be most fluent in French, then Spanish, and lastly English.  They are using and interacting in French most of the time, next Spanish.  From your initial post, it sounds like English gets the least practice.

WeddingConsultant wrote:

I took three semesters of Greek in college for my major (which was sort of a religious studies major and a minor in Bible)...

And I'm finishing up my first semester of Biblical languages for my Master's degree (Master of Arts in Theology).  That class has included both Greek and Hebrew.  Again it's all ancient Greek and Hebrew, so it's of little communicative value to me!

Much of Modern Greek is based on Ancient Greek and you'd be surprised at how much of today's Greek written word you'd be able to understand! Speaking (pronunciation) is rather different though, so harder.

My children are bi-lingual, Greek and English. Brought up in Greece. When they were small I stayed home with them so they were mostly hearing English all day, from me, and Greek from their father, other Greek relatives and friends etc. 

Once they started Greek school I went back to work and the Greek really took over. One year after they started school, when they had mastered Greek and the alphabet, they also started  English classes to learn reading & writing in English (they were speaking both languages fluently).  With two different alphabets to learn the general opinion is that they should master one before starting to learn a second.

WeddingConsultant wrote:

Teaching multiple languages is something that I think American schools are bad at.  I have family living in Europe and they all speak at least two more languages than me, and I think it's a little sad.  It's sad on my part that I don't know how to speak any other languages and it's sad that schools here in America don't do a better job of teaching languages.  It's typically 2-3 years of Spanish and you've passed your language requirements for your life!  I wish we'd do a better job of that here...

I think it is easier to learn a second language in Europe because the countries are so small and in some places like Switzerland and Belgium, the population is so diverse that you end up learning the "other's" language.