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Raising trilingual children | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes  Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 28 21 March 2013 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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So my wife and I have our first baby on the way and we are super excited! We have started discussing how to go
about speaking to our little one. We would love for our child to become trilingual, and this was the way in which we thought we would try to do it. I will speak only English, my wife only Chinese, and then when my wife and I speak to one another we will do it in Khmer. We live in Cambodia and so there will be a much bigger Khmer influence from outside also. Does anybody have any experience in this area or any insight on how well this could work? Many thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 28 21 March 2013 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you speak to one another in Khmer, chances are pretty good that the child will start to speak it to you as well, responding in Khmer even when you speak English or Mandarin to him/her and developing only rudimentary passive knowledge in them.
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| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 28 21 March 2013 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Will that still be the case if friends and family are speaking in English to them on a fairly regular basis? These will
be people who don't speak Khmer. Hopefully school will be in English as well, so if it happens as you described then i'm guessing that our child will still be fluent in English, albeit at a slightly older age? Thanks for the help! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 4 of 28 21 March 2013 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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It all depends on individual circumstances of course, but I can give you my own experience which is somewhat similar.
My wife is Spanish, and I am Norwegian. When our first child was born, we decided from the outset that she would speak Spanish and I only Norwegian to the child. At the time we lived in England, so she started kindergarten and later school in English. My wife and I speak Spanish together. We had a second child and took the same approach. Now they are 11 and 9, and they have contined with English as school language, even here in France. So what has the result been? They are completely bilingual Spanish/English. They understand Norwegian pretty well, but hesitate to use it actively, so they normally speak to me in Spanish (being the family language). An additional complicating factor is also that for the last five years French has been added to the mix. I therefore haven't insisted on developing their Norwegian skills. Now if as you say friends and family speak English with them on a regular basis, they might be able to keep all three languages active. In my case, they hear almost no Norwegian except from me, and the short periods we go to Norway every year isn't enough to activate it (and even there, their uncles, aunts and cousins rather speak English to them). By all means, I fully support your approach, just be aware, as Ari points out, that in a trilingual situation like you describe it is quite possible that they will consider Khmer the family language and reply to you in Khmer even when you speak English to them. I would not worry about it though, especially since English is the world language and they are bound to learn it well sooner or later. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 28 21 March 2013 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I once heard somebody claim, "Kids are just like everybody else: They learn the languages that they need to learn." And of course, just as with adults, some kids really love languages, and others see them strictly in practical terms.
My experiences here are based on living in a multilingual household with kids, on speaking to other parents with bilingual kids, and on doing some reading. Take my opinions with a grain of salt. There are some languages that kids are guaranteed to learn. - The language used by other kids their age: They'll become fluently conversational and sound native. They won't necessarily develop academic vocabulary. - The languages their parents actually speak to them every day: They'll gain at least passive understanding, assuming you really speak the language consistently. - The language used by their teachers at school: They'll be able to do academic work, but they may not always be able to socialize comfortably (judging from French immersion schools in Canada). So, for example, children raised in bilingual households in the US are often bilingual until 6 or 7, and then they lose their active skills in the minority language. Children raised in a bilingual environment in Montreal will quite often appear to speak both languages at a native level, though longer conversations may reveal surprising vocabulary gaps. North Africans who speak Berber in their daily lives and French at school will be socially comfortable in Berber but will often switch to French for intellectual subjects. In your situation, as long as your kids spend a lot of time with friends who speak Khmer, I wouldn't worry about it. They'll develop solid conversational skills out of necessity, and they probably won't need advanced academic skills. You may have to pay some attention to active skills in English, at least until they start going to an English-speaking school. Chinese might be a little trickier, especially if you don't have a lot of Chinese speakers around. But if your wife is consistent, I'd bet on your first child developing at least solid passive comprehension of Chinese. Anything more than that will depend on what languages actually get used at home. Also keep in my mind Khatzumoto's original AJATT experiment: "If I change my environment to a Japanese environment, will I become a Japanese speaker?" It turns out the answer to that question was yes, even for an adult. And as a parent, one of your most powerful tools is your children's environment. With enough time and ingenuity, you can control what languages your kids will need to know. This is way more effective and pleasant than trying to cajole a 3-year-old to speak a language they don't see any point in speaking. And of course this is different for every kid! Some kids are just natural little polyglots and will pick up active skills where other kids would only figure out how to skate by with partial comprehension. Other kids will have significant language delays even in a monolingual environment. Edited by emk on 21 March 2013 at 3:15pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4716 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 6 of 28 21 March 2013 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm sure Richard Simcott could give a good insight, since his daughter is being raised speaking 5 languages, if I'm not mistaken.
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| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 28 21 March 2013 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks guys you have been a great help!
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| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 8 of 28 21 March 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | ||
Although I'm sure if they spent some time in a Norwegian speaking environment, their speaking skills would accelerate at an unbelievable rate. Edited by beano on 21 March 2013 at 4:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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