Babies and languages

regulus

regulus

regulus

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ChCh, NZ
My parents are Danish but I was born and raised here. I speak English, Danish, and very bad tourist level French. My future wife is French.

Is it possible to teach a young kid THREE languages before he/she is 7? I would like to teach him Danish because his grandma can't speak English, English is a given and so is French. Would the kid be confused with three languages coming at him? I don't want the little blighter growing up speaking some kind of hybrid language. Anyone with any experience in these matters?
 
Yes it's possible, although IIRC you'll probably end up with them dropping words from one language into a conversation in another.

I'd say give it a go, more languages can only be a good thing

Mox3d is Danish too btw ;)
 
yeah, children find languages far easier - and have a better chance of being multi-lingual if they learn early - irrc.

As Treefrog says he'll probably drop different words in, but he'll be able to speak them all pretty well if he sticks at it :)
 
kitten_caboodle said:
yeah, children find languages far easier - and have a better chance of being multi-lingual if they learn early - irrc.

As Treefrog says he'll probably drop different words in, but he'll be able to speak them all pretty well if he sticks at it :)
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This is correct, humans learn languages much quicker and easier at an early age, so teaching your new kid 3 languages would be easier than waiting until say 10 and then teaching them.
 
Two languages is a bit easier, as the child remembers "when I talk to mummy, French, when I talk to daddy, English". That's certainly how it was for me when I was growing up (but in my case Swedish & English). I'm not quite sure how you'd bring in the third language though.

Unless you speak to the child in Danish, your wife speaks in French, and you rely on TV, nursery school and eventually school itself to teach him or her English.

It's probably possible.

But if you start it, you have to stick to it rigidly, as if you start speaking bits of each language, the kid will pick and choose, either completely snubbing one language or ending up speaking some weird hybrid!
 
regulus said:
My parents are Danish but I was born and raised here. I speak English, Danish, and very bad tourist level French. My future wife is French.

Is it possible to teach a young kid THREE languages before he/she is 7? I would like to teach him Danish because his grandma can't speak English, English is a given and so is French. Would the kid be confused with three languages coming at him? I don't want the little blighter growing up speaking some kind of hybrid language. Anyone with any experience in these matters?
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Id certainly say its possible.

The whole basis of Montessori teaching is that kids at a young age are like sponges, and will learn more readily than older ones.
 
regulus said:
My parents are Danish but I was born and raised here. I speak English, Danish, and very bad tourist level French. My future wife is French.

Is it possible to teach a young kid THREE languages before he/she is 7? I would like to teach him Danish because his grandma can't speak English, English is a given and so is French. Would the kid be confused with three languages coming at him? I don't want the little blighter growing up speaking some kind of hybrid language. Anyone with any experience in these matters?
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Swiss people typically speak 3 languages, often 4. French, german and Italian are all common native langauges there, along with a romance language in the mountains. IF they natievly speak one of these they likely learn at least 1 other, they then also learn english.


very possible. Langauge acquistation of a sngle language might be slower but will reahc normal levels. Start early.
 
My aunt's friend taught her children to be trilingual. She speaks English and French as she's from Quebec. Her husband speaks English and Spanish as he's from Mexico. When it was just him around he would talk to the child and read to the child only in Spanish. When only the mother was around only French was spoken and read. When both were around English was used.

Reading was very important to their strategy.
 
My ex neighbours were ..... Greek father, Italian Mother and a daughter born here ...

I first met the little girl (Sofia) when she was three years old and she could hold very lucid conversations in all three languages (smart arse little ... ;) ) she was also extremely polite and relatively mature for her age; so much so that she would be a delight to have around when 12 or more adults held a BBQ .... rather than the screaming little beggers that would visit now and then.

Sofia would lose some English every time that she went to visit Grandparents of either side but eventually, when she started school, she managed to juggle all three and was fluent in English too.

I think that she didn't realise how difficult it was so just got on with it ....

Picture of the little brat with my boxer bitch. ;)

Sofia-and-Tilly.JPG
 
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usually only works well with 2 languages. As 1 parent speaks say english, the other parent will always talk say danish. You would need a third person with a lot of contact with the child to speak the french. But its deff possible.
 
Or start with 2 purely, and introduce a 3rd one slightly later.

Like Danish and French first, then English slightly later. She is going to go to school anyway and will pick up a LOT at school.
 
Raymond Lin said:
Or start with 2 purely, and introduce a 3rd one slightly later.

Like Danish and French first, then English slightly later. She is going to go to school anyway and will pick up a LOT at school.
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this is very true.
 
One of my housemates was brought up speaking several languages. She was born and raised in hong kong, but her dad I think is half british-half chinese and her mother is fully chinese. Her parents spoke to her in english, cantonese and another chinese language that I forget the name of (wasn't mandarin). After a while her parents realised she wasn't learning to talk as fast as usual so they decided to bring her up speaking mainly english. Now she is fluent in all three and probably a few other chinese languages (apparently they are all very similar).
 
Psyk said:
One of my housemates was brought up speaking several languages. She was born and raised in hong kong, but her dad I think is half british-half chinese and her mother is fully chinese. Her parents spoke to her in english, cantonese and another chinese language that I forget the name of (wasn't mandarin). After a while her parents realised she wasn't learning to talk as fast as usual so they decided to bring her up speaking mainly english. Now she is fluent in all three and probably a few other chinese languages (apparently they are all very similar).
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I put my money on it being Haka. I was the same, my grandmother speak mostly Haka and when i was young i spoke only Haka, then i went to nursery at 3 and picked up Cantonese there, and came here at 11 and picked up English.

You don't have to teach them all 3 at once, you can phase it, but the later it is, they will have an accent. But 5 is still young enough to introduce English and will grow up with no accent.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I put my money on it being Haka. I was the same, my grandmother speak mostly Haka and when i was young i spoke only Haka, then i went to nursery at 3 and picked up Cantonese there, and came here at 11 and picked up English.
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Yes I think it was Haka, it seems to ring a bell (and not just because it's the name of a local chinese take-away).
 
My little brothers are bought up in an English household, but in French. They do a fair bit of frenchisms in english and the odd english word dropped into French but they're bilingual :D
 
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