The Trilingual Child: Can this Work?
When I was working full time in Paris, the Bambina started talking at around sixteen months and her words were pretty much all in ... French, much to my disappointment. She even insisted on calling me maman instead of mommy.
A few months later, I left my job for good. The Bambina still went to daycare for a few hours a day so that I could get things done but her English vocabulary rapidly picked up just from seeing a lot more of me. By twenty-two months, the Bambina was speaking about fifty percent English and fifty percent French. And she started calling me mommy instead of maman about half the time.
And then we moved to Italy.
Now, the Bambina speaks: one hundred percent English (with me) and one hundred percent Italian (at the nursery). She speaks no French.
With the Frenchman, she tries to speak Italian (somehow knowing that it is closer to French than is English) and if that fails, she resorts to English (which annoys him to no end). What's more, she claims that she does not understand the Frenchman when he speaks French to her.
And yet, back in Paris, a speech pathologist (who also happened to be a bilingualism expert) had assured us that trilingualism was entirely do-able and yes, the "third language" would be a bit behind the other two dominant languages but it could still "work".
It's not working.
I am even considering lifting (gasp!) the ban on television (the Bambina doesn't watch except when she is at her nana's place) so that she can (gasp!) watch the teletubbies in French (nana has offered to purchase requisite set of French teletubby DVDs). Anything to motivate her to understand and speak to her father.
I suppose I could also enroll her in the French school this year, notwithstanding the catastrophic visit at the Lycee Chateaubriand but I think I will hold out for now. Worse comes to worse, she can go there when she turns five and still barely utters Bonjour to a French acquaintance.
13 comments:
I don't want you to think I'm stalking you but if we ever have kids we were thinking about raising them trilingual too (OK - I was thinking about it - my boyfriend thinks this is nuts!) I'm Australian/American, boyfriend is Dutch and we live in Italy. Boyfriend and I speak English at home so any potential kids would speak English and Italian (through school, TV etc.) I think that BF should speak Dutch with them too but he says that this would be "too difficult" and that "it would confuse the kid." I poo poohed that but maybe he has a point? I think it would be a shame if potential future kids could not communicate with their dutch grandparents (who don't speak any English.) I don't speak any Dutch though so the onus would be on boyfriend who does not seem very keen...
I think it's possible to raise a trilingual child. I have friends whose children speak German (father's language), Polish (mother's language) and Portuguese (they lived in Brazil). There is always a point where the children prefer two of the languages to a third, but that seems to be a state of flux. Your husband must absolutely not give up speaking French to her even if she doesn't seem to like it. She is sure to start speaking it as soon as you visit or move back to France.
I also just wanted to say it's such a stunning opportunity you're giving her that it's worth persevering, isn't? Our kids are bilingual (English at home, German in the world) and it's wonderful to watch them segue effortlessly from one to the other, depending who is in the room!
I agree with Charlotte, though perhaps a bit hard. I myself am a trilingual kid and have no problems communicating in all three of my languages (though some of them may lack a bit).
There are some parents who use the one-parent-one-language approach when the parents have different native languages. Perhaps it works?
Personally I think that learning a language first (with a good vocabulary and all that) and then add another language onto the base of knowledge would be less confusing. That's how I experienced it, at least. As for the French, it might be difficult to catch up. But if you stimulate interest in the child to learn the language, it might help. I used to really fall behind in Chinese (which is my native language, shame on me), but now I'm trying to catch up because I'm interested and realize that this is good for me.
Sia, we use the One Parent One Language Approach. I speak exclusively in English to the Bambina and the Frenchman speaks exclusively in French to her. Problem is that she sees a lot less of the Frenchman than me and she is also exposed to Italian for a few hours per day, so the French that she hears doesn't really make an impact.
HiCaroline,
I've been following these two blogs for a while. You might find them interesting:
- http://trilingual.livejournal.com
- http://babybilingual.blogspot.com
Hi Caroline,
Great blog! Fun to live vicariously through your adventures! I just found you since you have a link to our website via your blog - THANKS! You obviously already know about our digital magazine where parents and experts talk about these same issues that you bring up - very interesting stuff! Anyway - I'd love to add a link to your blog from mine, if that is ok?
Such an interesting discussion. I don't have kids yet, but I'm an American with a southern Italian, and we'll at least have two languages around, but then there's the Calabrese dialect (most here use that to communicate with one another on an informal basis). I'm wondering how it'll all work as well, but I'm thinking any future children will basically learn English and dialect at home, Italian more at school. Should be interesting.
I'm glad I found your blog :)
Hi Caroline,
We're also raising a trilingual child - English (hubby), Indonesian (me) and Italian (school). So far my son knows 'ciao' and 'hello', and understands basic words in Indonesian (i.e. milk, bathtime, eat). I was told that a multilingual child pick up on speech later than a monolingual child (??)Great blog, btw!
ps: We're also interested in sending our son to a Montessori school, unfortunately I couldn't locate one in Siena (or surrounding areas)
-Indah
Hello Caroline,
When I was 5 years old, living in Hong-Kong with my French father, Argentinean mother, and Nanny from the Philippines, my brother and I used to be trilingual (French, Spanish, English). We always attended French school because my dad claimed (and was right) that it was the hardest grammar to learn.
Today I speak 5 languages fluently, but my brother is not as interested (he likes his life to be 100% French).
I think that in the end you should keep being bilingual at home. My mum gave up on her Spanish mainly because of the stubbornness of my brother to hear one language at home... I regret she did that.
My 19 month old daughter is bilingual english/french (we live in Paris) and I think it's quite a challenge. Going trilingual would be pretty difficult in my opinion. I think trilingual would be good but once the child is a bit older, like 3-4.
Note from South-Africa. Trilingualism is really a challenge for me. My husband is German speaking, I speak Afrikaans (therefore I also understand Dutch and Flemish), but my children go to a German/English school.
We have tried speaking exclusively in our native tongue to our children, but unfortunately I see the kids 80 percent of the time and they refuse to speak German.
As of late English has become predominant - I even catch them speaking English to each other.
My only concern is their lack of control over any of the languages. My eldest (5) is fluent in Afrikaans and 75 percent in English, but my daughter (3) was introduced to the third language (english) much earlier than my son. She now speaks a mix of all three, but predominantly Afrikaans.
My only comment and advice is to not introduce the third language too quickly. If possible only Kindergarten age (4plus). If I had to do it differently, I would have introduced my daughter to English a little bit later.
Hope this helps someone out there ... Thanks for a great blog.
I am raising my son trilingual, he is 3 and we are not having any problems. I always speak Spanish to him, dad speaks Cantonese and we live in england so he learns English in nursery and when I speak to my husband. We have always stick to our mother tongues to speak to him, its quite funny as when he does something bad, he has us shouting at him in unison but in 2 different languages. He is obviously less fluent than a kid his age with just 1 or 2 languages but he has never been confused. We can tell If I spend more time with him he speaks more Spanish, these days dad spends more time with him so he speaks more cantonese, and he only goes 2 or 3 days to nursery, but his english is more elaborated, he has less vocabulary but makes longer phrases. I am expecting a rejection, they sometimes reject a language when they are older, but I am ready to not give up. I am not going to force him to speak something he does not want to, but I won't stop speaking it myself to him in any case.
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