Who else is raising children multilingually in a monolingual environment?

[YtownPolyglot]

My youngest is thirteen years old and he has acquired my love of languages. He is homeschooled, and we started him off with a little French here and there. His pronunciation is not bad, and he writes reasonably well. We've got a number of Spanish-speaking relatives, and his listening comprehension skills in Spanish put mine to shame. He found my German translation of Harry Potter and I caught him working things out with a dictionary.

[IronMike]

My youngest is thirteen years old and he has acquired my love of languages. He is homeschooled, and we started him off with a little French here and there. His pronunciation is not bad, and he writes reasonably well. We've got a number of Spanish-speaking relatives, and his listening comprehension skills in Spanish put mine to shame. He found my German translation of Harry Potter and I caught him working things out with a dictionary.

You might find this thread interesting. Homeschoolers United

[PeterMollenburg]

Time to resurrect this thread...

Not for the sake of it, but I wanted to provide an update. Last time I brought my story to this discussion was nigh on two years ago...
(see below - I'll add an update below my old post.

Hi Finny, Hi guys,

First up, thanks Finny for starting this thread. I'd only been thinking a few days ago to do something along these lines, so you beat me to it.

My daughter turned two nearly a month ago. I'm Australian (native English speaker) and my wife's native language is English as well (from New Zealand originally but very much Australian for a many years now). I'm a French learner with an estimated B2 level. I speak and have only spoken French to our daughter since birth. She communicates predominantly in English with us, but at times will prefer a French word. The aim is to homeschool as well for us with our daughter and any future children. I never speak English to my daughter unless it's by pure accident (very rare). I'm sure my pronunciation is very good but my grammar would not be perfect and my use of idiomatic expressions still rare. I read to my daughter in French and she occasionally watches French TV programs (some originally French, some dubbed).

Lately i've been encouraging her to pronounce French words- a word each page of a book for example, and if she says something to me in English I get her to say it again in French. I'm attempting to reinforce that to communicate with me she'll need to use French. I'm trying to encourage her activite participation in the Language. Many times i've heard of Italians and Greeks here (simply because there are plenty of them in Australia) growing up understanding their heritage language but not knowing how to speak it back. The reason i think is simple, they weren't encouraged to use it (which may have been for motivational reasons perhaps), or if they were they still didn't use it. The thing is if a child realises they won't get a response using Language A then they will likely aim to use Language B with that particular person in the family.

I also recently met an African guy in passing from Zambia. He mentioned how his daughter won't speak back to him in his native language despite him speaking it continually with her (she only answers in English- they live in Australia). I didn't get to the nitty gritty but I beleive again encouragement could be part of the issue. Another factor is potentially lack of media.

Lately this kind of discussion has become suddenly more relevant again, because I'd like to introduce a third language with my children (last post singular, now plural, although for some time) environment. We plan on homeschooling and now that I've seen results with OPOL even despite me being non-native.

In the recent months my daughter has taken a leap in her French abilities. Like Finny some time ago in this thread had stated that he was having his daughter repeat Spanish back to him in place of the English she would say to him, I also took this approach with my daughter. I had to really root out the English. I would often respond to my daughter's English questions in French. The problem continued for a good while. Then I got tough (all round - me, her, no more English!). I would pull her up on absolutely every English thing she would say (to me only), and as opposed to making it an ordeal would be encouraging and helpful with her by providing her with the necessary linguistic tools/elements to get her to speak French. At first I'd replace her English sentences with French and get her to repeat them. Then I'd give her clues, the start of the sentences, a word here, a syllable or few there, as little as I could eventually to provide her with the clues/tools to get her speaking more and more French consistently and comfortably.

I noticed her dreaming in French a few months or so back, then her French a couple of months back dramatically improved. She stopped being shy at the French playgroup, the kindergarten teacher stated her French was better than some native children's French she comes across, and her French became 'liberated'. And now, she speaks with ease, freely. She plays with her dolls doing their voices in French (I think it helped that I was doing their voices in French, and she ran with it), she sings out loud, explains French words to relatives without knowledge of French (translates for them), and clearly differentiates between the two languages now. She will very easily go from speaking English to my wife, French to me, back to English, back to French etc depending on who she's speaking with. It's currently very very enjoyable to watch and certainly at this stage a huge success.

I am still not certified beyond B2, although I'd guestimate I'm around C1 level. However, I still have some nervous reservations sometimes as I occasionally need to use circumlocutions with her due to grammar or vocabulary gaps, but nothing a good stint abroad won't fix in my opinion (still on the agenda). I read to her regularly (and these activities are helping her and me!), she watches things in French regularly, she follows along with audiobooks in the car, listens to music and so on. In short, it's working very well, but I need to stay ahead of the game to ensure I remain up to the task and the time abroad is needed imo, for the icing on the cake and to solidify this project as a real success because, no matter how hard or much I study, French is simply not resting on the tip of my tongue like English - I want my brain to switch over completely at some point so that it just comes freely (like it does for my daughter) like I don't ever have to even consider how to form a slightly unusual grammatical construct of not so common idiom pertinent to a very particular context. Don't get my wrong, this is working, I just want to iron out all the creases with a stint abroad some day.

And... I'm considering a third language. I think after my intended French exams later this year, I'm considering introducing a third language, like Finny has done so. This language is one I will also endeavour to learn simultaneously. It will be a language I have previously studied and want to resurrect. Thus, either Spanish, German or Dutch. I'm mulling over methods of introducing the language to my children, how to choose which one, when to start and the context in which I shall allocate time to the language with the children. It's likely to be a language in which we grow together in, and taking such an approach I think is realistic. If I can't speak grammatically correct all the time in the chosen language, then French will fill in the gaps (like in Finny's example of introducing French after Spanish).

Still, for now I must get down to business and improve my French further, and never will French bet left to fend for itself. I'll always be actively involved with French as even if I am C1, there's still much room for improvement.

Anyone else out there with an update or want to add to the discussion? I've been reading quite a bit on multilingual parenting/raising children to be multilingual. And you know what, sometimes it's okay to simply expose children to a language to the extent to which you know it, meaning that it's okay to not expect them to be perfect. Still from my experience, a natural immersive approach is key to real success (reading, watching, speaking). Ironic, when I've drilled my brain with grammatical books and courses But children are not adults.

[Finny]

Yoo hoo all,

I've been away for a while (general life business, such as our family growing by two babies in the last month!), but I logged in today and saw Peter's post, and got back to him via PM, but wanted to post a general update here too...

Things continue to roll in Spanish and French. We've stuck to the 4 days Spanish, 3 days French plan we established a couple of years ago (which actually comes out to an equal amount of both languages during the school year since 2/3 of French time is on the weekend). Mom (and society) deliver English.

The kids speak all three; I continue to correct various grammatical bits but less over time (e.g., my son went through several months of saying "je peux quitter ma couche?" each morning no matter how often I corrected that as "enlever," or my daughter says "je l'ai parlé"instead of "je lui ai parlé" a lot) despite having read that kids don't learn from grammatical corrections (I don't believe that). Every now and then my daughter corrects me, which is great, because it shows she's paying attention.

Things go in waves. As expected (but as I'm still very grateful to discover), the more comfortable I become in French, the fewer doubts I have about being able to teach it to them. A smart phone and Reverso comes in handy on a daily basis for looking up the odd word or phrase I'm unsure about (e.g., looking up "biffer" and "rayer" today when telling my daughter to cross things out). The kids still challenge me (more my son than my daughter) by saying the occasional thing to me in English to see if I respond (I don't). Sometimes I'm less patient than I'd like to be. It's a balancing act, especially when teasing apart a language skill gap from general preschool-aged defiance (like when my son is tantrumming about this or that issue).

My biggest suggestions continue to be to a.) learn the language well enough to use it all the time with your kids, and then b.) use it all the time with your kids, and c.) get them used to using it all the time with you. Substituting words is fine as needed; today we went sledding and I talked about how the ash beetles were what had killed all the ash trees at the base of the hill. I didn't know ash beetle or ash in French and wasn't looking either up there; instead, I talked about how "c'est un type de scarabée qui a tué le fresno. Une coccinelle c'est un type de scarabee, mais elles ne mangent pas des arbes." Fresno is the Spanish word for ash tree, and scarabee is the French word for beetle. This got more than enough of the idea across.

Trilingual Mama is the blog that showed me that one person teaching two languages via alternation was indeed possible; I'm as indebted to her for providing a proof of concept for trilingualism as I am to AJATT / Antimoon for giving me the blueprint to general language acquisition.

The twins are the first kids to get all three languages from birth; we'll see how they develop. I'm not reading to them as much, simply because I have less energy and time than I did when we had one / two kids. However, I'm far stronger in French than I was when I started it with the two older kids (at 2:6 with daughter, at 1 with son), so things will be fine as long as I keep the speaking rhythm.

Ooh, and media. The kids frequently watch Frozen and Moana and a handful of other movies (e.g., Cars, Finding Nemo). Frozen and Moana are the best; they're two of my favorite films as an adult. TV-wise, they love Doc McStuffins and Puffin Rock, both of which are available in FR and ES. Puffin Rock is only available on Netflix unfortunately, but Doc is available on DVD, and that show is chock full of language with a host of characters. PR has language too, and is a gentler, sweeter show, while Doc is more active and wordy. I feel very grateful to have both shows at our disposal, as I do feel the kids learn from them and benefit from hearing other children's voices in the two languages, although I'd prefer real life playmates!

The kids get to hear actual people speaking French (and use it with them) once a year when we travel to a Bastille Day celebration. This has become an annual tradition, and I'd like to make a family trip to France someday; we'll see.

Sometimes I think I'd like to add German or Portuguese, but I'm completely sure that while I'd be able to learn either, I don't spend enough time with the kids to be able to teach a third language. I subscribe to the idea that somewhere around 20% of waking hours need to be in the language for active proficiency, and I feel teaching two while having a day job is my limit.

Sometimes I feel like it would be great to just teach one and dive into it at an even deeper level than what's possible with two. Then I think of how I wouldn't want to choose between them, and how silly it would be to do so at this point when they fundamentally understand and speak both. We're at the point where it's just normal. I look forward to teaching them how to read in the languages (although I have no idea how to do so, and will do some reading on that in the coming years). Right now Mom is teaching our daughter to read in English.

It's a long road. Keep walking it.

[languist]

It's been such a joy to read through the first few and last few posts of this thread, and when I have time I'll work through the rest. I'm not exactly raising a multilingual child, but I recently started to teach my little sister French. I'm 24 and she is 6, so we somewhat blur the line between a sibling and a parental relationship. I also have a 2 year old brother and was considering starting to speak French to him, but I'm concerned that the little time I spend with him would just lead to him finding me forever incomprehensible and never picking up any French.

My French is, by exam standards, C1, but due to lack of usage, it's more like a rusty B2, but it's more than enough to incorporate French into playtime with my sister. At the moment, she needs prompts to remember even the basics, but I can tell that the words are in her brain. I make a point of making phone calls in Slovak in front of her, and playing YouTube videos and other media in other languages when we're together. Just to try to convince her that languages are something which are all around us and nothing to be afraid of. Accessible both in terms of being available and being learnable/usable. I hope that one day we can communicate only in French, but I'll be satisfied if this just helps to broaden her perspective on communication and lay the foundations for future language learning.

[PeterMollenburg]

Yoo hoo all,

I've been away for a while (general life business, such as our family growing by two babies in the last month!), but I logged in today and saw Peter's post, and got back to him via PM, but wanted to post a general update here too...

(above quote deliberately cut out 90% of it to save space )

Finny,

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with us. And congratulations on the expansion of your family! You had responded to my PM btw, but your text was missing (I just received a quote of myself). Nevertheless I was certainly able to get a good idea of your methods from your post above. You're doing an excellent job!

My daughter now speaks exclusively to me in French and only French and has done for a long time now. At the time of my last post she would occasionally slip up or struggle with something in French. That's not the case now, although sometimes, rarely that is, when she's attempting to explain something to me in French she gets a little twisted with her phrasing and I get a little lost in her attempt to communicate something in detail. She is very aware of the differences between EN and FR now that she is 4, approaching 5 in a few months. I believe when I began speaking to her in French when she was born, that my French was a little on the weak side (? B1.5 at a guess from memory). Nowadays it's hovering somewhere between B2 and C1 territory.

My 2 y/o son is not communicating in full sentences yet, and although perhaps now English is being expressed equally as much as French, for some time there French seemed to have the upper hand and his nasal vowels are beautiful.

I have see-sawed between ideas of what to do with the kids, but given we are set to move soon to the middle east where I will have a LOT of time with the kids, in the end I have decided to introduce them fully to Dutch. I toyed with some Dutch stories and Spanish as well on occasion with them, but have lacked consistency due to time constraints and uncertainty on my future plans with regards to the children and languages.

My Dutch would be barely B1, but with some consistent practise it's likely to reach B2 relatively quickly as I've been on the cusp of B2 in the past having lived for 5 months in NL while learning Dutch intensively, and reviewing some Dutch lately is a breeze. So... I'm going to introduce a 50/50 balance between French and Dutch once we relocate to the Middle East, which will include speaking with the children, reading out loud to them and some watching (TV).

Given my experience with French and the short but definite struggles to 'convert' my daughter to 100% French communication with myself and eliminating English, I now know what I need to convert 50% of the children's communication to Dutch without much pressure on myself nor them. I'll make it a smooth transition using French as their language of comparison, or explanation until perhaps in 6 months at a guess, every second day will be 100% Dutch communication. I'm more likely to take an observational/basics approach to Arabic with the children, as I have no skill in the language at this point.

Thanks Finny for mentioning Trilingual Mama also. I'd not heard of Trilingual Mama before, and there seems to be plenty to explore there - useful resources, inspirational stories, some realism.

[zenmonkey]

I see the vast majority if not all the cases here are of "one parent speaks only X, the other only Y" to the child, so that he or she has to use the assigned language for communication.

Not here. My approach has been one of creating language desire and letting things fall in place. I speak French primarily with my daughters (their home language - their mother is French and speak C2 English and B2/C1 German.) but added others along the way.

We moved to Germany to have German as a second language for them, I added English early on and made sure they were exposed to Spanish (all the cousins, my father’s first language) and formally started to speak more and more to them in Spanish as they grew up. They all complain that I didn’t teach them enough Spanish but surprisingly they are fluent by the age of 18 or so. It’s the way I’ve stacked 4 languages for them. They oldest is sort of learning her 5-7th with more or less success. And the youngest added Italian spontaneously at 10 as a private language between us. They roll their eyes at my language effort and exposure but when I mention a half dozen other languages they all know a few words - girl in Arabic, too expensive is Mandarin, sorry in Hebrew, please and thank you in Slovak, Polish, Croatian, where is my pencil in Russian (not my fault) grasshopper in Nahuatl, etc.

Afterwards, learning is whatever they want to make of it. It isn’t about effectiveness or communication but showing them that the vast world of words is their oyster. If they want it. Today we talked about the imaginary in P.K. Dick, the historical weight of symbols in Europe (and why a skateboarding logo might not be well received in Germany), “dork” and teen slang in the Breakfast Club and the poetry of Wings of Desire.

For me, content and culture drives language.

All is far from perfect. My third (16) enrolled in an English / French Lycee program (I was leaning more towards German...) which is heavily loaded in English literature and frankly she’s drowning. She may drop out, back into a European program. We will see. The fourth wants to enter an Abi-bac program but her German exposure has been lower this past year and she has forgotten quite a bit. Language abilities seem to blossom and fade at this point, we have some decisions to make.

[Finny]

You're quite welcome Peter, and thank you for your well wishes and kind words : D I hope the new PM went through!

I'm so happy to hear about how well things are going with both of your children, and I'm sure your son will have an excellent model in your daughter (as well as from you, of course) as he continues to grow. Keep up the good work!

Your Dutch plan sounds solid. I'm firmly of the belief that the languages you're most likely to successfully teach are the ones that take the least effort to use, and it sounds like Dutch is already a third language in your brain, so it's just a question of sharing it with your kids over time. And yes, Trilingual Mama is awesome. She doesn't post as much on her blog compared to mini posts on Instagram these days (although I see she recently posted last week after a gap since last summer), but without her, I would never have had the courage to add a third language, any more than I'd have had the courage to try to learn Spanish well without AJATT & Antimoon. So yeah. Good stuff there.

[Finny]

I also came across this tidbit years ago regarding Huma Abedin (Hillary Clinton's assistant during her presidential campaign in 2016) that I've always loved as another example of trilingualism:

“I rarely just saw my parents sitting around. They were always doing something,” Abedin recalls. “I’d come home, and my father would say, ‘We’re only doing Urdu or Hindi in the house today!’ ” The next day they’d have to speak Arabic.

From my understanding of her background, she likely learned English from school, Hindustani from her parents, and Arabic from both her parents and the 16 years she spent in Saudi Arabia.

[PeterMollenburg]

You're quite welcome Peter, and thank you for your well wishes and kind words : D I hope the new PM went through!

I'm so happy to hear about how well things are going with both of your children, and I'm sure your son will have an excellent model in your daughter (as well as from you, of course) as he continues to grow. Keep up the good work!

Your Dutch plan sounds solid. I'm firmly of the belief that the languages you're most likely to successfully teach are the ones that take the least effort to use, and it sounds like Dutch is already a third language in your brain, so it's just a question of sharing it with your kids over time. And yes, Trilingual Mama is awesome. She doesn't post as much on her blog compared to mini posts on Instagram these days (although I see she recently posted last week after a gap since last summer), but without her, I would never have had the courage to add a third language, any more than I'd have had the courage to try to learn Spanish well without AJATT & Antimoon. So yeah. Good stuff there.

Awesome, this time around I got your PM. I looked up antimoon as well and find that I agree almost or perhaps even 100% with the principles and dispelling of myths, which focus on how useful it actually is to live abroad to improve your language (not as useful as most of the general population believe - serious effort is also required, which can be done in your home country), that you can indeed sound near native even if you're learning as an adult (and it can be a cop-out when ppl say you can never sound near native, in order that the work be avoided) (btw, if you don't want to sound native, that's your choice too, not necessary an excuse to not work harder), and that you can learn languages later in life (you don't have to be a child). It very much coincides with my beliefs around learning languages. Trilingual Mama seems to be a treasure trove of good info and resources.

If you (or others who are following this discussion and are interested) have not discovered it before, I've found this older digital (free) magazine well worth a read too (heaps of articles on numerous families raising the children bilingually, trilingually and more). it might be 10 yrs old, but the information is still relevant. I think I've posted it here before, but here it is again anyway.

Multilingual Living