Raising multilingual child

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aoiyouko
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Raising multilingual child

Postby aoiyouko » Sun Dec 19, 2021 8:55 pm

Hello everyone,
My husband and I are waiting for our first baby, and this is our situation: I am a native Italian speaker, while my husband's native language is Russian. We live in Portugal, but our Portuguese is basic and we speak to each other in English (we met and lived in the UK, so our English is fluent).
We would like to use the OPOL strategy to teach to our child our respective native languages, as the future grandparents don't speak other languages than their own. We don't expect s/he to have absolutely perfect Italian and Russian, but enough to communicate with our families. The child will start the local nursery between 4 and 6 months old, hence they will have exposure to Portuguese from that time during nursery and the rest of schooling.
The real pickle for us is English. That's going to be the family language, the only one my husband and I have in common, and the language we will need the child to speak when s/he grows up during "family moments". We don't know if we should leave it "passive", i.e. the child will pick it up by hearing the parents speak to each other, or we should find a moment during the day, feeding time in the evening for instance, when speaking only English to the baby, taking away some time from the parents' ml's.
Any suggestions or any similar experiences?
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Re: Raising multilingual child

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Sun Dec 19, 2021 10:08 pm

Sounds like you have a great plan. Limited time taken away from Russian and Italian is okay, especially if you aren’t aiming for perfection with either of these languages. I think you will be successful. At some point you will need to decide which languages to develop literacy in, but that’s a problem for a different day.
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Re: Raising multilingual child

Postby språker » Sun Dec 19, 2021 10:47 pm

What an ideal scenario for learning many languages well as a small child already!

We also intend to raise our one year old boy using OPOL (Swedish+Lithuanian) while we speak English between ourselves. We live in Lithuania though, so a clear environment bias towards LT. We didn’t think about “family moments” you describe, when everyone would speak the same language. I think he will pick up English passively, especially given how ubiquitous it is, if not in school. There is an English nursery in our street, so that is tempting.
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Re: Raising multilingual child

Postby Le Baron » Sun Dec 19, 2021 11:23 pm

That's a tall order balancing those four languages, I'll be interested to see how that goes. I only have the experience of our little cherub (who is no longer a cherub and lives somewhere else now!) having to balance two languages. My wife was pretty much restricted in her 'heritage' languages by her father who thought it would interfere with her accent and learning of Dutch. Not to worry, she had aunts and uncles and cousins who broke the restriction. :D
I think that was important though, that other people around her spoke the languages, since a single source probably makes it tougher; especially when you can easily default to another language you have more mastery over. That latter is how you acquire more of a passive command, that being a 'speaker' of the language. Common for children with mixed heritage.

Can I ask question about you though? You say you use English between yourselves, does this ever put up a language wall or sorts? I mean do you ever feel that what you say to one another doesn't go fully to the heart because it isn't in the language which sits deepest?
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Re: Raising multilingual child

Postby Flickserve » Mon Dec 20, 2021 11:33 am

I think a flexible approach is less stressful.

Both parents speak their native language most of the time directly to the baby.

Portuguese from school and from children's activity groups - kid learning sports together is a great way of getting them talking and listening to instructions.

At least get your child to hear English through media and conversations between father and mother. English might just be a game you can play. There may be a time at 5-7 years old where you start to gradually reduce the heritage language at home and use more English. You may even move away from Portugal. However, if you feel the heritage language is starting to weaken too much, then switch back to the heritage language for whatever time you think appropriate.
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Re: Raising multilingual child

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Dec 20, 2021 12:48 pm

aoiyouko wrote:Hello everyone,
My husband and I are waiting for our first baby, and this is our situation: I am a native Italian speaker, while my husband's native language is Russian. We live in Portugal, but our Portuguese is basic and we speak to each other in English (we met and lived in the UK, so our English is fluent).
We would like to use the OPOL strategy to teach to our child our respective native languages, as the future grandparents don't speak other languages than their own. We don't expect s/he to have absolutely perfect Italian and Russian, but enough to communicate with our families. The child will start the local nursery between 4 and 6 months old, hence they will have exposure to Portuguese from that time during nursery and the rest of schooling.
The real pickle for us is English. That's going to be the family language, the only one my husband and I have in common, and the language we will need the child to speak when s/he grows up during "family moments". We don't know if we should leave it "passive", i.e. the child will pick it up by hearing the parents speak to each other, or we should find a moment during the day, feeding time in the evening for instance, when speaking only English to the baby, taking away some time from the parents' ml's.
Any suggestions or any similar experiences?


Hi aoiyouko,

I will reply based on my experience and from what I've heard from other multilingual parents in real life and from anecdotal experiences I've read about online...

My experience is this- We have three children, the eldest 7 y.o., almost 5 y.o. the last almost 2 y.o. From the beginning, when our eldest was born we have approached our children with the One Parent One Language (OPOL) approach. My wife speaks English with our children, always has. I speak French (and more recently Dutch as well), with the children, so we are one parent one language, the other parent more than one! I never use English with the children aside from the rare comparison with an English word which i try to avoid like the plague. My native language is English, my French is broadly speaking 'advanced', my Dutch is barely intermediate but yet very familiar to me having used it on and off over the last 15 years roughly.

If you stick to boundaries you are much more likely to be successul. My advice is this- you speak Italian at all times with your child and absolutely do not allow your child to respond to you in another language when speaking with you. Your husband speaks Russian to your child at all times and absolutely does not allow your child to respond in another language when speaking with him.

How do you do this without being abusive/mean/a dictator? You create a need. If your child sees that he/she can use English with you or Portuguese as an example, since it comes easier to your child perhaps (it may not, just hypothesizing here), and you actually reply to a question or query from your child in English or Portuguese using Italian or in your husband's case, Russian, it's going to reinforce to the child that he/she can get a reply that meets his/her needs without using one of the other (perhaps more difficult) language(s) (Italian, Russian) - more difficult because they are minority languages in Portugual. Why would your child bother using a more difficult language if an easier one is going to 'work' even if your child understands the reply in Italian or Russian that you might provide? Your child needs to reply in your language to end up being able to actively speak the language and not simply passively understand it.

I/we are surrounded by English here all the time where we live and Dutch for example does not come super naturally to my kids like English or even French, and yet they use it well and do sound natural with me because they know that they need to use it to get a reply/to communicate, in other words to meet their needs. Reinforcing to children that communication is not going to happen unless they use the designated language(s) as the boundaries in your family unit indicate will mean that minority language use no longer remains so difficult and it becomes second nature for them. I have seen and read about many a child losing their second language/minority language(s) simply because the parents found it too much to focus on the language when surrounded by English, or gave in and reply to their children's English questions in their (minority) language, thereby weakening the children's abilities in that language and potentially spelling the end of their bi/multi-lingualism in favor for the predominant language in their society. It's a slippery slope so do not let the majority language gain a foothold into your family's language boundaries, unless it's part of the plan.

So, if your child struggles, there's no need to be mean. Encourage them by starting to say a word they can't think of or a sentence and very importantly get them to finish saying that word/phrase themselves as this trains their brain to search for the correct terms and build correct sentences in the language in question. If their grammar or word choice is off, correct them in a friendly manner and get them to repeat it back to you. Never in a patronizing manner, always encouraging. Your child will be speaking Italian always with you without issue and Russian always with your husband without issue if your boundaries are clear and the need for each respective language is obvious. Be supportive but never accept anything but Italian or Russian depending on who is being spoken to.

Portuguese will not be a problem at all provided your child grows up in Portugal and spends time in Portuguese institutions/organisations with people who speak the language.

For English I would continue to use it at home between yourself and your husband, but how to approach potentially using it with your child I am not totally certain, but can make some suggestions. You could allow your child to passively pick up the language from being around you both and learning it through school and media. Or, it could be a family language designated to be used when outside the home, or on car trips, or when visiting a regular location you will continue to visit, or in a certain part of the house, or between certain hours in the day. Perhaps for half an hour a day while reading English stories or putting on English speaking cartoons, discussion at English story time could be in English. At the dinner table where everyone is together English might seem like the right language to use for this common family time together. I know this advice contraindicates my above statements on never using any other language with your child, but if your boundaries are rock solid strict I think it will work well. At some point when your child is a bit older they might be invited into the decision making for when/where English could be used (provided it doesn't take up too much time from the other languages). I think 30min/day would be a good amount (English story time one day, English dinner time the next?) as such time over many years together with it being learned in school and increasingly omnipresent English media should ensure success in this language without an issue. Thus, four languages is absolutely attainable.

Stories, music, television, podcasts... all help children engage with the language too. We have subscribed to several children's magazines from France, the Netherlands (and now Spain) which are great for learning not just a language but about animals, nature, science, different cultures, etc etc.

Good luck!
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Re: Raising multilingual child

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Dec 20, 2021 1:46 pm

Peter has some great advice above.

While I think OPOL is great for assuring bilingualism it isn't what we used.

In a family where we had French as our community language (and my wife's maternal language) and Spanish/English as my languages.
We started focusing on only French but made other languages highly present (language games, media, and family). We moved to Germany where Bayrisch and German were the community languages. We worked on actively "stacking" languages - adding them as the girls grew up.

We actively made choices to have switch days, to ask people to speak their language, to get tutors, to immerse in English, etc.

The result is pretty good but with caveats. My daughters now master 4+ languages but each has at some point complained that I didn't teach them Spanish enough. Individually they speak it at B2 to C1+ levels. They picked up the tools to learn other languages.

My single suggestion - spend time regularly - once every few months, assessing language goals with your partner - whatever decision you make now may need adjustments - it's ok.
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Re: Raising multilingual child

Postby Leurre » Mon Dec 20, 2021 5:57 pm

aoiyouko wrote: We don't expect s/he to have absolutely perfect Italian and Russian, but enough to communicate with our families.
[...]
The real pickle for us is English. [...] We don't know if we should leave it "passive", i.e. the child will pick it up by hearing the parents speak to each other, or we should find a moment during the day, feeding time in the evening for instance, when speaking only English to the baby, taking away some time from the parents' ml's?


A question here: do you hope for your child to speak _any_ languages with absolute native fluency and ease? From what you have written, you're not planning that for Italian or for Russian. You won't be able to achieve that with English the way you're describing it.

I've met 'zero native speakers' before--people who somehow sound off / foreign / like a child in every single language they speak-- and it is not pretty.
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Re: Raising multilingual child

Postby Herodotean » Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:59 pm

I recommend a skim through Meisel's Bilingual Children: A Guide for Parents (Cambridge University Press, 2019). The author is an academic, which means the book is detailed and research-based. He discusses many different scenarios and options for raising bilingual children. The Kletsheads podcast is also worthwhile (it describes itself as "The podcast about bilingual children for parents, teachers and speech language therapists").
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aoiyouko
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Re: Raising multilingual child

Postby aoiyouko » Tue Dec 21, 2021 10:20 am

Le Baron wrote:Can I ask question about you though? You say you use English between yourselves, does this ever put up a language wall or sorts? I mean do you ever feel that what you say to one another doesn't go fully to the heart because it isn't in the language which sits deepest?


There's no wall, really :) My husband lived in the UK for 12 years and to him English comes out more natural than Russian most of the times. I have studied in the UK for my master's and started working there immediately after, and that's when I met him. We've always been speaking English to each other and we both have English-speaking jobs. It's become very natural, despite keeping the links to our respective native languages and cultures through our families and media. Plus we like to share each other's traditions and culture.


Thank you very much to everyone, some very interesting opinions and experience. We'll have to see once the time comes, what kind of strategy adapts the most to our routine, but we surely have some ideas.
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