“Little S. was born on 22nd January 2008. Little does she know she is supposed to be trilingual in a few years time.”
This is how I started my first blog on multilingual upbringing more than ten a half years ago. Now S. is eleven and a half years old, mother tongue speaker of Italian and German and on her way to becoming a fluent speaker of English.
I have tried to record S.’s language development over time and published a summary of my observations every three to four months in this blog. There were ups and downs for the different languages, sometimes one of them disappeared, sometimes there were sudden leaps.
In general, however, S. has learnt the three languages without major problems. With my second-born son Q. I then understood that all children have their own ways and paces. Q. is now 9 years old, he understands Italian, German and English, but for the moment he only speaks Italian like a mother tongue speaker. In German he has made big progress, but there is still a long way to go.
Trilingual children 
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July 27, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Edward
Fascinating blog! As a trilingual trying to bring up trilingual children, I share many of your experiences. I grew up trilingual in Barcelona (Catalan mother, English father, bilingual Catalan/Spanish society) and now live in England married to my English wife who speaks near fluent Spanish and understands 90% of Catalan.
When our first daughter (now 19 months old) was born, we thought long and hard about what do speak to her. My wife rightly concluded she could only really speak English as this was her mother tongue, which came most naturally to her. I had a terrible dilema: my mother tongue is Catalan (I speak this to my mother, brother and most of my friends back home) but I speak Spanish to my wife (for 7 years) and, confusingly, my parents speak Spanish/English to eachother (they met in this language). We initially decided that I would speak Spanish to her as this would be “more useful” to her living in the UK than Catalan. However….
…we have recently been back to visit the grandparents in Catalunya on holiday and I found it very uncomfortable speaking Spanish to my child in Catalunya, surrounded by Catalan speaking citizens, friends and family (mother/brother). So, after much thought / argument(s) / discussion amongst family members, I decided I would speak Catalan to my daughter (this comes slightly more naturally to me as it is what my mother and brother spoke to me) but keep speaking Spanish to my wife (so that our daughter would “hear” Spanish and hopefully learn it passively). So after 17 months, we switched and I now speak Catalan to her.
It is proving a rocky ride so far! Our daughter (19 months) is only saying a few words in a mixture of English (80%), Catalan (10%) and Spanish (10%) although her comprehension in all three is remarkable and much like your daughter’s at this stage – happily identifying objects and responding to commands in any 3 of the languages.
The main concern in “the family” is whether our daughter will learn good enough Spanish if she only hears me speak it to my wife and occasionally between grandfather/grandmother and on holiday. Your blog has been quite reassuring in this sense as it shows just how well children can learn languages passively. Also interestingly has been the fact that my wife, having never spoken Catalan but heard me speak it to my mother for 7 years, has learnt it passively and to both our surprises, appears to understand 90% and increasingly be able to speak it.
So, I’m hoping our experience turns out much like yours (and my own, as a child), and that our kids can eventually learn all 3 languages to some extent through a mixture of active and passive learning.
Keep up the blog, it is uncannily similar to our experience but a few steps ahead, so very interesting to read!
Best wishes,
Edward.
October 15, 2013 at 6:48 pm
EB
WOW! thank you so much for sharing your experience! My daughter is 22 months and is being raised in a bilingual environment. I only speak Spanish with her and my husband speaks both English and Spanish. We are also exposing her to ASL, but its limited to the videos we watch with her. Our goal is to have her be multilingual: English, Spanish, Mandarin, and ASL. She is currently on a “waiting list” to begin Kindergarten in Mandarin. We will begin Mandarin toddler classes soon and you have inspired me to also begin a blog as we begin the process of raising multilingual children. 🙂
January 14, 2014 at 10:41 pm
诸葛孔明
Nice plans. I am trilingual and will naturally be speaking to our daughter in Mandarin, Spanish and English. Being the top 3 most spoken languages in that order, she will greatly benefit from this upbringing in the future. Godwilling.
October 28, 2013 at 8:59 am
Elena
Thanks for sharing this! It is true that bilingualism and multilingualism are a growing reality. However, I found it extremely hard to find something in the scientific literature.
I have a son, who’s trilingual (me being Italian, the Dad German, and speaking English when we’re both there) and my main question is how I can help him segregating the three languages. He currently mixes them all up, most of the time because he does not know the name of an object in all three languages, other times because he picks up the one that pops up in his mind most easily or is better stored in his brain. The problem is that people who do not know the three languages not only do not understand what he’s talking about but also tend to correct him.
How can I help him?
Thanks.
November 12, 2013 at 12:42 pm
Irina
Hallo and thank you for keeping this blog, so well written. We starded our adventure almost 2 years ago when our daughter was born. Our languages are French (we live in France and speak it with my husband at home), Romanian (my mother tongue) and Bosnian(my husband’s mother tongue). This particular life points out a few interesting elements. As we apply the rule “one language one speaker” it occured to me that the goal to achieve is “everyone speaks his mother tongue and every one undestands”. I understand well Bosnian (70% of what I hear in almost all situations) so it happened that my husband said something to me, I understood what he said but 5 minutes later I was unable to tell in which language did he speak to me ! what about the child ? he speaks his parents’ languages but which one is his own? according to my husband, the child’s language is the one taught in school. To continue, this very language will most certainly become the brotherhood’s language. In this way, we must change and adopt another meaning of “mother tongue”. This conclusion puzzles me : why should I speak Romanian to my child if his mother tongue cannot be the one I speak to her ? the reason left (beyond the grand parents’ need of communication with her), is that I cannot speak another language to her. So to say : raising up a trilingual child is not only a language challenge, it is a question of identity.
For the curiosity : my daughter seems to notice that I really appreciate when she uses Romanian words so, she avoids using them when we are together. During 3 days spent without her father (zero Bosnian) she kept pronouncing French (well known as she goes to Keindergarten) and Bosnian words (short, sharp words) and not many Romanian words (longer words). This seems to be a small crisis for a tired parent : no new Romanian word, no reward for mama !
November 20, 2013 at 9:32 pm
Lynne Kolar
Thanks for sharing your experiences of raising trilingual children, it has been difficult to find much hands-on or even theoretical information about it. I am English, my husband is Czech and we live in Austria (local Austrian German dialect), and our daughter is now 3. So far we have strictly applied the ‘one parent one language’ rule, so even when we are all together I only ever speak English to her and to my husband, my husband only ever in Czech to her and to me (so we have bilingual conversations! Although I also speak fluent Czech and my husband fluent English, so when it is just us we speak sometimes one and sometimes the other), and we leave German up to the environment and her playschool since she was 2. From the beginning she has mostly distinguished English and Czech well depending who she’s talking to (just occasional mix-ups when she doesn’t know the word in both languages) and both are of a similar level now, with occasional big bursts forward in one to the virtual exclusion of the other (like when spending time on holiday/with family in a monolingual environment), like she can only really progress in one at a time, but then levelling out again. She turns to me and says something in English, and then turns to her dad and says the same in Czech. She started talking early, so no delays, and she speaks both languages in full long sentences to the point of entire conversations and uses tenses. Although there are situations where her CZ and EN are definitely not as good as some of her peers of the same age who have only ever been in a monolingual environment, because she has not experienced everything in both languages and is also very reticent to speak with people she knows less well. Funnily enough, she speaks English with a foreign accent, despite my own very BBC English. Better pronunciation in CZ, although occasionally English and German pronunciation creep in there too. At 2 years old, Austrian German was added into the mix when she started playgroup, and we were terrified she’d get confused and stop talking altogether. It didn’t affect her CZ and EN at all, but for the first 9 months at playschool itself she didn’t utter a single word in any language (having tried CZ/EN at first and quickly realising nobody understood) but after a while appeared to understand everything, and then suddenly overnight the floodgates opened and she started rabbiting and singing in German (she had stored an amazing amount!), even often being the language she talks to herself, and communicating with the other children in it. And she uses the German ‘r’ in all three languages, like she has a German accent in CZ and EN. Although her German of course lags far behind her Austrian peers, as her weakest language. So now at 3 she is cultivating the three languages simultaneously and we continue the strict divide of me (and my family/friends/certain books)=English, dad (and his family/friends/certain books)=Czech and playschool/environment= German. Sometimes she’ll come out with cute mixes of all three when she doesn’t know all the words in each language (and conjugates them accordingly, applying foreign grammatical rules), but whilst her language switching is automatic and subconscious she is aware enough now to say: ‘daddy says A, but mummy says B, and at playschool we say C’. In general she speaks very little or not at all with unfamiliar people, and I think perhaps she is working out what language they speak, it takes her a few days. What I am curious about as we go forwards is which of the three languages will be the dominant one (probably German with school and friends), how all her languages will compare to her peers at different ages and stages (it will take conscious cultivation of each), what language she thinks in, and what language she’ll speak if she initiates a conversation to both of us at the dinner table (at the moment it depends on who her comment is more directed towards or who she’s replying to). It is a fascinating journey, perhaps more difficult in the initial years, but surely a big asset in the long term…
June 19, 2014 at 6:49 pm
Katerina
Thank you very much for sharing your expirience. We are at the same situation- I speak CZ, husband EN, living in Vienna, Our 2 year uses both languages well, but now we are wondering whether to enroll him in DE kindergarten or EN/DE… Any thoughts on that?
January 17, 2014 at 11:32 am
Trilingual Mama
I am also a trilingual parent. English, French and Spanish. We live near Paris and have four children, ages 1-12. Happy to have found your blog.
March 3, 2014 at 11:33 am
Maria Kenny
Hi trilingual mama, we are exactly in the same situation. English, French and spanish, we live in Nice, France. =)
April 8, 2014 at 7:09 pm
niha
Hello, we are a trilingual family living in italy. The Dr advised us to speak me the mother to speak one language in the morning and another one in the evening while the father sticks only to one so by the second year the baby speaks 3 langs. but from what I am reading everywhere it seems all wrong. i am so confused. 😦
April 17, 2014 at 7:44 am
trilingualdad
Of course there are different thoughts on how to bring up children trilingually, but your doctor’s suggestion sounds very strange to me. I believe in the one person one language approach and if you change at a certain point during the day I suppose it must be very confusing for the child. Why don’t you try speaking one language to the child, your husband a second and then the two of you speak the third to each other (that’s what we do and it seems to work out fine). Or, if it wouldn’t work between you parents, try to meet with people of the third language and then speak exclusively the third language. And try to involve the grandparents, who are the best language teachers you can find. All the best for you
July 16, 2014 at 2:34 pm
irina
hello trilingual families
I have a question to you : have you noticed how your trilingual (or bilingual) children speak of themselves ? in which language do they say “I” or “me” most of the time ? do they accept to say “I” or “me” in other than de dominant language ?
Thakn you !
July 21, 2014 at 8:29 am
Simone
Such an useful blog. My son is also growing up trilingual: Portuguese, Hungarian and English (we live in England). Sometimes I worry about his language development and this blog is a good help.
He is now 2 years and 7 months and I’ve noticed how important songs and some cartoons in our native languages help his language development. He loves books and we bought books with several objects which both of us go through with him in both languages, that helps a lot in terms of vocabulary.
His speech is not at the same level as his peers’ in nursery, but it’s getting better and better and he now can translate directly without us prompting him. Eg. I said “tell daddy you want a biscuit” in portuguese. He went to the kitchen and said “I want biscuit” in Hungarian.
We make sure we never correct when he says something right in the wrong language, we say “yes, that’s right, but how would mummy/daddy say it?”. Many people say keeping three languages may affect his development but we think he is doing well and the benefit of being trilingual, together with advantage in cognitive development is well worth the extra work parents of trilingual children go through.
August 28, 2014 at 4:23 pm
Edvent
We are setting a trilingual preschool overseas. French, Mandarin and English. Any suggestions would be welcome..
February 4, 2015 at 5:24 pm
John M
I’m Greek, my wife is Croatian and our newborn (also named Scarlett) will grow up in the UK. Thank you so much for this blog! I’m looking forward to updates.
February 28, 2015 at 3:59 pm
Karen N. Schultheiss
What an eye-opener this blog! No wonder our trilingual 2 1/2 year old son Ugo refuses to speak (English) at his English nursery.. While happily yelling out both the Dutch and French version of a lot of animals and food at home. Like a walking dictionnary, while I always speak Dutch with him and my partner French. On top of that, Between us adults we speak French. And only with visitors in the house we’d speak English, as we live in the UK. So that makes the English nursery another universe for our son on a language level and as a consequence he seems lightyears away from his peers (specially girls, who make full sentences). Ugo who, just as Quentin, is physically and technically -turning on and off every technical device- quite ahead of the rest in his age group and 1m tall! Which makes it more confusing to understand for outsiders. And also for us in the matter which school will be suitable for him EN or EN/FR? Public/Private? Thank you for your insight as it concerns Quentin. That might work for Ugo as well……….But maybe not for his 10 months old twin brothers seem already to chat away in their own language… Very curious how they will develop as trilingual twins.. Keep you posted! Please continue, it’s very recognisable and helpfull!
February 15, 2017 at 5:06 am
Elena
Thank you so much for recording the progress of your children’s language here. We are a trilingual family (German-English-Russian) and it is difficult to find very much information about trilingual versus bilingual, and especially such detailed accounts. I find it absolutely fascinating how different your children are with respect to learning language. I also find it really admirable that you continue to immerse your son in German and trust him in his learning process.