A friend of mine, who has a baby daughter, read somewhere that a young child can be taught up to three languages in his/her first four years (I think it was four).
1. Is this true?
2. Have any of you Dopers had any experience teaching multiple languages to young children? I know it’s common to teach two, but how about three? Do kids mix up words in different languages?
I spent time in both Germany and Canada before I was 5 years old, and continued going to canada after I was 5, so in addition to my native english, I also spoke some german and still speak fairly good french. My command of french was good enough that in 9th grade I tested at the 4 years of french level for the school I was in [allowing me to ditch french and take spaish instead=)]
I have fatigue and pain aphasia and many times end up speaking an amalgam of english, french, german and spanish with some japanese and ‘husband/wife slang babble’ when I am particularly tired of migrain-y and cant form coherent thoughts. Luckily mrAru has a decent command of languages and understands me just fine=)
I spent some time at my friend’s house in Zurich last December - he is an American who was raised mostly in France and Austria, and his wife is an Austrian raised largely in France, but who also speaks flawless English.
They have 2 kids, ages 4 and 6 - Mom stays home with them and speaks German to them most of the time, so that’s really their dominant language. Dad speaks English to them most of the time, and they understand him fine, but when they answer back (or when they talked to me), you could really tell that although their comprehension is fine, they aren’t up to native-speaker linguistic ability (especially the younger child, who hasn’t had the exposure to the English-speaking grandparents that his older sister has. Actually the grandfather is a native Hungarian speaker, but I digress.)
Then of course, since they are now in German-speaking Switzerland, the primary language the kids speak at school is Swiss German, which might as well be a fourth language - although Mom is a native German speaker, she told me that Switzerdeutsch is diferent enough that she literally doesn’t understand what is going on around her in casual conversations about half the time. I believe her - I can usually at least identify German, but the first couple of times I heard it, I couldn’t figure out what the hell the Swiss were speaking. So the kids essentially speak 4 languages, although not with equal degrees of facility. But I imagine if they had equal exposure to all 4, they would, and their ability will probably even out over time. In any case, they are functional in all of them, and the constant linguistic shifting doesn’t seem to bother them.
My brother, sister and I were born/raised in the US, but our parents were from Latvia so we spoke Latvian at home and English with neighborhood and school friends. Of course, it was important to have Latvian friends, too, and we were active in Latvian church, a Latvian school that met on Saturdays and summer camps.
My sister now speaks Latvian, English, Russian, German, Spanish and Japanese (!) so I think learning languages early pays off.
I’m pregnant and my husband is French so we’re planning to raise our child tri-lingually. I will speak Latvian to him/her, my husband French and we will speak English all together. That’s the plan anyway, we’ll see how lazy we get. Most kids here speak French and English anyway, so I’ll have to do my best with the Latvian.
My sister’s 2 1/2 year old son already recognizes different languages and can speak/understand Latvian and English. He knows some Spanish (from a babysitter) and can identify French (from his uncle). In fact, he heard people speaking French on the television and said, “Uncle Stephane?!” – kids are pretty amazing at that age.
Sorry, just wanted to add something about mixing up the languages. My nephew does sometimes mix up the languages, as in, “Es want agua” (I want water). I don’t think it’s language confusion, I think he’s picking out the word that comes to his mind first. Even now, when speaking Latvian or English or my terrible French I tend to choose the word that first comes to my mind, regardless of the language.
If you ask him to identify something (colors, boby parts) or ask for a reply in a specific language, he always knows the words.
The son of two of my collegues is a good example: the mother is Austrian, the father is French. At home, they communicate in English. They all live in Japan. The kid is kindergarten-age and he speaks French, German, Japanese and English almost flawlessly.
My cousin’s kids also spoke French, Spanish, English and understood Hungarian to some extent when they started elementary school.
Or “colleagues” even.
I wanted to add that in my experience with these kids, they tend to identify languages with certain situations. In the first example, the kid always plays in Japanese, even when he’s alone. That’s the language he uses when he’s with his friends.
People who learn more than one language during their critical (first-language-acquisition) period also find it easier to learn other languages later in life.