How to Raise a Trilingual Baby?
My, wouldn’t that be a good subject for a post? Unfortunately, this is not a tip, but rather a question. As I have previously mentioned, we are now expecting our first child — it’s Zsolt 2.0!
We definitely look forward to being parents, being united in our multi-cultural upbringing and all. But still, I could find myself whining at times: what’s a parent to do to raise a trilingual baby?
I am Indonesian, the hubby is Hungarian. We speak English to each other, and we live in Singapore.
Most Indonesians are bilingual; speaking a regional language as their mother tongue, and Indonesian in larger community. I myself have been proficient in both Javanese and Indonesian since my early age, and only took up English in school.
I’m afraid our baby would be in more difficult situation than mine; since he would have to learn English, Hungarian and Indonesian at the same time to preserve his language heritage (though I don’t want to burden him further with Javanese).
I’ve done some googling on this matter, and apparently there are not too many resources available. From what I read so far, mostly parents are encouraged to teach all languages since the very beginning, like this adventure dad.
But this method would probably cause the child to mix all languages at first, regardless of whom he speaks to. I think it’s normal, since I also did the same when I was younger. But then, people where I came from would understand both languages. That won’t be the case with our baby.
So, if you have any suggestions/ opinions/ anything, feel free to write me. Thanks in advance!
Try looking up books on Child Language development. I studied linguistics at university, and we learnt that the best way to raise children be multi-lingual is to associate each language with a context. So for example maybe you always speak Indonesian when addressing your baby, your husband always speaks Hungarian, and you speak English as a family and outside the home. As your baby becomes older you could make it into a bonding exercise, each of you sharing your ’special language’ with your child.
Comment by Sarah — May 3, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
I am a speech and language specialist in the public schools in California, USA. I married a Chinese lady, and we have a daughter who is now three. She is fully and competently bilingual, and my interest in trilingualism is increasing as we hope to intoduce more language to her. My suggestion would be for you to use Indonesian with her (your primary language?) and hubby use Hungarian (his primary language?) and then English be the language of perhaps school. Use the one-person-one-language rule. All language development appears to me to be heavily dependent upon the quantity and quality of linguistic input. Logistically three languages is enough to keep the family busy. Adding a fourth would require real planning and effort, unless it can be done in the educational setting alone. We plan to introduce Cantonese to our daughter in another year or so, by living in China…and then perhaps another European language even later. It has been my experience that children around the age of 18 months begin to learn that mom and dad are using different languages, and now our daughter corrects my Mandarin Chinese and my wife’s English!!
Comment by Larry Elder — May 19, 2009 @ 4:18 am
My wife and I are also trying to raise our daughter trilingual-my wife speaks to her in Spanish, I speak to her in Mandarin Chinese, and she learns English from her environment (we live in Milwaukee, WI, USA). We hope she will learn and continue to speak all 3! Right now she is very enthusiastic about it (she is 18 months).
Comment by Holt A — June 7, 2009 @ 1:01 pm
Thank you guys for the tips. So sorry for taking ages to write. Been busy with the littleone. He’s only 8 months now so I can’t tell much about his linguistic ability. We’re trying to introduce him to all languages already, as this was how I was raised, though I’m only bilingual. Will update you when I have more interesting findings.
Comment by ayulittleone — July 3, 2009 @ 11:07 am
I have a question: How do you teach three languages when you live in the states and you speak two of them.
This is my situation: My wife is English speaking. My first language is Spanish, my second are English and Albanian. I want to teach my kids all three is possible. I understand what has been said above, but we live in the states and the ideas above dont really fit to my situation. I dont have kids yet, but want to prepare for when the time comes.
Comment by Herbert Handal — July 14, 2009 @ 6:11 am
We are also raising our baby trilingual. Funny, I’m Hungarian as well…
Check out my blog at: http://trilingualchild.wordpress.com/
Comment by Orsa — October 20, 2009 @ 7:05 am
i am a south african lady who besides speaking english have parents who spoke to other south african languages (xhosa and sotho), my husbands black african languages are (xhosa, sotho and pedi), the community we live in african language is xhosa but when we are together we speak sotho. So we decided to try and raise a trlingual child speaking not only english but two black south african languages. But we have not designated one language to a specific parent we just speak all three languages to her, is approach ok or should we let her associate a specific language to a particular parent? We could try maybe letting her dad speak to her in sotho only, her nanny (who speaks four languages) speak xhosa and i would speak english She is now 18 months and does not speak a lot of words and i`ve been told that she should be stringing two words by now,could be due to our trilingual approach to language….help pls
Comment by phumlani — October 26, 2009 @ 1:36 am
Hi, we have a 22 months old baby in which we hope he will turned out to be trilingual.I speak portuguese, my husband czech and he has been exposed to English in school and at home since my husband and I speak english with each other. As of right now, he has not said any specific word, but “mommy” and “dada”…. He does mumble his own language that noone understands and uses his fingers to point at whatever he wants to say… I am getting concern and I am not sure if we should just stop speaking out native language with him and focus just in English…any advice?
Comment by Brazilian — October 28, 2009 @ 9:10 am
Hi all,
My apologies for writing only now. Junior still keeps me busy these days, that’s why.
He’s now almost 1 year, and we mostly speak English to him. Only sometimes we talk in our native tongues to him, especially while visiting his grandparents — just to expose him to our mother tongues.
So far he doesn’t seem to have difficulty. But I guess it’s too early to tell. All I can say is that he starts to understand what is being said to him — doesn’t matter whether it’s in English, Hungarian or Indonesian.
He’s learned, for example, to clap his hands in Hungarian, while saying “mamam” — Indonesian word for “eating” — whenever he’s hungry.
I personally think there’s nothing wrong in mixing all languages at once, because kids are better learners.
What I’ve often heard as the side effect of this is that the child will start to speak later than his peer, because he’s learning more things at once. But isn’t it normal?
I think this is what’s happening to some of you guys. But I’m no expert, so if you’re worried about your children, you should maybe talk to the pediatrician about it.
Comment by ayulittleone — October 29, 2009 @ 2:40 am
Hey Ayu or Dyah, panggilannya apa Mbak??
Yes, I am Indonesian, too… my husband is Brazilian and we speak English to each other. Now, we live in Brazil. I have been speaking Indonesian only to our 3-month old baby, my husband only speaks english to her, and the rest of the community speak Portuguese. It’s funny, how she reacts better/faster with Indonesian and English, rather than portuguese and she´s only 3 months. I´ll try to keep this up and I am very, very curious to find out what her first will be! 
Anyway, glad I can find this blog and share with parents who are in the same boat.
Comment by Sharah — December 4, 2009 @ 8:10 am