Multilingual advice: Families with 3 or more languages

In this blog I will talk specifically about trilingual families, and families with even more than 3 languages. In general, not much is different with raising a trilingual child, then a bilingual child. All of my advise and information I give about raising children with 2 languages, also work and are intended for children with 3, 4 and 5 languages and so on. While officially the term bilingual means two languages, whenever I use the term bilingual in my posts, I actually mean 2 languages or more. Another term that is used for 3 or more languages is multilingual. For the remainder of this blog, I will use this term to talk about all the families with 3 or more languages.

Even though a lot is similar, there are some challenges that specifically multilingual families face. It mainly takes more thought, more planning and more perseverance from the parents. In this post, I will talk about several different situations a multilingual family can be in, and the different options and tips that suit those situations.

A tip for new readers if you don’t understand some of the words I’m using: Most terms I use and don’t explain are coloured. This means they link back to a previous post in which I explain in more detail what they are all about.

In a lot of multilingual families, parents are from different backgrounds, places of origins or cultures. Each of the parent has their own native language, and sometimes those languages are not spoken by the other person. In that case there can be a third language that the parents speak to communicate to each other. This third language is often English, or the majority language spoken in their place of residence if both parents speak a minority language. When raising their children, it makes sense to want your child to know all three languages.

What can you do?

• Altered version of OPOL: One option or strategy is to slightly alter the OPOL strategy. Each of the parents speak their own native language with the child when alone with them. When both parents are present, the third language is spoken. It is important to know that your child will most likely not learn to use the third language if parents only speak it to eachother. In order to learn active use of the language, you need to specifically address the child in that language.
• Outsource the majority language: If one of the languages is also the majority language in the place you are at, you can also choose to outsource this language. Children will learn the majority or school language without much difficulty, even if it is never used at home. Too much of the majority language at home can in fact put the minority languages in danger, as you are probably the only input of those minority languages. In this case both parents use their own native language (OPOL) or choose a different strategy if possible and wanted. Of course, this is only if you are both comfortable with this choice. The third language, being the majority language, will then be taken care of the by babysitters, daycare, school, friends etc.
• Talk to each other: It can sometimes feel awkward to talk to your child in a language that your partner does not speak or even understand. You might think they feel left out, or that they think you are talking about them. Be sure to talk to your partner about your expectations and feelings, as you might not really know what their thoughts are about it. It can help to create your family language policy with these situations in detail, so you know what you both want and why.
• Translate when needed: If one of the parents doesn’t understand what is being said, and wants or needs to understand the conversation, you can choose to translate. You can translate the entire conversation in detail or just mention the general idea.
• Learn the other language: You could learn (a bit) of each other’s languages, in order to feel included in conversations. A bonus of this is that your child will see your efforts, and feel the appreciation everyone has for all the languages.

As bilingualism and multilingualism is not a new thing, many people in the world are being raised with multiple languages. A lot of people also learn more languages along the way, and most of those persons becomes a parent. Their children are (hopefully) raised multilingual and they will (hopefully) raise their children multilingual and so on. When parents are from similar (language)backgrounds or have learned each other’s languages along the way, more options of multilingual parenting are possible.

What can you do?

• Choose any strategy: Parents who can speak all the intended languages, can basically choose whatever language strategy fits them best. You can alter the OPOL or ML@H to your situation, but these can feel a bit unnatural for parents who would normally speak all the languages in their daily life. A more flexible and perhaps natural choice could be one of the other strategies, like T&L or MLP.
• Alternate languages per day: With T&L, you can choose specific times of the day to use each language. As this can sometimes result in isolated vocabulary (always eating in language A, outside playing in B and bedtime rituals in C) it can be tricky to generalise the languages. A great way to get a wider exposure to all of the languages, is choosing specific days (or weeks or months) instead. This way you get to speak all your languages in all situations throughout the day, and switch to the other language in the morning. This helps to broaden your child’s vocabulary (and perhaps also your own). Just as in the first situation, keep in mind that focussing on the minority languages is most important. The majority or school language will be acquired regardless of the input at home.
• Go with the flow: You can also choose to not have a strict schedule, and go with the flow (MLP). The more languages you have, the more risk there is that you’re forgetting or neglecting one. However, for many families it works just fine and feels more natural. This also depends on what your goals are for all the languages. The lower the expectations of each language, the less structure you might need.

All family situations are different and there is no perfect way of raising a multilingual child. However, a general rule of thumb is to equally divide the exposure of all languages. This way all languages have enough input to provide for the language development of your child. In many families however, this is a difficult goal to achieve. One of the parents may not be home with the child as much, and therefore one of the languages may not be spoken that much. Another possibility is that even though the parent can interact with the child for a lot of time, but is the sole provider for more 2 or even more languages. In this situation there is a risk that one of the languages gets forgotten a bit, especially if resources in that language are hard to get by.

What can you do?

• Create language routines: Make a detailed family language policy, with special consideration of the language most at risk. Try to create specific times or routines in which you use that and the other languages. Recurring moments like breakfast, bathing or bedtime stories are perfect for adding that extra exposure of language. Don’t just hand your child their bread, or clean your child silently. Create your special moment together in which you tell stories, sing songs and play little games like “I spy with my little eye”.
• Find a community: This might be hard in smaller towns but especially in bigger cities there will be some people with the same language as you! Try to find those people and organise language play dates. As children learn more from their peers than their parents, this is a great way to keep children motivated to speak the language. I know local libraries can be a hotspot for different multilingual families, try facebook groups or even find your (Corona-proof) online community with digital play dates.
• Use any resources available: If there is not enough “live speaking time” with your child in a particular language, use other resources. Even though watching television or listening to music on your own will not boost the language development as much as communicating with a person does, it still helps more than nothing. If your child can read for itself, try getting books (or audiobooks and podcasts) in that language.
• Create your own resources: Some languages have easily accessible resources, other may not. If you find it difficult to find resources such as books, songs or even boardgames, get creative yourself! Also look on the internet, find facebook groups or instagram accounts with helpful home made resources. Even though I have it quite easy and can order a lot online (English as minority language), I find translations of books or create them myself and add them to our Dutch books.

I hope you have gained some knowledge or tips here that can help you go forward with your multilingual journey. Even if it gets hard sometimes to juggle all languages, know that you can absolutely do it and just go for it! Children will not be confused, and will not have a language delay because of their multilingualism. This is the case for any number of languages, as long as you have enough quality language input. In the long run, your child will most likely be grateful.

Thanks for reading and I’d love to know what you thought of this blog. If you have comments or have a specific question about bilingualism in your situation, please let me know! All contact details can be found under contact. You can also t ake a look at my other posts on this blog, or follow me on instagram.

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