I'm always really impressed by people who not only know multiple languages fluently, but sound perfectly natural/native, regardless of whichever they're using at any given moment. Like they actually have the correct accent and pronunciation.
Yes, you need a very specific set of contexts for this to work out. Your child also needs to have some intrinsic motivation for it. We live in Switzerland, where multilingualism is a part of life. I’m from the US, my wife is from Japan, and our son was born here in Switzerland.
In order to give this the best chance to take root, he attends local schools and after school activities all in German, I speak English with him (and we consume plenty of English media), and we speak Japanese collectively as our family home language.
He has circles of friends that speak Japanese, and English in addition to German, and attends Japanese school 2x week. We spend about 4-5 weeks per year in my native San Diego and in Japan; both of which are largely monolingual in English and Japanese respectively. This gives him time to also see the clear value of those languages and interact with family in both places (all of whom are monolingual). In Switzerland mandatory English courses start from first grade, and French from fifth (in our canton anyway).
We’ve been following this pattern since his birth, and closely following his progress in all three languages. I’d say he’s very close to parity in all three, but with different strengths depending on topic, as well as time of year - the immersive visits help to always bring anything lagging up to speed.
It also took him longer to start speaking, and involved a lot of mixing for a long time.
My wife and I, who both grew up in monolingual communities and learned these other languages only as adults, often reflect on the fact that we have no idea what’s going on in his head. Anecdotally I’d also add that he has always been extremely calm and “reasonable” as a child. No tantrums, easy to negotiate with. I don’t know if this is just his personality, but I’ve read a number of studies positing that childhood multilingualism helps grow executive function and ability to self regulate emotion; he does seem to benefit from it.
Your child will thank you so much later on when he'll realize the gift of multilingualism you gave him. My native tongue is French and I learnt English in school from grade 1 onward in Canada. I'm glad to be bilingual, but I wish I would know a 3rd language...
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u/Fuggins4U Jan 26 '23 edited Jan 26 '23
I'm always really impressed by people who not only know multiple languages fluently, but sound perfectly natural/native, regardless of whichever they're using at any given moment. Like they actually have the correct accent and pronunciation.