You and/or your partner speak multiple languages ​​and would like to raise a bilingual child Or better yet, a polyglot. Do you already have a list of languages ​​in which you would like your the child was talking. What to do next and where to start you know.

Many beginning parents ask themselves:
1. What language should you speak with your child?
2. When should you start talking to your child in the chosen language?
3. What language should other family members speak?
4. Should I do something or just talk to the child?

Language strategies.
There are two most popular strategies for teaching a child languages ​​in a multilingual family:

1. One parent - one language.
This strategy implies that each family member speaks to the child only in one language. For example, mother is Russian, speaks only Russian to the child, father is Italian, speaks to the child only in Italian. The language of the country can be either Italian or Russian or even a third, for example, English.

2. One language at home, but another in society.
speak at home in one language - the language of the minority, and outside it - in the language of the country where do you live. For example, living in Italy, family members always they speak Russian, but in society they speak Italian.

3. Time or Place.
If you plan to teach your child other languages, you can logically tie them to the days of the week or to certain activities. For example, family only speaks Spanish on Sundays or when the child is taking bath or dinner. Thus, offering the child a permanent a routine to which he will get used and be ready.

Child may be bilingual, trilingual, quadrilingual, or polyglot even among parents who speak only one language, for example, if the family moved to another country and motivates the child to learn new languages ​​and maintains the level of those already studied.

Which language should I choose? What language to speak with the child?

There is no single answer to this question. Definitely the best thing to do is talk to child in the language you speak best. This is usually native language. From my point of view, mother's point of view, mother tongue is more natural when communicating with a child, since all lullabies and the words you heard as a child come back by themselves when you hold baby in arms.

It may be difficult to start talk to your child in your native language, especially if you have not used it for a long time. I experienced it myself. But don't worry, you'll be fine! You just need to start talking with the child from birth and the language will return to you, and strange sensations will disappear.

Can be such a situation: for some reason you do not consider "useful" is your native language. And you don't want to talk to your child on it. Before you finally abandon the language that seemed to no one unnecessary in favor of another, ask yourself if this will be an obstacle to your child in contact with relatives. Especially important for a child communication with grandparents. Do not take away from him the joy of communicating with them!

If, after careful consideration, you nevertheless decide to refuse to give your child your native language, you can support your spouse and speak to your child in his language. This is the case if the language of the parent differs from the language by spoken in society, in the country where you live. Thus, following the strategy of "Home Alone language, but in society - another" you will be able to have a calm conversation at the table without interruption for translations. As it usually happens with us.

When should I start talking to my child in the chosen language?

Than the sooner you start, the greater the advantage over the dominant language, usually the language of the country of residence. So actively talk to your baby from the moment of birth. And closer to 6 months you can start introducing him to books. Time plays very important: the more you can invest in your child in the early years, the better the result.
You can read about my early reading experience on the English version of the site: When to start reading? and How to read to a child?

What language should other family members speak?

Ask grandparents, aunts and uncles to support your child on their journey to multilingualism and speak to him in the minority language. If one of them says in other languages, you can ask to use it only when talking with your child. Consistency is important here too, explain relatives what you expect from them.

Is it enough just to talk to a child in order to convey the native language while living in a different language environment?

No. Just talking to the child in this case will be not enough. We need to develop vocabulary day by day. So read to your child as much as possible. Keep talking with him from birth and even during pregnancy. Based research published in Psychological Science Journal, infants who are spoken to in two different languages ​​during pregnancy show interest in both languages ​​in contrast to monolingual children. Thus, attention and ease of perception of already heard languages ​​is ensured.
You also have the task of maximizing the child's contact with language as much as possible.

How long does it take to speak with a child in the language?

Scientifically proven there are no numbers to measure sufficient language impact guaranteed result if we say your child will be in the language environment 25-30% of the time. You just need to be patient and constantly day after day, work with the child, develop his vocabulary, trying to include material from all possible life situations.
If you are working, hire a nanny who speaks your language. Look for a kindergarten or school where the language will be supported. You need to develop a long-term plan from birth and for many years to come, which you can change as your child grows and depending on the current dynamics in the family.

It's time to hit the road to bilingualism, and maybe even multilingualism!

Good luck to you and your children!

Language Strategies for Trilingual Families: Parents' Perspectives (Parents' and Teachers' Guides) by Andreas Braun - Kindle - Paperback

Growing up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven (Parents' and Teachers' Guides) by Xiao-lei Wang - Kindle - Paperback

Trilingual by Six: The sane way to raise intelligent, talented children by Lennis Dippel MD - Kindle - Paperback

Multilingual. Elena Madden's book "Our Trilingual Children"

The book is interesting because it describes the real experience of multilingual upbringing in the family. The mother of the children (as well as the author) is a literary critic, a native speaker of the Russian language. Dad is a linguist, native speaker of English. The family lives in Germany. The family has two twins - a boy Alek and a girl Anya.

Thus, from the very beginning, the family faced a difficult task - to make sure that the children spoke three languages ​​(since everyone wanted to speak with children in their native language, plus they had to take into account the language of the environment).

The book consists of 5 parts. Each part is devoted to a separate problem area in language learning. At the end, in addition to the list of literature recommended for study on the problem of children's multilingualism, there is a "Chronicle". This is a special "language diary" in which the mother describes all the stages of the formation of the language, that is, what the children do, say, what mistakes they make, at what age the first complex sentences appear, and everything...

I will describe those moments of the book that seemed to me the most interesting or thought-provoking.

PART 1. What happened in the beginning.

- Many people know the principle "One parent - one language". It is usually associated with the name of Jules Ronjat. His method was based on the ideas of Maurice Grammont about the strict separation of languages. This principle is well known, however, in order to consistently adhere to it, a lot of parental endurance is required.

- The author raises the question of whether to talk to children in Russian while on the street in Germany. On the one hand, if this is not done, the child may lose the desire to speak Russian, as the child will be embarrassed about it or will not consider this language a full-fledged means of communication. However, at the same time, parents should be very flexible and take into account the fact that foreigners are treated everywhere, as a rule, very wary.

- A very difficult question: do multilinguals start speaking later and do they lag behind in speech development compared to monolinguals? On the one hand, a number of researchers confidently say "no" (I. Montanari), on the other hand, in practice we observe the opposite.

Francois Grosjean gives a marvelous metaphor. He compares multilingual children to athletes who climb hurdles, jump high and run short distances. It would be strange to expect equal results from all athletes in sprinting. After all, a professional jumper cannot run as fast as a sprinter.

Susanne D ö pke, "One parent One language" says that a multilingual child is comparable to a monolingual child in strong language, but lags behind in weak language.

PART 2. About the language - and only. Entry into languages.

- An interesting fact is that Russian and Turkish children (according to the American psychologist Schaeffer) immediately begin to produce albeit short, but correct sentences. This is explained by the fact that in Russian and Turkish languages ​​grammar is more important than word order.

Compare:
Mom asked Joanna.
Joanna asked her mother.

- The category of gender in all three languages ​​was the most difficult for Elena Madden's children. Maybe the problem is that the children are twins? Or that the category of gender does not match in three languages?

- A separate chapter is devoted to the "mixed language" used by children. "Mom, he work no!" (the Russian negative particle is at the end, as in German). This is a normal period in the development of languages, after which there is a period of rejection of one of the languages ​​- children resist the desire of adults to speak their own language if it does not coincide with the language of the majority.

What to do in case of refusal?
1. "Not to understand" such language.
2. Increase contact with people who speak the minority language.

- After the language mixing period ends and the languages ​​are separated, they are not perfectly readable. "It should be accepted as an axiom that there is no bilingualism without interference," Tashner wrote as early as 1963. However, parents who are worried that their children, when communicating with each other, mix languages ​​too much, can be reassured. When communicating with monolingual people, such mixing is sharply reduced (Montanari).

PART 3. Not only about the language. Why is it so difficult for us?..

- After going to kindergarten, a child may have a so-called "period of silence". This is a completely natural phenomenon when a child observes language and develops.

- The author of the book made a serious mistake. Without studying German at all with children and thinking that they would not be left without it in Germany, later adults realized that they still could not do without German classes, since in kindergarten children first of all listen to each other's speech, full of mistakes.

- Another serious mistake of parents was the "average" approach to teaching children. As a result, the faster developing girl could not develop in accordance with her rapid pace, and the boy's development was delayed, since the tasks were too difficult for him. The author comes to the "banal" individual approach to each child later.

PART 4. Parents: balancing in multilingualism

- The author gives a number of tips on how to strengthen weak language.

- The other part is about bugs: whether to fix them or not. In my opinion, Elena is doing the right thing, correcting the mistakes of children, but at the same time doing it very gently. If the child mispronounced the word "pear" ("the child's version is the wilderness), she may ask again, "not hearing": "Do you want a pear?" Or, if the child stubbornly uses his own word when referring to some object, you can praise him while paying attention to what word other people use to refer to the same thing.0003

General conclusion: it is necessary to correct children, but at the same time, one must try not to kill their desire to communicate in the language due to errors in speech.

- One of the discussion theses in the book: "A little multilingual needs international books the least of all. " According to the author, this will help him better master a foreign culture, immerse himself in the atmosphere of the language, absorbing non-linguistic elements.

- Most of the book is devoted to the experience of learning to read. What seemed very entertaining to me was that my mother, having worked with Zaitsev’s cubes and taught the children to read, laid out interesting tasks for them with cubes: where to find the treasure. Of course, this stimulated interest in reading.

And one more thing: as a rule, adults are afraid to teach children several alphabets at once, fearing that children will get confused in them. However, there is a lot of evidence that children master several alphabets at once without problems.

- How to talk a silent child?
Elena used the following technique. For example, her son wanted to watch cartoon ordins. And she didn’t really “understand” what kind of cartoon he wanted to watch. The child had to tell what he was about, what was happening in him and who the main character was.

PART 5. Children: over the barriers.

- Code switching - the child's ability to easily switch from one language to another. The author associates the code not only with the language, but with the culture, the type of intellectual behavior.

An example of a language game: A father, prompting the children to remember the name of the Eiffel Tower, says: "Is it the awful tower?.. It is so big, it fills your whole eye ..."

- The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language is a reflection of the world is interesting. The fact that it is the language that makes a person think this way and not otherwise. It turns out that it is not easy for representatives of different nations to understand each other, which in itself leads to the rejection of children's multilingualism? Then, rather, the opposite is true: a multilingual is free, as it can choose the language, thought or style of communication.

PRELIMINARY RESULTS.

1. "Threshold Hypothesis" by James Cummins: if the native language is formed in a timely and correct manner, bilingualism will not harm the intellectual development of the child.

2. Every child needs an individual approach.

3. Bilingual kindergarten does not harm the child's language development.

4. It is important to follow the principle of "one parent - one language".

5. It is necessary to correct children's mistakes, sparing children's pride.

6. Don't waste your time! Even on the road, you can learn a language - even just by discussing what you see.

7. Weak language is great for stimulating the input of new information in this language.

8. What children love:
- transformations, confusion, fabulousness;
- hide and seek, secrets, labyrinths, treasures;
- legends about the past, fantasies, discussion of secrets;
- funny;
- theater.

9. Language development will not go by itself - language must be practiced.

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