I have a 3-month old baby boy who is raised bilingual (Polish and English). The baby is exposed to different accents of English (American, British, and foreign) on everyday basis. We are hiring a babysitter with a strong accent in English but who is a native speaker of Spanish. We are considering having her speak Spanish to a baby. While I am familiar with research on early simultaneous bilingual acquisition and its benefits on cognitive development, I have not found enough research on advantages and disadvantages of early simultaneous trilingualism. Are you familiar with such studies? Thank you.
Actually I have raised a question like that to find a scientific studies on acquiring new dialect in early age but I could not get good response. In a case of my son, he is 3.6 and he speaks Azeri Turkish as a mother tongue (home and society language), Istanbul Turkish dialect (from TV Cartoon), and he started to learn Persian as a formal language of the country and I have been regarding English to teach him from coming summer. Whatever I observed is motivation for communication, If he understands that he can communicate by a language through the game or other context he feels responsibility for learning. He learned Istanbul Turkish dialect without any problem only by cartoon and he can speak better than me and I see that there is no problem with it, so do not worry about it and let it go. But consider motivation and happy condition. I am sorry that I could not give nay scientific sources because I am still searching for it.
Scientific evidence seems to be sparse. I live in Luxembourg, so there are 3 languages in the country: luxembourgish (a dialect with structures originating from southern germany, but an articulation rather flemish), german, and french. My 2 sons have no problems with the former two.
I know from consultations a lot of children that use several languages already when going to primary school without any negative effects. (e.g. father of italian origin, mother portuguese origin, speaking their own mother languages with their children, using french in the couple, wheres the children use luxembourgish in school, and learn the alphabet in german.) Most striking was the little one with a arab father, portuguese mother, the couple speaking french, and school career in luxembourgish and german so far. Interestingly, the children seem to adapt very well to that. So I wouldn't worry.
Dear Monika,
Research on the interplay between linguistic development, perception and attentional/inhibitory control has revealed that multilinguals possess significant cognitive advantages over their monolingual peers in various settings. Evidently, positive effects on trilinguals' intellectual growth have long been established through related research. I would like to refer you to a very interesting article published in Huffington Post available at www.huffingtonpost.com in October,05,2013 with the title of Bilingual Education. I hope all is well with your lucky baby.
Best regards,
R. Biria
Dear Monika,
There is a diss by Liquan Liu 2013 The Effects of Bilingualism on Infant Language Development: The Acquisition of Sounds and Words. Also,
Magdalena Łuniewska, Joanna Kołak, Agnieszka Kacprzak, Marta Białecka-Pikul, Ewa Haman, Zofia Wodniecka
WYZWANIA W DIAGNOZIE ROZWOJU JĘZYKOWEGO DZIECI DWU- I WIELOJĘZYCZNYCH
I have pdf's of both, if you want.
Also, Magda Wrembel and Marta Marecka did some research on Polish-English bilingual children in the UK, the paper is in ISPhS 2015.
Cheers,
Kasia
My daughter married a Dutch citizen and their son was raised with mother speaking English and father speaking Dutch. He is in a very classics-oriented school in the Netherlands now. English and Dutch have been being taught forever. When he was 12 in the first year of middle school, he began to study French and Latin as well. In the second semester, they threw in Classical Greek. This past year at 13 he was also introduced to German. He and a friend decided to teach themselves Russian but some personal issues nixed that for now. So he is now studying 6 languages at school. It has increased his interest immeasurably in languages. I can't see that it has confused him. It certainly has given us (him and me) a great bond.
It definitely is! Gaining three languages at a time might seem extremely tiring for the child, but I can tell you from my experience that this is the opposite. My children were exposed to such a challenge, and they attended to it very well. Any new language learned at an early age is an incredible achievement which models the map of your brain; it increases its flexibility and enhances the activity at the level of synapses. It molds your intellectual profile, and deepens your future cultural perspective making you more tolerant towards the others.
It all depends. One child may fare well while another may experience confusion in a bilingual/multilingual setting. I guess the most important thing is to observe while trying, and decide whether to carry on or quit based on the child's performance. To be multilingual these days is definitely an advantage given the condition that international communication is becoming more and more popular. Good luck to the child!
Yes! Tough raising the children multilingual is not always easy, there are many advantages! They can have a cognitive advantage in tasks that tap into the executive functions, as the following paper shows: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027715301165
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