a question about multilingual babies

Mon May 9 05:20:27 UTC 2011

Hi,

just to add a personal experience (in full awareness that it is in no way representative):

My son grew up under similar conditions: he was exposed to 3 languages at home (my husband (1), me (2) and English (3) as the language between my husband and me)
and one (4) at the nursery from 10 months onwards. He only spoke and understood those languages he was addressed by (French, German, Dutch), he seemed not to pick up English which he heard from the conversation between my husband and me. Dutch ended up being the dominant language (the language of the environment). By the time my son was almost 4, we moved away from the Netherlands. After about 4 months of no exposure to Dutch, he no longer understood nor spoke the language. That was a surprise. Multilingualism is quite dynamic as it seems. 

He is 6,7 years old now and he speaks French, German and English. He learned English at school from 4 years onwards which he picked up quickly (possibly because of exposure at home). There weren't any problems in respect to social-emotional development. I am surprised that autism is mentioned as a risk factor. He also has no problems at school, on the contrary. 

Just to give one example where exposure to 4 languages, at least in the first 4 years, were no problem. 

Best wishes,

Edith

Edith Schlag, MSc, MPhil
Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates

Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 06:41:05 +0330
Subject: Re: a question about multilingual babies
From: pdaftaryfard at gmail.com
To: info-childes at googlegroups.com

Language delay is much more dangerous than loosing time for true bilingualism. There are many risk factors like being autistic, developmental delay and global delay in terms of cognition. I think recent psychology suggests for learning one language first and then being exposed to other languages. I can send you some books off list.

Best,
Parisa

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 3:55 AM, beachjade <beachjade at gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Tamar and Yves,

There is a recent paper by Janet Werker that may be relevant to your second question about how early should you expose your child to his many languages.  In contrast to an earlier response to your post, my reading of the literature suggests that bilingualism/multilingualism in an of itself is not a risk factor in development.  This is echoed by 

http://www.lsadc.org/info/pdf_files/Bilingual.pdf 

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pspi_10_3.pdf

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2010/werker.cfm 

On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Tamar & Yves <tamarmr at gmail.com> wrote:

Hello all,
Our 10 months old son is exposed to 3 languages at home ( each one of
us is speaking to him his mother- tongue, and we speak English between
us) and to a 4th one outside.

Soon he will be starting Nursery, and we were wondering what language
it should be in. Is it better to expose him simultaneously to all 4
languages or should we do it gradually over the first few years of his
life (It's possible to sign him up to a nursery in my husnband's
mother tongue (2)/ english (3)/ bi lingual (enviroment+English)(4))

We don't want language acquisition to be too much of a burden on him,
and not sure how many languages he can learn at once.

We are aware of the large number of factors affecting the answer, but
does anyone know or refer us to research done on the specific issues
of (i) number of languages babies can learn and its implication on
their emotional state; and (ii) Is it better to expose a baby to those
languages simultaneously or gradually over the first few years of his
life.

Thanks,
Tamar & Yves

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Parisa Daftarifard
Phd Student of TEFL 
Islamic Azad University of Science and Research

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