My husband and I (’30s) have a baby (0,7M). At home, we usually speak English/Japanese but my mother tongue is French. Unfortunately, my husband can’t speak it but recently I’ve been using it every day with our son. I’m a little scared to confuse him and I want to make sure he learns those three languages. How did you manage to teach three languages to your children? Do you think an international school is a must? Did you set some specific rules at home?
I’m curious to hear about your experiences!
Edit: Thank you all so much for sharing your experience! I feel so much better now. I’m going to follow your recommendations and I can’t wait to hear my baby talking in this “big language” made of three languages.
28 comments
Similar situation but the 3rd language is Polish and our daughter is almost 3 so there’s people with a lot more experience than me.
We used a lot of English before she entered nursery school but after that we used more Japanese so she could more easily pick up some of the basic commands and requests by the staff. Now it’s half and half as I try to use a lot of English with her but my wife uses 80% Japanese.
A lot of the content she consumes through books, music, and a little TV is mostly English though.
At the moment she mainly uses Japanese to speak but is using more and more English in some situations, and often knows both the English and Japanese word for objects in her life. She also understands English perfectly fine even if she doesn’t use it so much yet.
I haven’t introduced much Polish yet but will start to soon though.
Not sure if this is much help though. I’d like to have her spend more time in English speaking environments going forward and am making an effort to get to know some of the other multinational families in the area.
We speak 3 languages at home. sometimes I ask something in japanese and get an answer in one of the other languages.
No rules!
Just make sure you speak French to the baby so that it’s hearing gets used to it.
Babies hearing between US and Japan starts diverging at 6 months old so it’s not time wasted.
Mine’s still too young to have 3 languages but mainly Japanese at home and English at preschool plus TV in all 3 languages seems to work.
My kids are trilingual. Just treat all three as living, necessary languages – a mix of travelling or video calling with family from birth (Dutch); school (for Japanese), speaking at home (English, Japanese and Dutch). English, Japanese and/or Dutch speaking friends come over with their kids. I also maybe let them watch a few too many TV shows and YouTube videos than I would like in Dutch or English. Usually Dutch or English radio in the car. I’m not sure my youngest even knows they are three different languages. When they’re very young, nursery rhymes helped a lot – we sing a lot of nursery rhymes. The longest grammatical structures they were able to make were from singing nursery rhymes to themselves when playing.
Where I’m from this is natural anyway – it’s how I also grew up.
My two yen: momma try to speak French as much as possible. Let Japanese come from socializing. Try to limit the household language to French and English. I bet your husband could learn French a long with your baby. Since society speaks Japanese, you don’t need it in your house. Similar technique worked for my Canadian Japanese friends. Parents only spoke Japanese in the house. They let Canadian life teach the English. Kids don’t get confused as much as adults so don’t worry 🙂
I’d suggest each parent speaking to the baby in their native tounge. The whole babies getting confused and you should only speak one language to them is an antiquated myth.
My boy’s almost 2. My plan is to have him learn Japanese from nursery, school, and pretty much anything outside of the home. Netflix, YouTube, and I will be in charge of English. Wife is in charge of Mandarin. Grandparents will add a hint of Cantonese.
I am expecting some delay in his speaking ability but it’s all part of the process in learning multiple languages. Think long term.
At that age the child is not learning 3 languages. The child is learning 1 really fucking huge language. They’re also little sponges. Just keep doing what you’re doing.
My 3 kids speak English and Japanese because that’s their mother tongue(s). Watching them remember which language to pick and choose once they became aware of the difference (or choose a different language because the concept could be more clearly communicated in one language over the other) was really cool.
Even cooler was watching them learn German when we lived there. We put the kids in the German schools and for the first 5-6 months the 2 younger ones were miserable – they were 4 and 7. At about 5-6 months they suddenly started speaking German (admittedly with a slightly below grade level vocabulary) but it was like a switch flipped. The oldest was 10 when we got there – his German is the best of the bunch (because he spent a year doing nothing but studying German and taking just enough math/science that he didn’t forget) BUT it’s also the least natural of the bunch because he was just past that point where the language centers start to “harden” and learning a language becomes harder than just being exposed to it.
Similar situation here, my wife is Japanese, I am French (we are both in our 40’s) and we both speak our mother tongues to the kids (now 8 and 12 years old). Their Japanese is native (we were living in Spain before that, but they had no problem with the school once we moved to Japan), and their French is a bit shaky, they understand well but make mistakes when speaking. My wife and I speak English together and the kids can understand it.
My personal opinion is that it’s fine if their French is not great. If later on they want to do something requiring the French language they will be able to learn on their own.
We speak Polish at home between family (it’s the first language for all of us) and occasionally English if we’re with English speaking friends. A lot of the media consumption happens in English too. Kids go to Japanese preschools so exclusively Japanese there or with our Japanese-speaking friends. Somehow, it works.
One thing to remember, understanding a language is different to being able to speak it. They need to actually do it, regularly. My house is bilingual and I have that figured out …adding a third to the mix….idk
We grow up speaking Malay, English and Chinese in Malaysia. Just do it!
We’re doing the same just with Danish English and Japanese. My daughter still only speaks Japanese but she understands both English and danish (altho she doesn’t always know the difference between these two languages).
So keep at it- it can be hard because you don’t seem to see any effect or benefit for a long long time- but trust it- eventually the language is in their brain and just needs activated.
It requires planning.
My cousin who speaks French, English, and Mandarin Chinese married a Frenchman and is living in France. She only speaks to her children in English, while her husband speaks to them in French. They get some measure of Mandarin Chinese exposure via their grandparents.
But you could just as simply change plan it so your children get exposure to 2 languages via the parents and the last via daily life.
Ie you speak French exclusively to your child, your husband English, while your child learns Japanese outside in school
We speak three languages as well. English, Japanese and Uchinaaguchi (Okinawan Language. Most of my wife’s older family speak it exclusively so I’ve learned as well years ago). My kids are all teenagers now and are perfectly comfortable speaking any of them, which leads to very confusing conversations if overhead with random jumble of each going back and forth. Young children are extremely adaptable to learning multiple languages.
One thing I have noticed speaking with other parents is that each family has their own goals and definitions of “speaking the language”.
We decided to only focus on English and Japanese and our goal is university/professional level in both languages. Native level 100%. Even 2 languages is a lot of work if you want this level. My wife speaks some French and my boy is for some reason highly interested in Spanish. But we are not introducing any other languages until at least middle school and even then the goal would be a nice hobby language/conversational fluency.
Plan: we have done 100% English at home, Japanese houikuen. Sent him to kumon about a year before Japanese public school so at least he would get his reading/writing down. Japanese public school now and in 3rd grade. Since 1st grade we have been sending him to English clases with American text/coursework (phonics, composition) so he does 3 hours a week of class and another hour of homework in English.
My Russian/French friends just left Japan for France. One reason – what to do with the child’s education. They both speak English well plus Russian and French. Adding Japanese didn’t make sense when they aren’t Japanese and didn’t see themselves here forever. If I understood correctly, their goal was French/English first with Russian as a side language to communicate with extended family.
I have an American friend in China who basically says, “My daughter will probably stay in China so Chinese first and then I am focusing on us being able to communicate well in English. I hope to get her to a certain reading/writing level but that’s not going to be my focus in elementary”.
Speak as much u can in any language, their brain are sponge . In my house we speak 5 (Japanese , Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese , English)! He is 3 years old now and some how he know I don’t get Chinese and he change to English or Japanese, I speak Spanish/Portuguese but he only use those to his grandparents 😢
My wife speak Chinese only with him. Tv is English , school is Japanese , I read books before sleep in Spanish and video calls with family Portuguese, Spanish. I speak Spanish/ English with him.
Btw I was born in trilingual family and was ok (I was 2 months old when we moved to another country) . My old brother was around 4 years old when he move and for him was way more difficult at the beginning, he used to punch the teacher or start screaming every time he didn’t understand, so imo start early is best.
Also a trilingual household at its early stages (1.5 year old) so keen to read everyone’s response here as I’m also figuring it out.
That said, OP’s situation reminded me of this [manga author](https://bookwalker.jp/series/58113/) might be a good read! Similar situations are portrayed probably.
My children spoke multiple languages until we returned to the USA when they were quite young. Then they promptly lost all languages but English over the following year. It was quite sad but they simply would not respond to me when I addressed them in other languages.
This is what I’m worried about too. So much worse in my case. I speak 7 languages and dialects. So aside from Japanese and English, there’s 5 others that I use normally with my family at home. Mandarin and Tagalog are the two biggest language groups but we also have 3 other dialects in the mix that are very different in tone and structure.
Currently planning to only introduce kiddo to two, Japanese and English. Might expose to more depending on how much they absorb but I also don’t want to ever have a “secret” language between kiddo and me that hubby can’t understand.
There is no such thing as language confusion for a toddler. Failure is not a demerit for a toddler’s learning of nearly anything. As a child in a multilingual household, I used to call milk, “leche” without realizing the word origin.
Speaking to your newborn in your mother tongue is actually highly recommended.
That’s the way you pass your culture and your mom’s and grandmom’s culture down.
When your child becomes a toddler and starts going to daycare, they will very quickly start speaking the daycare center language, I’m guessing that will be Japanese.
At that point, you may want to set up some routine to ensure that your child speaks 2 or 3 languages.
The rule of thumb of second and third languages is that they need to actively use the language 20-30% of your day. One-Parent One-Language does not work in Japan like it does in some other countries. As the care-taker, this should be something you can manage.
If your husband has a normal work schedule, the risk for your child is to fall behind in Japanese. There will be some delay when teaching multiple languages, the same rule of thumb applies, so keep track of the Japanese too. Once they go to school, their language will catch up, but you do not want the teacher deciding and unintentionally communicating to your child that they are stupid, which is common with Japanese teacher toward foreign kids. That will turn a delay into a permanent condition.
Imperfect English on your and your husband’s part is OK so long as they get lots of input from other sources. They work out which is correct rather well.
Video is good, but interaction is the key.
I speak French exclusively with my daughter (6) and my wife who isn’t fluent at all in French only speaks Japanese to her. My Japanese is… conversational at best. Between my wife and I, we speak English as a force of habit.
She’s growing up speaking French & Japanese no problem, and she picks up a lot of English passively from us speaking to each other. She’s going to the local elementary school.
The hard part I’m struggling with the most is teaching her French grammar/writing. She’s a good reader as she grew up in France, but she can’t spell and I’m having a lot of issues with finding time and energy to teach her. The other struggle I’ll have is socialising with French speakers because we live in countryside Tochigi.
Speak French. Children don’t get confused. Learning a language before the age of 4 controls how you think. It’s the single best thing you can do to give your child a better life. Don’t stop at English/French/Japanese. If you have the funds, find a school that will use another language. There’s theoretically no limit, but children need about 1-2 hours of daily exposure to learn the language, so they can really learn 10+ before the age of 4.
Do you mean simultaneous trilingual, or perhaps simultaneous bilingual and then one (almost native) language as the first foreign language?
True simultaneous trilingual is almost impossible to pull off, bilingual is much more realistic to pull off. In your case Japanese/French 🙂 I’d concentrate on that. The kid will learn English from TV later.
I speak only Finnish to my son and wife speaks only Japanese. We use Japanese and English between us, he’s now almost 4.
I really love it that he addresses me pretty much only in Finnish, and the mother only in Japanese. Just 6 months ago he suddenly started translating my Finnish to the mom, it was hilarious 🙂 The change was sudden.
I also wouldn’t worry about your kids Japanese, if you put him into daycare or kindergarten, his Japanese will catch up real quick. Your husband should talk to him exclusively in Japanese, hopefully he’s able to spend as much time as possible after work with him 🙂
We do the following with our two year old:
Japanese = Daycare, and Japanese grandparents.
English = When we are all together, and when with only mom.
Swedish = Alone with me, and talking to Swedish grandparents.
So far she understands pretty well all of them, but she mixes them up when it comes to talking.
Sometimes she might use a Swedish word at the daycare and the teacher get a bit confused.
Like when she was shaking her head and saying “Nej!” when she didn’t want something for a while.
Your best bet is probably to have one parent speak one language and the other parent speak the other. Your child will learn Japanese at daycare and at school like all the other kids.