Many children in the world grow up with three languages. For example, because their parents both speak a different language and they learn a third language at school. Or because they speak one language at home and go to a bilingual school where they learn two new languages. There are also many countries in the world where almost everyone is trilingual. Think, for instance, of countries in Central and West Africa, countries like India, Luxembourg and Switzerland. There are actually far more trilingual children than you might first think, also in countries like the Netherlands.
In this episode of Kletsheads, we focus mainly on trilingual families. For example, where one parent speaks Russian, the other German, and at school a third language is learnt. Our guest is Simona Montanari, researcher and mother of two trilingual (Spanish, Italian, English) teenagers. Together with Simona, we answer the following questions: What can you realistically expect from a child who grows up with three languages, and how can you best support his or her multilingual development? Are children able to keep their languages apart? Do they take longer to develop their language than children who grow up with only one or two languages? How many languages can a child learn at once?
Listen to this episode of Kletsheads
Kletsheads is a podcast about bilingual children for parents, teachers and speech language therapists. What can you expect if you’re raising your children bilingually? What’s important? What will help your children’s language development and what won’t? In each episode, Dr. Sharon Unsworth, linguist and mother of two children (both bilingual, of course), discusses the science behind the language development of bilingual children with another expert.
Photo: Nicola Giordano via Pixabay