Quad-Lingual Week
By
on
June 4th, 2008
Print This Post
Email This Post
The Adventuredad family is going quad-lingual this week. For the third year in a row we're spending some time down in Germany with friends and also playing professional tennis. We speak three languages (English, Swedish, Spanish) during our normal days but here we expose the kids to yet another language since I speak German as well. Traveling to countries where a different language is spoken is great for kids (and adults). They may not learn much of the new language but it's a reminder that the world is large, people are different, and that things work differently than at home.
Our tri-lingual adventure is going well. No real surprises so far. Our 4-year old son Daniel already speaks three languages and we haven't even begun to teach him yet. No classes, tutors, or practice sessions. He's learned just by listening to his parents and people around him. Which is the preferred way for a child to grow up with three languages. English is by far his weakest language so far, he understand a lot but speaks little. But that's of no concern to us since English is the easiest language of all to learn. He will be fluent in a year or so.
Our 21 month old daughter has limited vocabulary, she speaks a lot in long sentences which consist mainly of "baby speak" . The words she know are in Swedish and Spanish but her learning and mimicking of other has picked up dramatically in the past month. She now keeps repeating words all day long and her pace of learning is increasing. I would say she's a little "behind" other kids her age but this is normal considering her exposure to different languages.
The quad-lingual adventure was quite funny to start with in 2006, our first visit here with the children. When I spoke German to my friends, my son just looked at me like I was an alien. Then he laughed. This went on for a couple of days and then he was used to it. His memories from that year were just incredible, he had a great time with the kids of my friend which made him a huge fan of Germany. He's even picked up a few handy words by playing with other kids and also taught the Germans a few Swedish words.
Switching between the different languages is easy and without effort although the first days are always interesting. I keep mixing and substituting German and Spanish words, especially this year when I flew down with my MIL a couple of days earlier than Foxy Wife. MIL speaks little English so it's mostly Spanish for us two.
Now, time to relax in the sun with a nice beer after lots of tennis and some intense days with the children.
I was waiting for an update on the multi-lingual! Erik’s been doing good in learning Cantonese and English. He’s picked up a few words in Spanish because of his day care teacher is Mexican and does bi-lingual reading to the chilrden plus Erik is really into Dora & Diego. He can count from 1-10 in 3 languages, hee hee!
However, I was wondering how I’d introduce Erik into Mandarin as well though, since its another dialect in Chinese but I’m the only one who’s semi-fluent in the family and nobody to talk to. Hmmmm? Thoughts? Besides a trip to Beijing, of course! LOL!