We’ve got tons of new words
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March 13th, 2006
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When we left Sweden for New York and Mexico, Daniel's vocabulary was limited. Like I mentioned in my post on The Blogfathers, he then spoke about 70% Swedish and the rest Spanish with the occasional word in English. After three weeks in Mexico this had changed drastically. 70% was now Spanish and he had learned tons of new words. I estimate that Daniel's vocabulary tripled in the first three weeks of vacation. It was just amazing to hear all the new words coming out of his mouth. We know that he will speak a little later because of our trilingual household (we speak Swedish, English, and Spanish) but it now seems like we've reached a state where he's more confident playing around with words and short sentences.
I've heard many kids imitate words from their parents as early as after 12 months but Daniel has never been interested in this behavior. Until Mexico. He now loves to imitate the words we say, mostly in Swedish and Spanish. So far we've been fortunate and haven't caught him saying any bad words. We try to behave around him but Sandra tends
to blurt out some less than proper words in Spanish because of her Latin temper. I would be extremely embarrassed if Daniel blurted out "fuck" out of the blue one day. That makes me think of the Ben Stiller movie "Meet the Fockers" when he "taught" the little kid to say "asshole". I'm sure that will happen to us sooner or later.
Daniel's increased Spanish vocabulary creates some interesting scenarios at his school. His kindergarten is only in Swedish and no one knows much Spanish. We have talked to the teachers and let them know what to expect. We've also "taught" them a few crucial words that Daniel uses often. They are not at all concerned about the additional language and Daniel's return to kindergarten has been amazingly smooth. There is not Spanish/Swedish school around here so we are thinking of enrolling him in the English/Swedish school starting next year. He's speaking very little English so far so we'll have to see how the year progresses. It might not be a great idea to get English involved at this early stage but we'll make a decision later on.
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Very interesting post – would love to read more about your adventures/experience on this subject matter – We are hoping our kid picks up a couple of languages – we speak Cantonese and English right now – but having done my schooling in India – I learnt Hindi too – so I hope my son picks up an additonal language. I think while growing up I picked up Chinese and Nepali – as these were the languages I was spoken too. And I think I learned English from school and from my aunts.
Good Luck – I think in this day and age having an extra language under your belt is pretty useful.
Sep 25th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
[...] We're now two years and seven months into our little "experiment" with teaching our son three languages at once. Some people believe it's difficult for parents and children to handle all these languages but it's actually very straight forward. It does take a little planning and discipline and also a bit more patience but it's overall a great solution to give your children a nice start in life. I've talked about this earlier but last time I made an "official" update was back in March. Back then we were excited that Daniel was learning lots of new words but still lagged most of his other friends his age in the vocabulary department. Lately we've taken a large jump and Daniel is able to communicate a lot more clearly. The most exciting thing is that he now separates the languages automatically depending on who he is speaking to. [...]
Dec 20th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
[...] We've reached a new interesting phase in the tri-lingual upbringing of our son Daniel. As you might know, we've been raising him to speak three languages from the very beginning. The issue of raising kids in a few languages at once is nothing new but it's becoming much more common because of the global workplace. If you're used to mixing languages on a daily basis it's no big deal, you can find a few thoughts on our progress here, here, and here. If you only speak one language you're likely to feel very confused and intimidated by the whole adventure of languages. [...]