Multilingual Children

I know Christina and many think that One Person, One Language is the most efficient way to communicate with a multilingual child, but I just can’t do it in our situation. I try, but it is a complex scenario: I was born in the US to Danish and Swedish parents who now live in Mexico and Sweden respectively. My husband is French and I lived in France for most of my adult life, but I have lived in many other countries as well. The babysitter is Italian and we speak only Italian with her. BUT we live in Luxembourg where nursery school and the “street language” is Luxembourgish. We have specifically chosen a private school that has 40% of the classes in German, 30% in English and 30% in French (the twins start at 6 years old until they are 18) so the students leave school perfectly fluent in 3 languages with no accent. The problem is that I can only speak English to them when we are alone. Otherwise I always speak the language of the people we are around (Swedish with Swedes, French with the French, Italian with Italians, etc.). I have expected big delays due to the fact that they are twins in a multilingual environment, but they are 16 months now and have a vocabulary of about 6-8 words (they understand much more). Am I doing something horrible to my children? Since everyone in Luxembourg is at least quadrilingual, it is considered rather normal to switch back and forth between languages. I understand the logic behind OPOL, but it seems like it is for people with much simpler situations. I remember once I met a family with teenagers and they communicated in 4 languages, mixing constantly, and the children seemed exceptionally bright and not scarred in anyway….

This is just a follow up: they are now 2 and everything is fine so far despite my worries above. They speak French, English and Italian and rarely mix so far. They use each language only with the appropriate person, but accept if I speak with the nanny in Italian for example. They use a few words in Swedish but we really don’t press it, it has been their choice. We are starting “spielschule” in Luxembourgish this week but it is only one morning a week and I will go with them. The teachers speak Lux and the other kids there will also be multilingual and will be in the girls’ nursery school in September.

Hi, thanks for posting. Nice to know there are others out there! In Belgium you’ll find people are very multilingual and expect it from others. Disregarding the “almost civil” war between the Wallons and the Flemish, the EU has many offices there so there are so many Spanish and English speakers. Here in Luxembourg something like 5% of the population is Portugese so it is the unofficial fifth or sixth language of the country. There are radio stations, stores, offices etc. that operate exclusively in Portugese. Depending on where you live in Belgium, your kids probably won’t lose Spanish, English and Portugese! Good luck, Kristina