I am a trilingual father from birth (Catalan, English, Spanish; grew up in Barcelona) married to an English mother who speaks very good Spanish and understands Catalan. We have a 19 month daughter and second child on the way and we live in solidly monolingual England.
Initially, we spoke Spanish (me) and English to our daughter as we felt Spanish would be more “useful” to her than Catalan and I speak Spanish to my wife anyway.
However, on recent trips “back home” to Catalonia it has dawned on me that I would like our daughter to speak Catalan as this is what I speak to my mother, brother and most of my friends. Since coming back, I have been speaking Catalan to her, my wife (and society) speak English to her and I speak Spanish to my wife.
Our concerns are:
(1) She won’t master Spanish just from hearing me speak it to my wife (although my wife appears to understand 80% of Catalan just from hearing me talk it to my mum a few times a week, which I guess shows how much one can pick up “passively”). When we visit family at home, all 3 languages are spoken but > 50% of people on the street speak Catalan so achieving full immersion in Spanish on holiday won’t be that simple.
(2) I’m not sure what to speak when I want to address both daughter and wife. Catalan, at the risk of reducing daughter’s exposure to Spanish and making it weird for my wife, to whom I’ve never spoken in Catalan in 7 years? Spanish, but risk confusing my daughter?
(3) Is my daughter more likely to rebel against speaking a minority language that nobody in England cares about? People here think learning Spanish is cool but learning Catalan is pointless and I worry that such comments will put her off. I’m aware I was glad to speak English as a child in Spain as everyone was jealous of this.
I see lots of posts of trilingual families where each parent follows the OPOL model and society provides the third language but what if the third language is only heard at home amongst parents?
I should say my daughter currently understands English and Catalan very well; and has a limited vocabulary which is 70:30% English:Catalan. My wife speaks very good Spanish and understands Catalan quite well but isn’t used to me speaking it to her (feels weird).
