Introducing a 4th language to a 2 year old

[alenharry]

I am French Lebanese and speak exclusively Arabic to my 2-year-old son. My Polish wife speaks Polish to him, and we live in the U.K., where he is exposed to English at nursery. His language skills have far exceeded our expectations: he understands Arabic and Polish very well and « speaks » both to some extent, English is however his dominant language.

I am considering introducing French. We already sing in French and attend a Saturday baby school, but I'm thinking of alternating days of speaking Arabic and French. My wife believes it might be too much to introduce another language now and prefers to wait until the first three are more consolidated. Has anyone with similar experience found that four languages are too much for a 2-year-old?

 

[barsomo]

@alenharry My kids have been exposed to 4 languages more or less since birth and we haven’t had any issues. As far as the scientific research about multilingualism goes, there’s no need to wait until the other languages consolidate. The advice is rather that earlier is better. Of course, there’s never any guarantee that a child will learn a 4th language but if they get consistent and meaningful exposure to it then it’s possible.

 

[mjmichaels]

@alenharry Give it a try and see how it goes! Kids can definitely learn 4 languages and it sounds like 3 is going well. In my experience the earlier you start the better. Then your child gets used to it. I have been doing two minority languages alternating Spanish and German with my now 4 year old daughter. What I found is that she started to resist it more around 3 and 4 but it helps to be able to say "this is just how we speak on different days. Today is German day" and she doesn't remember anything else.

I've commented about it before but what I do is really work on making the weakest language fun. We do crafts and board games, nature play, Disney is in her weakest language too and Bluey.

One thing to look at is auditing how many hours of exposure your son will have to each language. It's a balancing act to keep the three minority languages at a reasonable level, but with our German it's around 15 hours a week at the moment and that's enough that she understands everything and is speaking whole sentences, though it's obvious that it is the weaker one.I do a whole day on Saturday and about an hour in the evenings, and Spanish is all day Sunday and the rest of the time she isn't at kindergarten (where they speak English).

Here's a list of some of what I did when she was younger, she had a basket of books and toys that I only got out for German time.

-Some dolls that "only speak German"

-Some toys we only use in German (we have one of those city rugs with a road and town drawn on, we build our city and play with cars)

-Books, movies, audiobooks, music always available. French has the same advantage as German, with being a commonly spoken language there is truly an infinite supply of content for kids. Check your local library as well!

-Meeting other speakers, check out any local playgroups, meetups etc

-Encourage family and friends to speak with them

-We actually use an art subscription box to keep things fresh, my daughter loves art. I have to translate everything as we go because it comes with a booklet in English about how to do the crafts. For example a box about dinosaurs had us watching documentaries about fossils, playing with playdoh and dino figures and painting. Figure out what your kids are interested in and try to provide them with related French content.

 

[alenharry]

@mjmichaels Thank you for your long and thought off answer I will take your tips into account !

 

[mjmichaels]

@alenharry No problem! Good luck with it. I forgot to say I feel like the minimum to get a kid understanding things is about 14 hours a week. I notice if we haven't had that quality time that it's harder for my daughter to click back into the language.

 

[momandjohn]

@alenharry my friend has 3 kids - 6,3,1 and the eldest 2 are fully quadrilingual - the mum speaks italian, the dad speaks greek, the nanny speaks spanish, and the community / school language is french - its amazing and it works for them

 

[relle25]

@alenharry Nope, 4 is fine as long as there's some level of consistency and frequency! I used to work at bilingual schools and we had a few kids at each place that were quadrilingual and overall it was fairly successful. They admittedly had at least one language of the 4 that was significantly weaker but all in all, worked nicely and jealous of them that they had 4 languages!

My oldest kid (trilingual) has been learning a 4th language at school for a couple of years now and doing really well in it. I think being trilingual from the get go really opens you up to other languages in the early years. Go for it!

 

[butterflyaway]

@alenharry Wonderful, not too early to introduce a 4th language and you don't need to wait. But you do have to be careful and have a plan as to how your family will sustain the four languages. Consistency and amount of exposure are very important. Also, what to do when children resist speak one language. Please feel free to reach out if you want more personalized guidance. I would love to help!

https://www.multilingualfamilyconsulting.com/

 

[aimees]

@alenharry if they havent fully mastered the languages they are already learning why introduce a new one?