Multilingual Family Struggles: Balancing 4 languages at home. How do you do it?

[missjenjen18]

Hello, we speak 4 languages at home:

• I the mother speaks French
• father speaks Hindi
• we speak English at home
• we speak German outside home (school, work, anything)

The children are 3 and 6. Now they know mostly English and German. I sometimes try to introduce French but both of my children are fighting hard not to learn it. Nevertheless when we visit my family they try to understand and reply in english.

Hindi they understand it a bit (somehow I can understand it better than them sometimes), and answer in English.

I have bad relationship with my family so we barely ever talk, the only place I speak French myself is for work...we live in a village in Germany so there is no possibility to create a French network. I already looked into that. What I do try is to sing in French, listen to French music, say some words to translate something during a conversation, read stories in French, and the in French. They do not like the French TV and I don't like the French music so much

I know that we should have done OPOL but that too much for us the parents to think about.

How can we help our children with our mother tongues French and Hindi?

 

[barsomo]

@missjenjen18 Hi!

My setup is quite similar as in that we have 4 languages (Finnish, Portuguese, French and English) but we have done OPOL from the beginning. I speak Finnish, my husband Portuguese, community is French (with a bit of English) and us parents speak English between us. We don’t have a family language that we all speak together but our kids (2 and 5) speak all the 4 languages. Their Finnish and Portuguese are so far the strongest out of the bunch.

Would it be an option for you to transition to doing OPOL? It might sound daunting but we always felt like it was the most natural option for us and therefore it didn’t feel difficult. Of course for you it might be different. Overall I think it’s by far the best way of helping your kids with your mother tongues, especially if it’s hard to get exposure from the community or through interactions either family.

Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!

 

[missjenjen18]

@barsomo How do I transition to OPOL from now? I feel like my children are fighting against French so much

 

[barsomo]

@missjenjen18 How much do you currently talk to them in English and how much in French? Transitioning to OPOL would mean that your end goal is to exclusively speak French to them, maybe not overnight but over time. And same for your husband with Hindi. I’m sure they’ll resist but if you don’t give up and keep speaking French to them, their resistance will die at some point. There’s no guarantee that they’ll start answering back in French but it’s totally possible, especially with your younger one

 

[missjenjen18]

@barsomo As I wrote I speak French only for work reasons, I don't even talk to my family.

 

[barsomo]

@missjenjen18 That bit I understood, but it’s not clear how much French you speak to your kids. If you sing to them, translate stuff here and there and read to them in French then it’s not nothing. You just need to start increasing the amount of French

 

[aldredian]

@missjenjen18 You probably should cut out German completely. Switch to OPOL and can still keep English as the family language but when individually talking to your children, your mother tongue.

These articles might help around the resistance

https://chalkacademy.com/speak-minority-language-child/

https://chalkacademy.com/encourage-minority-language-trilingual-family/

 

[missjenjen18]

@aldredian We can't stop speaking German, we live in a village in Germany

 

[aldredian]

@missjenjen18 No, as in. You guys don't promote German within the family.

So I'll put it this way. I grew up in Australia. Everything's English around us. My family's from Taiwan and we speak Mandarin.

I have barely spoke ANY English to my parents my entire life. At home, English is banned. Every conversation I have with any of my family members is all in Mandarin.

When we go out, obviously, if we're talking to shop assistants or ordering food, it's in English. But amongst ourselves, when we speak to each other, it's only Mandarin.

That's what I mean cutting German out. The community is providing that exposure for you already. There is no need to further provide exposure to it.

When I'm with my son, I would be talking to my friends in English or talk to shop assistants in English, but the minute I turn my head, it's Mandarin.

My entire relationship with my family members were all built on Mandarin. Same with my son. I've built my relationship with my son using Mandarin. My husband built his with our son in English.

So OPOL is really about you building your relationship with your children using French and your husband builds his relationship with the kids using Hindi.

There may be another reason why your children are pushing back. How diverse is this village? If you guys are literally the only non-Germans in the village, I can understand the push back. Kids want to fit in.

 

[missjenjen18]

@aldredian We did find some Indians in the next town but French speakers to hangout with are much harder to find indeed. In our Village, we haven't met a foreigner yet. I did meet an American at the next village

And yeah we don't speak German at home either. Kids sometimes mix it up but I always switch back to English because my German is still so bad when my husband switch to German I am always so annoyed and let him know. I also want to be able to understand in my home.

anyway, I've read in comments here to try OPOL slowly, I don't really know how to try that. My kid is pushing back so much :-/

 

[aldredian]

@missjenjen18 Low pressure and fun.

The 2 articles I've linked about is a mum detailing how she managed to pivot her 2.5yo to the minority language. You may be able to find some useful tips there.

How about a trip to France for a holiday? Let them see how useful it is? Or is there any original French kids show you think they will like? Cause if getting them hooked on to a French show will be good motivation.

I've hooked my son up to a Chinese show right now so zero resistance there to watch the show.

So basically, find things that interests them that could only be done in French.

What kept me going when I was a kid was back then, Japanese mangas were not translated to English but they were translated to Chinese. So that's just a massive motivation back then.

 

[ibaneztony]

@aldredian I agree with cutting out the language of school/the living environment and focusing on minority languages within the family (whether you're physically at home or outside)