Raising child trilingual (OPOL) when parents don’t speak each others language

[antonhrrs]

@pollyton I can relate somewhat to this. I'm the father of a bi-national family (American/Dutch). I don't speak much Dutch, so English is our community language.

To complicate things, we moved to Sweden (neither of us spoke Swedish), from the US, when our daughter was 2 years old and just learning to speak a bit of Dutch and English words.

Our approach for most of our life has been:
To sppeak:
English to Me
Dutch to Mom
Swedish at school and our swedish friends.

As most comments mention, there is a lot of double speak and mirroring of conversations, and sometimes feeling left out (for me at least) when at home, but I have felt this helps tremendously to keep exclusivity of language/parent so their little spongey brains can context switch. Ie this is Mommy's language and this is Daddy's language, and this is how teachers talk.

This was further exemplified when I would picker her up from Swedish school at ages 2-4. I'd come to school and watch her speak swedish fluently to her teachers and friends, probably better than Dutch/English, and automatically when she would see me she would have to pause talking for a few minutes and not be talkative in either kanguage till we were walking toward the car to leave. It almost felt like her brain was having a bit of trouble context switching because I was there. Time went on and she grew out of that, but would still speak swedish to her teachers and English directly to me.

Really, it took patience and trust in your child and your parenting. Just because she wasn't speaking as fluently compared to other kids didn't mean she was behind. There was just a lot jumbled together and needing to be connected. Now she speaks all 3 fluently at 4.5 yrs old. It just clicked one day. Just yesterday for the first time she said, "that is how you say it in English." My brain, nearly exploded because she was actively understanding not just Mommy vs Daddy language, she knew which was what!

TLDR:
Be patient.
Have trust.
Keeping one parent, place etc connected to one single language greatly helps with context switching and connection.
Your child and their development might be slow at first, but it will help tenfold later on.
Bonus - This journey may help you speak your partner's language a bit better too.

 

[jimakoskx]

@pollyton My wife and I are committed to raising our children to be trilingual. They're excelling in all three languages, outperforming many of their monolingual peers.

While my wife has mastered my native language, I've faced challenges in doing the same. I often have to rely on her or our children for translations, which can be frustrating. However, it's a sacrifice we're willing to make

 

[4bears]

@pollyton My wife and I are in a very similar situation. We both speak to our 16 month old son in our own languages. Those two languages are completely unrelated and we both have only a very rudimentary grasp of the other (similar to what you said, neither of us can read the baby books in the other language). Our shared language is English, which is also the community language.

However, we've picked up enough of the key phrases, like "give this to mommy", "do you want milk?", etc. that, together with situational context, we can usually follow the conversation in the other language just fine. It helps a lot that he's only 16 months, and so the range of topics is really, really limited. So, neither of us feel left out at all. And it also doesn't feel strange to us at all for us both to be soothing him simultaneously in our languages.

I'm hopeful that, as he grows, our passive language abilities in each others' languages will be able to keep up enough to keep this dynamic. Even if not, at some point, he'll be able to help translate for us.

As for our son's vocabulary, he's learning a mishmash of both languages. He seems to have a decent passive vocabulary in both languages, and knows the words for things like "milk", "cat", "change diaper", "go outside", etc. in both languages. But currently, his active vocabulary is all one language per concept. For example, he only says my wife's language for "eat", even though he understands when I say it in my language. Similarly, he only says "press" (he loves pressing buttons and light switches, etc.) in my language. So, for those words, we just encourage him and repeat it back in the language he said it and/or rephrase it in our own language.

 

[seanh43]

@pollyton The part about two people raising their kid in their own language really hit me. Of course learning the basics is a good start but the basics don’t get you that far in my opinion. If you truly want to understand everything you would have to study it more deeply or always have the other translate both sound exhausting to be honest.

 

[barsomo]

@seanh43 We’ve had the complete opposite experience. I’ve been able to learn Portuguese and my husband Finnish by doing OPOL without any prior knowledge or additional studying. In the beginning it’s more translating (yet simpler language) but the longer we’ve done it the easier it has gotten. Not saying that everyone will be able to do it, I’m sure there are lots or variables but it’s certainly possible

 

[seanh43]

@barsomo That’s great, thanks for sharing. The reason I was saying someone would have to study is that basics for me are „ how are you „ etc. but what if your child gets older and is using idioms or elaborating on their day you would need a lot more knowledge to grasp that not? How did you do it? Did you translate what you said to the other parent in the community language or his language? I don’t think it’s impossible either but yes a lot of variables are at play.

 

[barsomo]

@seanh43 That’s a good question. My older child is 5,5y right now and when she and my husband talk between themselves I can understand everything. Every now and then I hear them using a new verb or a word that I don’t know and I always ask my husband right away what it means. So basically I’m at a similar level with my child in terms of my understanding of the language, but she actually speaks it every day and hears it a bit more from my husband so overall she’s more advanced than me. If I translate something for my husband it’s always in English which we speak between us (not the community language though).

I know another family where the wife speaks Portuguese (her husband is French Canadian) and although they do OPOL the husband doesn’t understand much Portuguese. So you’re right, it really depends!

 

[silent_wife]

@seanh43 This is sometimes a problem for us.
We are both decent at each others language (at least when it comes to understanding what the other person say, speaking is different), but my oldest is 13 now. 2nd almost 12. We are having way more complexe and nuanced conversations and debates about ethics, politics, science... And sometimes when we have them as a family we switch to English (community language) because its easier than translating back and forth. As adults we didnt learn the new language as quickly as our kids.
Its not ideal, but for our older kids their German and Arabic skills didn't suffer. They can read, write and communicate according to their age level.
I guess the pandemic worked in our favor there. The girls spend so much time at home with both of us (I was WFH and husband wasnt working regular hours in his industry) and we had so much time to focus on language skills.

 

[seanh43]

@silent_wife Yes that’s exactly what I’m talking about, the basics really don’t get you far if you start talking policts etc. But it seems that you found a way to make it work, maybe one has to accept things just as they come. German and Arabic really aren’t easy , so you’ve done a great job already.

 

[pmartens]

@pollyton We are in a similar situation - parents passing on Czech and Hindi, English as a community language and language we as parents speak to each other; we understand each other's language only a little bit; no daycare. I never felt that the separate languages infringe on our family time. I can generally pick up somewhat what my husband says from the context (you do learn as the time passes from the other parent speaking it to the child repeatedly); I do not need to know every word in books he reads to our son, and if I want to, I just ask what the book is about. We both use a lot of translation for each other (I tell my husband what I talked to our kid about/what the kid told me/what the books he likes me to read to him are about/etc.).

As others here pointed out, your husband's reaction to your child was not great. The child wants to feel heard and not punished for speaking (whichever language it is). I would suggest explicitly saying, "Yes, you got it. That's how it is called in [insert language]. In [insert language], it is [....]". My almost 3 year old has no trouble now understanding that words are said differently in different languages, and if he says something in one language, it is easy to ask him what it is called in a different language.

I also wonder a bit about your wording - you mention competing for the child's attention. Is there a bit of competitiveness between you and your husband with respect to passing the language/anxiety over who gets to pass it? A child might pick up on that/that itself could affect the quality of family type interactions.

 

[pollyton]

@pmartens Yes, there might be. At the moment my language is far stronger and my husband starts to not always understand what our son is saying. He only recently started asking me what certain words our son very frequently uses mean, which made me realize that he understands my language or listened far less than I assumed. Our son is verbally very advanced for his age, but only in my language. Additionally, there is family pressure on my husbands side that the child will speak his language. Despite all of them being fluent in English, unlike mine. His family asks frequently about it and even I feel the „pressure“ around this topic. I think they are unhappy with my language being stronger. At least temporary until his language and English catch up and English will overtake anyways in no time. My family was always very relaxed about that topic. Some also spoke English with our child when we visited to not exclude my husband. Both our entire families live abroad with us visiting once a year.

 

[pmartens]

@pollyton I see. I would focus on the family pressure first of all (I suspect your husband is feeling the pressure, which leads to friction during family time). Can your husband address it with them directly? Lots of people not accustomed to bilingualism just have no idea how hard it is to pass on the language in the absence of wider community, and are surprised why the child struggles to learn when one of the parents speaks the language. Unfortunately, all this pressure generally just makes things worse (these same people often are critical when they then hear the child speak the language, but not perfectly, which further discourages the child). Would they be open to learning a bit more about bilingualism? It might change their attitudes if you could refer them to some articles/videos addressing the common challenges. Also, as the child gets older and is able to stay focused during video calls, I would invite the in-laws to spend time conversing with the child and reading to him. It might also be helpful to figure out opportunities for your child to get additional exposure to Hebrew as he gets older (any local Hebrew schools for children? Other Hebrew speakers in the community? Online Hebrew courses for children for whom it is a second language? Facebook groups connecting Hebrew speakers abroad?). Even if it feels hard now, both you and your husband are doing great that you keep trying. Your son might be stronger in one language, but even just keeping the ability to understand in the other language keeps the door open for him to learn more in the future. Make sure that you have enough books in both languages on diverse topics, continue reading and speaking to him a lot, and he will learn both languages eventually.

 

[eawos]

@pollyton I speak Mandarin and my husband speaks Hungarian to our kids (7M and 3F) exclusively, while we communicate in English and they speak it at school. Our 7 year old is fully trilingual, and he only speaks our respective languages when talking to us. He has tried to interject our English conversations before, but one of us always turn to him and ask him to repeat it in our language. It has works for us and other trilingual families that we’ve met. Don’t give up!

 

[ibaneztony]

@pollyton Hi, a few points...

Your son is only 1.5 so it's very early to judge or test. I would encourage you both to not test him (with questions like "what is this") too often, but rather if you detect he's not getting something, just repeat it in context, like "oh that's a BALL, you want the BALL? The BALL has such a nice blue colour" etc.

Also make sure to keep language interactions as positive and low pressure as possible, while challenging him with expanding vocabulary starting with YOU (parents) modelling the vocab first. Try to avoid ever insisting on child using one language over the other as then it becomes a burden for them. If one language falls weak, then you need to increase exposure and diversity of exposure in that weaker language (new activities/experiences in that language, pulling in other people who also speak it, joining cultural clubs, later on introducing media in that language etc).

We are trilingual at home and not as isolated as you in terms of each other's languages, but my husband started off not knowing very much of my mother tongue at all, only a few words and not enough to string sentences together. It's now been 4 years of a multilingual family and he's picked up a lot more by osmosis but I make sure not to pressure him with keeping him learning. He's still definitely beginner though and far behind our child

Obviously if you and husband make an effort to learn more of each other's languages, that's a great start. But if that doesn't end up happening much, then what helps reduce the isolation is translating to each other the key interactions you have with child - e.g. if you have a discipline moment in one language or a longer conversation, explain in English to the partner in the moment/at the next opportunity what was said. This is good for 1) inter-parent collection and 2) child picks up the same content in a second language which helps with making language connections too. Even with smaller interactions you can ask each other "what did you say?/what did he say?" And translate it and then you're also learning on the go!

 

[godfavorme]

@pollyton If I were you, instead of doing full OPOL, I'd have both of you use your language predominantly but also study the other language and practice with your child.