Eva Longoria wants trilingual kids

My better half's family lives in Puerto Rico where all the locals speak Spanish amongst themselves and don't really care if you understand them or not. Just got back from our first family vacation and trust me, I felt left out ALOT.

The kids down there are under 5 years old and they all speak fluently in Spanish and English just as the adults can. It's amazing how fast they switch. I was braiding the one little girl's hair (she's 3) and she was saying something in Spanish (apparently to me) and turned around and said 'You don't speak Spanish do you?' They must do something right with the kids. They are all well spoken on top of being bilingual. I would love to learn Spanish with my daughter so that we don't feel so ostracized later on when she's able to join in conversation. I don't know about 3 languages at once, I suppose it could be possible.

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Christina of http://christinamolin.wordpress.com/ has a son named Vince, who has "an extra chromosome aka Down syndrome (Translocation 21;21)".

Vince is growing up trilingual - his mother speaks Swedish, his father speaks German and they use English to speak with each other. It makes sense that he should grow up with all three languages!

http://christinamolin.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/multi-lingual/

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My husband speaks only Dutch with my 2 year old and I speak only English (I do also speak and understand Dutch). She speaks both languages equally well for her age. Since we live in California where is is almost a 2nd language we also plan to introduce her to Spanish through after school lessons once she is 5. In general kids who learn a second language from birth learn subsequent languages very easily.

When you think about it we are one of the few countries in the world where the majority of people (educated and not) are only mono-lingual. My husband not only speaks perfect Dutch and English, but also French and German and also took Latin - all before he finished high school! Why should it be such an odd thing for us to strive for?

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My Indian friends would chuckle at the question. Pretty much all of them speak at least three languages. When I went to a wedding in Hyderabad, a 2-year-old girl was reciting her numbers in English, Hindi, and Telugu. She could speak in sentences in all three languages. In Hindi, her third language, she stated, "everyone should learn to speak Hindi."

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Jared went to preschool with two kids who were tri-lingual, one who spoke Chinese, Korean, and English (iirc) and one who spoke Japanese, Spanish, and English. The parents were each bilingual in the different languages. In fact, in his school, being monolingual was the exception. The more languages the better, if you ask me. Jared and Sara are learning Spanish as well as English, but they aren't (yet) fluent in it.

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I'm Danish, so I try to speak mostly danish to my daughter - her dad is Finnish, so he speaks finnish to her, but together he and I speak english. We're quite curious as to what language her first word will be in.

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It is easy to make your child multi-lingual. In this case...speak to the child only in French in the mornings, then only in English during the afternoon, and only in Spanish at night. (Keep television shows in those languages during those times...books, music, too) You will need to change this around so that the child is not only learning a certain category of words in one language (ie breakfast foods). If you separate the use of the languages, the child will have no trouble knowing the difference. If they speak to you in the wrong language at the wrong time, don't make a big deal out of, just answer in the correct language and they should begin to automatically answer in the right language. If not, you can politely remind them which language to speak. You can mix it up by days, also...just keep them separated. Children who are bilingual or better have excellent language skills, and for some reason researchers don't yet understand, they tend to score higher in math. Just be sure that one of their languages is the primary language of the country in which you live. Otherwise, they will suffer in school.

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I love Cathy's suggestion. I am VERY interested in making sure my child learns Arabic and English, as well as French. My husband only speaks English, so the burden falls on me. I majored in French in college, but my French is just so-so, so I am working on speaking it with her and using videos, Muzzy, etc. For the Arabic, I have mostly relied on my parents to speak it to her. I need to be more proactive about this because it is so important to me, so I loved Cathy's suggestion. I think everyone should be at LEAST bilingual. When I was in preschool, we lived in Egypt and I learned French, Arabic and English at the same time. There it is the norm, There is no reason why we can't catch up to the rest of the world in that regard!

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