"British
Airways to London Heathrow on Saturday, ready to land."
"Aereo
Alitalia in partenza per Roma."
"Lufthansa
Flugzeug von Frankfurt nach Chicago."
The other
day I was listening to my three-year-and-ten-month-old son while he was playing
alone in his room. The way he
could switch languages was absolutely fascinating. He was playing with his
little planes and one minute he was speaking English, the next he was making an
announcement in Italian and 30 seconds later he had moved on to
German....
There are so
many studies showing the positive effects of growing up with more than one
language and yet I still hear a lot of doubt and prejudice on the subject. For
example, people often tell me that children learning more than one language
start to speak later. It might be true in some cases, but in my experience it's
not the rule.
How
many times have I heard the story about when I said "pwetty twee" in
front of the Christmas tree at eighteen months? |
| Multilingual playground in Berlin |
I grew up in
a bilingual (English/Italian) environment, my son goes to a bilingual
(German/Italian) nursery and I know several children that are growing up with
two or three languages (including German, English, Italian, Spanish, Russian,
Japanese, Bulgarian and Farsi).
A friend of
mine was recently telling me about her son's new German nursery, in Berlin
Mitte, where the majority of children speak two or three languages.
I haven't
noticed any significant difference in the way multilingual children speak
compared with monolingual children. In fact, in some cases I would say that their skills can be more advanced.
Of course,
sometimes they mix their languages ("Io voglio mangiare Vanille
Eis!") and the Grammar is not always perfect ("Io sono finito"
instead of "Io ho finito"), but surely that's no big deal.
I remember
when I was expecting Leo, I told my midwife that I was hoping he would grow up
speaking three languages. She seemed to think that Italian and German would
suffice and that English could be a secret language between Mamma and Papa.
Well she couldn't have been more wrong: Leo already understands practically
every word we say in English and, if we need to speak in code, we either have to
spell the words out ("P I Z Z A" or "I C E" "C R
E A M") or say them in French (il est fatigué; never mention that little
one is "tired" in English, Italian or German!).
That works,
at least for now.
Are
you raising a bilingual or trilingual child? What is your experience? Comments
welcome!
