I have been living in Germany for eight years now with my French husband. We have a three-year-old and an almost two-year-old. Our children are growing up with three languages. In German your native language is known as your Muttersprache or mother language. English is literally our kids’ mother language, that makes French their father language, and German is, well, their everyone-else language. German is spoken by almost everyone else around us from neighbors to daycare. It is a lot for their little brains! Learning one language is hard enough!
I started learning French at age 13 with much difficulty. Everything I had ever known from porcupine to shoe was now known as something different: porcupine became porc-épic and shoe became chaussure in French. My entire world of words had just doubled! Not to mention verb conjugation, grammar and the infinitely different expressions in French. I realized from an early age that it would take more than a lifetime for me to really learn another language.
At age 30, I started to learn German through trial by fire. I worked in an entirely German-speaking environment shortly after arriving. I learned German quickly, but sometimes, it felt like I spoke three languages badly. To this day, I sometimes forget the English word for something because my head is swimming with German and French. That is not to suggest that my German and French are now perfect–far from it! Living with three language is indeed like swimming: swimming in a whirlpool that is fed by three powerful rivers! Sometimes you get completely swept up, like the time our son said, “Can du couper mein pancake, please?”*
I have so many questions about my kids’ language learning. Will our children have three native languages? Is one person enough to teach an entire language and culture? How can our children make each language equal or will they end up with a favorite language that becomes stronger? What language will they speak with each other? Will language learning be easier for our children than it was for me?
I want to know about your language learning adventures or misadventures! Did you make any silly mistakes when first learning a new language? Do your kids have any made-up words for things? Just today, I said Tagesauflauf, which would translate into something like daily pasta bake or hot dish instead of Tagesablauf. I wanted to tell my neighbor about my daughter’s “daily routine” at daycare! What about you?
*Here are some other gems from when our son was first learning to speak and constantly mixed English, French, and German:
Ich habe gelooked in the bag.
You the wolf, you esse me in the bouche.
Ich trouvé ein money in my hand.
Guck mal there is oben-stairs and here is down-stairs.
(While holding a large blue screwdriver) I can kaputt machen canapé!
Wir brauchen acheter toilet paper in the store.
Ich bin ein dragon. Ich habe fire gespitt!
Frozen Ocean Mom 
I loved this, and the examples of three languages – like “wir brauchen acheter toilet paper in the store.” My son, now 33, started out with English and German, his father tongue. Then he picked up French in school, where he had daily lessons in French, gym, playground and geography from age 6. By now, I guess he would say his strongest language is English. But he also speakes fluent Korean, Spanish and a bit of Dutch in addition to his other three languages! It can only get better. For the meantime, enjoy the laughs and stick to English with him and your husband French. They’ll get it figured out.
For me, the funniest thing I remember with my son growing up in a non-English speaking environment was one time we were both sitting on the piano bench, and he wanted me to move. “Go forth, Mama!” he said. He said this because I was reading a Dr. Seuss book to him, where someone tells a figure of some sort – not a sneetch, but a north-going snork or something like that, to go forth. So my son naturally thought that was the way you tell someone to move.
LikeLike