Growing up with Three Languages

Birth to Eleven

Xiao-lei Wang

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781847695673
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Linguistique

This book is based on an eleven-year observation of two children who were simultaneously exposed to three languages from birth. It tells the story of two parents from different cultural, linguistic, and ethnic-racial backgrounds who joined to raise their two children with their heritage languages outside their native countries. It also tells the children's story and the way they negotiated three cultures and languages and developed a trilingual identity. It sheds light on how parental support contributed to the children's simultaneous acquisition of three languages in an environment where the main input of the two heritage languages came respectively from the father and from the mother. It addresses the challenges and the unique language developmental characteristics of the two children during their trilingual acquisition process.

Chapter 1

The Complexity of Trilingualism

One day, my family and I were dining in a restaurant on a trip to Chicago. A middle-aged couple at a table near ours kept eavesdropping on our conversation. Before they left the restaurant, the woman came to us and asked, ‘How many languages do your kids speak?’ We answered, ‘Three’. ‘Oh boy, oh boy!’ she cried out, ‘Three languages, just like that! My goodness, these kids are so smart … ’. She mumbled her way out of the restaurant, saying, ‘It’s really a miracle that these kids can switch from one language to the other …’.

Another time, when my family was shopping in a jade store in Beijing, several shop assistants dropped what they were doing and gathered around us just to compliment me about my children’s ability to speak such good Chinese in addition to other languages (though they had no clue what the other languages were).

Still another time, at a New Year’s Eve party given by my in-laws in Neuchâtel, my husband’s elementary school teacher Madame Guillaume was so impressed with our older son Léandre’s trilingual ability (our younger son Dominique was still prelingual at the time) that she literally spent the entire party following him around to listen to him switching languages with multilingual guests and family members.

Although my husband and I have felt flattered by many such compliments over the years, we have also had some unpleasant experiences. For example, a few years ago, a man approached my husband at our community swimming pool to tell him off, saying, ‘It’s about time you speak English to your boys. If you continue to speak your language, they will not be able to speak English. You know, they live in America!’

When our children were younger, a Hungarian woman in our neighborhood bet with us that in a few years our children would give up their French and Chinese and switch to English, based on her ‘evidence’ that her son dropped Hungarian as soon as he had entered elementary school. One summer evening, she stopped me on my routine stroll and told me with a grin that her prediction had proven to be right. She said that she had ‘caught’ my children speaking English to each other that afternoon. She was blissfully unaware that Léandre and Dominique were actually talking to their English-speaking friend Galo who was playing on the floor of the terrace and could not be seen by her.

When Léandre was in first grade, one of his classmates told other children that Léandre had ‘something strange on his tongue’ because he could speak weird languages (after he had learned that Léandre could speak other languages).

And, in Dominique’s third week of kindergarten, he brought back a consent form from a school-district language specialist seeking parental permission to enroll Dominique in a therapeutic language session. Alarmed and nervous as any parent would be, I immediately called to ask what led her to this decision. The language specialist explained to me that as part of her routine entrance screening, she had read a school information sheet which noted that Dominique was trilingual, and it also seemed Dominique was not able to open his mouth wide enough when speaking. Puzzled by her rationale, I asked her whether she had observed Dominique speaking in other circumstances as well, such as with his peers or his classroom teacher. She said that she had not. I suggested discreetly that she observe him a little longer before deciding what to do. I never heard from her again.

I could go on with such stories. The point of sharing a few of them with you is not to blow my own horn with other people’s compliments or to be bitter about their not-so-flattering comments, but to show that many people may have extreme and skewed reactions, opinions and even biases toward trilingual children. In our conversations with people, we noticed that few realize that the process of becoming trilingual is not as simple and straightforward as they imagine. The small linguistic ‘miracles’ that my children have demonstrated involve many layers of complexity. As Colin Baker, a bilingual education expert in the United Kingdom, lucidly points out, bilingualism is a simple term that hides a complex phenomenon.1 In my opinion, the same goes for trilingualism.

This chapter discusses the complexities and intricacies of the trilingual phenomenon. The questions that are explored include: who is trilingual, why equal competence and performance in three languages are unlikely, why purity in three languages is an illusion and why trilinguals should be treated as a separate group instead of being ‘judged’ according to the standards of monolinguals and bilinguals. The purpose is to weed out many of the commonly held myths and misconceptions regarding trilingualism and to present a realistic picture of what it means to be a trilingual.

Who is Trilingual?

The complexity of trilingualism begins with the question, ‘Who is trilingual?’ The American Heritage Dictionary defines a trilingual person as someone who is ‘using or able to use three languages, especially with equal fluency or nearly equal fluency’. Most people probably will accept this definition without questioning, as shown by my survey of 200 preservice education graduate students, in which 96% think the definition is accurate.2 The truth is that if we use this definition, particularly the ‘with equal fluency or nearly equal fluency’ part, as a yardstick to measure trilinguals, I am afraid that very few of them would qualify. To put this discussion in context, I would like you to consider four individual cases.3

Case 1: Philippe

My husband Philippe was born in Switzerland. His father had a doctorate in law and worked for the OECD4 and then the Swiss federal government. His mother was an elementary school teacher and later a homemaker. Philippe spent his early childhood in Paris and Berne, and then his middle childhood, adolescence and young adulthood near Neuchâtel .

Philippe started his life as a simultaneous bilingual in French and German (Swiss–German and High-German). Philippe’s parents spoke exclusively Swiss– German to him at home, and his mother read many books in High–German to him and his sister when they were young to make sure that the children acquired not only dialect; at the same time, he lived in a French-speaking environment. At age 25, Philippe came to the USA as an exchange graduate student and thus added a third language, English, to his linguistic repertoire. Eventually, he earned a doctoral degree from an American university. At present, he is able to function at a high level in each of his three languages in listening comprehension, speaking, reading comprehension and writing (as evidenced by his university teaching and academic publications) in addition to possessing reading competence in Latin, ancient Greek, biblical Hebrew and rudimentary spoken Chinese.5 Philippe has a slight accent in spoken English (no one can tell whether it is influenced by French or German or a combination of both).

The following are his own accounts of his linguistic abilities in different stages of his life. Nineteen years ago when he first came to the USA, he commented, ‘When I talk about kitchen experience, I feel I have more Swiss–German vocabulary. When I was growing up, I spent many hours with my mother in the kitchen. Our conversation was always in Swiss–German. When I talk about academic and other experiences, I feel I have more French vocabulary. I have lived in a French-dominated environment for 25 years, went through all my education including university in French; thus, I feel comfortable to discuss academic and other topics in French’. Today, after spending 19 years in the USA and having the responsibility to pass French to his children (living in French with the children on a daily basis), Philippe commented, ‘I now feel very comfortable to chat with my children on kitchen matters in French … In fact, I feel very competent in English, French and German because of the academic and everyday communication needs … ’.

Case 2: Joanne

Joanne was born in South Korea. Her father had a bachelor’s degree and her mother had a high school education. Her father was a pharmacist and later a businessman, and her mother a homemaker. Joanne spent the first 17 years of her life as a monolingual Korean. Thirty years ago, she immigrated to the USA at age 17 with her family. She started to learn English in high school and college and became fluent in it. In graduate school, she added another language, German. Later on, she went to Germany several times, and spent a few yea...