When and how should we introduce a fourth language? | Raising Children in More Than One Language | Forum

Hi, I am so happy to have found this website.  We are a Greek-Belgium family living in London.  We have two children aged 4 and 21 months. I speak Dutch to my children and my husband speaks Greek.  Both children go to nursery full-time in English.  Our eldest is confident in the three languages, although he speaks Dutch and Greek with an English accent, so please let me know if you have any tips on how to change this.  Our youngest seems to understand the three languages, but only speaks a few words (but I am not that worried about that yet).  My husband and I speak French together, but so far we have avoided speaking French in front of the children, as we were worried that 3 languages would be more than enough and that a fourth language would confuse them.  We are also unsure as to how we should go about introducing a fourth language.  However, the issue is that as a result we don't have a common "family language".  When we are all together, my husband speaks Greek, and I respond in Dutch (we understand each other's language sufficiently well to do so) but we never have an entire conversation in one language.  We would like to start introducing French as an additional language, and I would love to hear from other parents on how to go about this, and when would be a good time to start doing so.  Is it too early? Should we wait until our eldest starts school next year or should we start as soon as possible? Should we involve the youngest as well or stick to the three languages at the moment? 

I look forward to hearing from you – thanks! 

Franck, thank you for your reply and your link to your blog! 

Our 4 y.o. has now started French classes, he has a 45 minutes lesson every week, and I then try to repeat what he has learnt at home, maybe once or twice a week.  He quite likes it, but it is interesting to see that, at four years old, he really has to LEARN the new language, i.e. he has to try to remember the words, and he is not just assimilating it, in the way that he continues to develop his English, Greek and Dutch.  He is finding the accent quite difficult too, it seems that the English accent is really embedded already! 

At the moment, we just try to keep French fun, and we don't put any pressure on him.  It will take time for him to learn, but that's fine with us. 

Emmanuelle 

Hello Emmanuelle,

I live in France and I have three trilingual daughters aged 2, 3 and 8. The girls speak Norwegian (with me), Arabic (with their father) and French (at school/pre-school/nursery).  My oldest goes to a public French school, but is also learning Norwegian (via an internet course designed for Norwegian children living abroad) and Arabic (Arabic course given at her school outside school hours). She has been watching cartoons and films in English since she was 3-4 years old because she wanted to learn to speak English.  She started learning English at school last year, and loved it. She says speaking Norwegian helps her "guess" the meaning of the words. She is also used to hearing English being spoken. Her father and I sometimes use English as a "secret" language when we speak together in front of the kids. Our "secret" conversations are no longer secret now though, because she understands most of what we say. Unfortunately, her teacher this year does not speak English, so I am trying to find easy books and CDs for her in English to enjoy at home. She wants to learn Portuguese,too, because there is a possibility we might move to Brazil for a year or two. Her younger sister of 3 is also very happy to learn a few words in English and would love to learn more. She stared speaking quite early and is fluent in French and Norwegian (with a slight French accent) and speaks Arabic well. Number 3 is still not saying much. Although she understands all 3 languages, I think she uses French the most. 

Nadya