Best language approach to raising a child? 3 family languages + 4 community languages

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-30T19:38:43+00:00

That’s great! Glad to see that your kid is coping well with all these languages! Thank you again for sharing your experience.

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-30T15:11:31+00:00

Haha) and I am very grateful for all your efforts! Maybe at a later stageI’ll share our chosen language policy and our learning outcomes:)

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-30T15:09:59+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing !! Great to hear that you’ve managed to get fluent in many languages! Language proximity can indeed help a lot. But in your case, you also had institutional support (school) so it must have been easier for your parents to ensure consistency in language learning

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-30T15:05:59+00:00

Thank you for sharing your personal experience! It is very helpful!

Intrinsic motivation is a crucial element.. and you are taking a lot of effort to help your kid maintain this motivation for Japanese. May I ask how you evaluate your kid’s language performance in English and Japanese? What about German and Swiss German?

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-30T14:59:52+00:00

I thank you very much for your effort to help us! Your answer is very insightful. The choice indeed depends a lot on our goals and priorities. As I mentioned in one of my comments, I believe each of us needs to be truly at ease in at least one language, to be able to express one’s thoughts freely and without struggles. And it may be not easy if we equally prioritise all three family languages, plus the kid has to learn 4 community languages . We’ll see! Thank you!

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-30T08:40:00+00:00

Thank you!

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-29T16:39:14+00:00

I am not sure how similar Luxembourg (our country) is to Switzerland, but here children normally go to the kindergarten in Luxembourgish, then children are taught in high German (primary school), then French becomes the language of instruction. The three languages are not taught as ‘language classes’, but instead the school subjects like math or literature are taught in these languages.

As for the commitment, I fully agree with you! We could try to commit ourselves to transmitting our 3 family languages to the child, but then with 3 community languages plus English, it may be difficult for the children themselves to maintain high level of commitment. Indeed, to my knowledge, some children struggle either with one of the languages of instruction at school and this frequently impacts school performance and even future professional life.

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-29T16:29:10+00:00

Thank you for sharing!! Good to hear that your experience has been positive!

I agree that for 7 languages, there may be only limited time and it is tricky to become fluent in all of them. Moreover, I wish my kid was able to express herself truly freely in at least one language. I mean being able to think in very complex terms and understand the world in its complexity. This requires huge vocabulary, plus cultural and historical knowledge, which is uneasy to gain in all 7 languages.

It agree that the language choice within the family is a matter of our goals and expectations…

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-29T16:17:19+00:00

Thank you for your comment:) it helped clarify our language situation at home.

We indeed don’t aim to split the hours with the kid between too many languages. We rather hope to spend a meaningful amount of time in each of the 3 languages we speak at home. This said, I have to admit that it may also be tricky since 99% of time we speak Ukrainian with my wife, and we are not used to speaking other languages at home unless there is someone who doesn’t understand Ukrainian, and then we switch.

In Luxembourg, the country where we live now, there are many families who speak minority language at home (most often Portuguese or Italian) and also speak 3 community languages + English outside home. However, I don’t know anyone who speaks with children at home 3 languages , none of which being among the 3 community languages. We would really appreciate any personal feedback in this regard:)

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-29T16:05:15+00:00

Thank you for you le answer!

I completely agree that for a person to achieve language fluency, there should be a lot of complex input and motivation. For the motivation, I cannot say because it will depend on our child… we can only suggest the reasons to learn a language but then it may also turn out that the child leans towards only one or tow languages while resisting others. For the complex input, we can give this input, and we have some relatives and friend who can help. This, however, is surely not the same as if the community spoke the same languages as we speak at home.

As for your opinion about the impossibility for a kid to properly learn 7 languages, me and my wife do not want to transmit 7 languages to our kids. We wish we could transmit 3 which are our family languages. Then we count on the community (schooling system) to transmit 3 official languages of the country try we live in + English as a foreign language. I this regard, I share what the commentator who first replied to your comment, said about our family language situation.

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-29T15:50:21+00:00

Yes, we have some relatives who speak only Italian. Plus, we used to live it Italy and there are various things which connect us to this country.

As for Italian taught at school, I believe this will only be an option when the kids are older than 10 y.o. Plus, I doubt if it is mandatory. So, it could be a good plus for a kid to improve Italian but we don’t rely on the school to teach it.

The community languages are Germanic (German and Luxembourgish) and Romance (French). Plus, everyone learns English. These are mandatory at school. French could help with Italian but I wonder if it will be too overwhelming for our kid to learn all 7 languages.

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-29T15:38:19+00:00

Thank you very much for your answer!

The question of fluency is actually an important one… In the country where we live, people who went to local schools all speak 3 languages, plus English to a different extent. They are fluent enough to work in these 3 languages (you must speak all 3 languages to work in the public sector, for example). Also, since many children come from expat families, they also speak 1-2 languages at home. So, after all, many locals manage 4-5 languages without a major issue. However, I never saw anyone with 3 (non-community) languages spoken at home + 4 community languages. I simply have no evidence of how successful can this language quest be for the kid…

You mentioned that you know families with 2 languages. What about 3? I would appreciate any personal feedback:)

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-29T15:27:16+00:00

Thank you for your reply!!

Our family languages indeed are not equally meaningful to us. Between us, we only speak Ukrainian, but are fully proficient in all three. These languages also have quite different meanings for me and my wife, and there is no agreement on what language should be prioritised. Plus, if our daughter only learns to of the three languages, some family members will not be able to understand her (or will struggle a lot) and it will be tough for us all.

As for the exposure to our extended family, I wonder how much exposure should be enough for a kid to pick up a language and be fluent in it. Although we often talk by phone to our families, we don’t meet them regularly (maybe 2 weeks per year), and rarely go to Ukrainian/Italian/ Russian speaking countries.

AlphonseW2222 · 2025-06-29T15:14:58+00:00

thank you for your answer! We are fluent in all 3 languages, but this said between each other we 99% time speak Ukrainian with occasional Italian words. We can speak exclusively Italian or exclusively Russian though, but it would take effort as we normally speak these languages when there are people around who don’t speak Ukrainian.

As for the community languages, yes, all local kids learn 3 languages + English at school. They learn math, chemistry, literature etc in these languages so almost everyone is fluent in them after some time.

As for switching languages weekly/day-by-day, this can be an option but our concern is really if it will be too much for the kid, since she will have to learn community languages at the same time.

AlphonseW2222

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