Re: Quadrilingual

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 09/18/04 

Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 23:52:39 GMT

Schurich wrote:
>
> I'm an Egyptian living in England and my husband is French/German. We
> have a six-month old son. So far, I've been speaking Arabic to him,
> and my husband French; following the ‘one-parent one-language
> approach'. However, my husband and I speak English together and to
> the community around us. We would really be interested in hearing
> from other parents in a similar situation to learn from their
> experience.
>
> Also, do you think it would be too much to try and keep the German
> side of things (I mean the language) alive for him, as well? I have
> heard of cases where children grow up speaking 4 languages from a very
> early age. Does anyone have some experience of this?

Speak away! He'll have FOUR native languages, and that will be a VERY
useful attribute in the future.

Don't worry, he won't confuse them. There's some indication that kids
with multiple native languages take a little longer to start talking,
but thereafter progress faster than monolingual children. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net
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