Trilingual Tochter

The decision to bring our daughter up trilingually was an easy one for us. Having grown up as a highland nomad, I have always been exposed to different cultures and languages and believe very strongly that the gift of language is priceless. It can only make you more open-minded and accepting in the long-term as well as open doors for your future. We haven’t done any research on the different approaches and as yet I don’t have any concerns (these, no doubt, will come later once her language use is more advanced, if we notice weaknesses, if she refuses to speak one or the other, etc.) Basically, she gets Spanish and English at home (one parent, one language) and German at nursery. I am hoping that consistency is the key and, as for the rest, only time will tell!

My daughter is 20 months old and has been attending a German nursery for a year now. She goes there most days from 9 until around 3.30, sometimes even longer, and seems to enjoy it (although she can’t speak yet, so still can’t tell me otherwise!) The only way I have of telling that she is happy is the way she picks up her shoes in the morning after breakfast, marches to the door and bangs on it until we are ready to leave. She then runs to the car and once out the other end, pushes the nursery door open, presses the button on the lift impatiently and then attempts to sprint all the way down the corridor until she reaches her home for the day – the Bienchennest (the Little Bee’s House). Once she’s in the room, she happily turns around to me, gives me her regal wave, says “bye bye” and off she goes. Not every day is like this, but thank goodness, and touch wood, most are and will continue to be.

As I said, at home I speak to her in English and my husband always speaks to her in Spanish; but English is the main family language. We have a competition running on how many words she can say in each and which she will pick up the fastest. I succumbed to a Spanish passport (it was cheaper than the British one – much cheaper – we are talking almost 300 Euros cheaper! I’ll resist the jokes about no-one wanting to be Spanish…), so I am obviously even more determined that she learns English first. Spanish was definitely in the lead – I think it’s a much easier language to learn, in terms of the vowel sounds anyway – and she picked up words like “Hola”, “Gato”, Vaca” and “esto” really quickly. Luckily for me, however, her British grandparents have just spent the week here, so for the time being, English is back in pole position. She now happily says words like bye-bye, hello, car, house, apple, fafafly (butterfly) and papapat (Postman Pat; her favourite cartoon).

The only German words we knew she said were “Nein”, “Meins” (mine) and “Auto”. The word “nein” was one of the first words she said in any language – I’m guessing she needed this to defend herself against the other children in nursery. The funniest thing was that she also perfected the wagging finger to go along with it (definitely from nursery as 1. We don’t say “nein” and 2. We don’t finger wag).

We knew therefore that she spoke the odd word in all three languages and that she understands mostly everything you say to her or ask her to do in Spanish and English. But until yesterday we had no clue and to be honest, hadn’t even thought about, how much German she really understood. We went to pick her up as usual and were standing at the door waiting for her to finish her drink. One of the group leaders turned and said to her “Hol bitte dein Oberteil von der Heizung ab!” (pick up your top from the radiator – so not even the most basic of sentences) and so off she ran to the radiator, picked up her top, and brought it over to me. It suddenly dawned on us that our daughter is trilingual…and that it won’t be long until she understands more German than us!