Can multiple languages confuse baby?

[ashah3]

Hello there,

My mother tongue is gujarati. We talk to our 3.5 months old in gujarati. Though I sing to her in 3 different languages. i.e. gujarati, hindi and english
Also I am going to start showing her flash cards in English once she turns 4 months. So my concern is, what if mix of all languages will confuse her and if she loses the interest.
Has anyone gone thru the similar case? What did you do differently? I want her to learn mother tongue (so that she can communicate well with her grand parents) as well as english.
Please share your thoughts. Thanks! 

[ELeducation]

My daughter is 13 months old and understands both English and Spanish. I speak to her almost exclusively in Spanish so she seems to be slightly stronger in that language since I am home with her all day.  However, although my husband tries to speak to her in Spanish as much as possible, English is his first language, and he and I usually speak to each other in English.  Because of this, she has always heard English being spoken, and I do teach her English as well now. She doesn't seem confused to me. I can say "horse" or "caballo" and she'll do the sign for it or point to a picture of a horse...same goes for a ton of other words. We will probably even be introducing German and French in the coming months as well. I think children have the ability to organize and sort out the languages. There are many success stories on here and all over the internet of people teaching their babies multiple languages. I think as long as you make knowing each language purposeful and that they get to use them both/all, they will retain the languages you teach them and not be confused.

[GeniusExperiment]

my daughter is trilingual, my language, my husband's language, and English (as we live in the UK). My husband is bilingual himself and we just added the fourth language - we waited till she was 4 to see how she was handling the main three languages, and when there wasn't a problem, we added the fourth. The human brain seems to be set up to handle multiple languages, so don't worry about it, just make sure you have one or two that she knows very well and it sounds like that's what you're doing.

[ELeducation]

GeniusExperiment,
Do you and your husband do OPOL or speak the different languages in different situations? How did you introduce the third language?  I'm just wondering about your experience since we will be adding another language soon.

[ashah3]

I am so glad to know that I am on right path! Thanks for sharing your experience and views. It would really help! 

[Speekee]

Hello there,

My mother tongue is gujarati. We talk to our 3.5 months old in gujarati. Though I sing to her in 3 different languages. i.e. gujarati, hindi and english
Also I am going to start showing her flash cards in English once she turns 4 months. So my concern is, what if mix of all languages will confuse her and if she loses the interest.
Has anyone gone thru the similar case? What did you do differently? I want her to learn mother tongue (so that she can communicate well with her grand parents) as well as english.
Please share your thoughts. Thanks! 

No limits!! She will not get confused... go for it!

[GeniusExperiment]

ELEducation, we are not strictly OPOL at all, I mainly speak my language, he mainly speaks his to the children but then amongst us we speak English 60-70% of the time and very often we are with friends when we speak English as well. plus my kids started nursery very early where it was all in English. Now we just added the fourth (my husband's second native language) via Saturday school, which is four hours each Saturday in Russian. So no, we are not strictly OPOL and even though I see how some structure makes sense, I know practically in many cultures that have two to three languages, it is very common for people to switch back and forth all the time, so don't worry about it.

[ELeducation]

Thanks for sharing! We are not strict OPOL either, as I did not really grow up that way either. I am entirely fluent in both Spanish and English. The only "rule" we have is to speak to her in Spanish as much as possible so that she hears it often since she mostly hears English from other people when we are out. Also, as I mentioned English is my husbands first language so even though we try to speak Spanish a lot, many times we communicate wih each other in English.  I can't wait to start with the next language.

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