multilingual delay speech?

[reei]

i speak mandarin to my daughter , hubby speaks english to her , my mother in law speaks cantonese to her and her violin teacher speaks japanese to her. i've been showing her Little Pim spanish dvd, just started to show her Japanese dvd from Little Pim and have ordered Wink to learn Japanese dvd.
I find that at 27 months old, she does not speak fluently as other kids her age. She is still speaking like 2 or 3 words, not full sentence. Is this something I should worry about? Should I cut down on the languages?

[LMsMum]

Hello reei! My daughter is trilingual by the nature of our family composition. This is something I worried about too when she was not speaking at the age-appropriate level at 24 months. The answer I got from specialists was "there is no scientific evidence to date that using two or more languages leads to delays or disorders in language acquisition". I heard it so often I memorised it.

I have seen many bilingual kids, whose parents speak the same language to them (e.g. Lithuanian), but different to the language of the environment (e.g. English), who do not have any trouble whatsoever acquiring the language of the environment. I have not seen many trilingual children, whose parents speak two different languages to their children (in our case Russian and Catalan) and who speak the language of the environment to each other (English), but the ones I have seen have similar difficulties to my daughter's.

I don't think there has been enough research on this subject. Having said that, speaking 2-3 word combinations at 27 months is probably about the norm:

http://www.home-speech-home.com/speech-and-language-milestones-30-36-months.html

[aangeles]

Hello reei,

We have almost the same situation with my daughter, who is 28 months old. I speak in Mandarin to her, my husbands speaks Filipino, my mother speaks Hokkien, her daycare teacher speaks Spanish and French to her on alternate days, and she gets English from the rest of the community (we live in the U.S.) I also used to worry a lot that exposing her to so many languages would result in confusion and/or speech delay. But after much research, this is what we found:

1. It used to be suggested that bilingual/multilingual children were a little slower learning to speak than monolingual children. This is no longer an accepted view. Multilingual children vary from one another just as monolingual children do -- some will be early and some will be late speakers.

2. However, a bi/multilingual child whose speech IS delayed (for example, if they have not said the first word by 18 months) should be treated exactly like a monolingual child and should be assessed by a professional. It would be dangerous to attribute the child's speech delay to multilingualism.

Having said that, I do agree with LMsMum that your daughter's speech development still falls within the norm for her age. I would definitely keep up the languages as long as it is fun for her and she enjoys it. 

[reei]

ladies, thanks for your assurance.. have a nice day..

[lizaveta]

i agree with all that has been said previously. it seem that the multilingual excuse has been taken away from us! it's too bad, i have a friend whose 2 year old only says mama and papa and still they hope it's because she is multilingual. unfortunately, their doctor told them that it was not normal and they have to worry more about speech development. thankfully, my daughter is really chatty so this is not a problem. she was always slow physically, she only started to walk at 16 months, but in speech she is a pro. she even sings songs with words. i am very proud of her. plus, she uses both spanish and russian, depending on whom she is speaking to.
cheers,
liza

[sonic]

My boy speaks 4 different languages, I expected speech delay and even taught him sign language in case he was unable to express himself linguistically. I thought he would talk later than most as I was under the impression that boys spoke later than girls and he may be confused due to the multiple languages. However he spoke his first words between 1 yr and 18 months with a vocabulary and word count well above average. He is currently 2 and a half years old and can understand and hold full sentence conversations in each of the languages. He even translates between people. Each individual in our family speaks their mother tongue to him and it seems to have worked without delaying his speech, though perhaps he may have spoken even earlier if we were talking just one language to him.

I believe that each child is different and personally would not have worried even if he did take longer to say his first words but I can't personally attribute multiple languages to any delay in speech.

[Skylark]

No delay here    I think it depends on the child and she/he will start speaking when they are ready, no input is too much for them, if they like it and welcome it! Our girl is not 2 yet, but she understand 3 languages, able to say words in two languages and speaks phrases and carries the conversation in 1 of the languages, I wish we would be more consistent with additional languages though... 

[ariel]

Hi,

It really helps when the child says only a word, you should say the whole sentence and prompt the child to repeat the sentence in whichever language you are working on.  That has really helped my daughter.  She is 22 months and has just started combining two words when speaking.  We speak two languages with her.  I think that is what helped her.  Before she would only say words and I think it was partially my fault because I was more concerned about her building vocabulary.  When I realized how other children could speak sentences, I started emphasizing sentences with her as well and now she is getting better with combining words.  It is a slow progress so hang in there. 

But keep at it with multiple languages; imagine how much difficult it would be for them to learn it if they were in school and were following a curriculum rather than now when they are having fun interacting with their parents. 

I am dissappointed too that the multingual leads to speech delay is taken away from us :P    

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