[matteoraso]

This can backfire sometimes. My parents tried to do this with me for Italian, and it ended up causing me some problems with English, so they had to stop. I still tend to slur my words in English, although I speak very well in Italian and have been learning the language very easily.

[kwanbix]

My kids are Spanish native, and learned German and English at their 4 and 6 years of age. Never a problem. Very common here in Europe. I don't get how that could cause trouble.

[prmoustache]

It is unlikely to be the cause.

A kid can learn as much as 5 languages at a time as long as it is context related (like one language with one parent, another with other parent, another at school, another with a grand parent, another in another context).

Sure they may be times when the kid will mix'n'match because a specific word comes in his head in a language but he will still be fluent in all those languages after a few years.

Problem arise when there is no boundary in how which languages need to be used. Sometimes the brain feels like a piece of furniture full of drawers. I speak 4 languages and understand well 6 but when my mexican speaking partner ask me something in spanish right after a teams meeting in english I sometimes answer to her in english because my brain didn't have time to close the english drawer and open the spanish one. Same when we are at dinner and me and my daughters speak in spanish although we're all french but talk about what happened that day, which happened in spanish. At lease that is how I visualize it.

[CogitoCogito]

> Problem arise when there is no boundary in how which languages need to be used. Sometimes the brain feels like a piece of furniture full of drawers. I speak 4 languages and understand well 6 but when my mexican speaking partner ask me something in spanish right after a teams meeting in english I sometimes answer to her in english because my brain didn't have time to close the english drawer and open the spanish one. Same when we are at dinner and me and my daughters speak in spanish although we're all french but talk about what happened that day, which happened in spanish. At lease that is how I visualize it.

Is that really a problem though? It's true that sometimes I can't find the right words in a certain language, but have the perfect words in another. But so what? I mean I know many people who only speak a single language that know exactly what they'd like to say, but can't quite find the right words. Is it really that different?

Personally I find the fact that two people can have a conversation in two separate languages and that they can understand each other great. I mean would it be better to both stick to the same language even if one of you has more trouble speaking it? What exactly is the advantage to that?

Anyway I might be reading too much into your post, but I often hear many similar worries of people when it comes to speaking multiple languages and think often they are overthinking it. You're likely to be stronger in some languages rather than others. You're also likely to be better and listening to some languages rather than speaking them. These factors will also change due to context (what language is spoken around you, whether you're tired, etc.). To me these aren't problems. These are just the limitations of our brains and it's all just fine.

[prmoustache]

I didn't mean it as a problem but as an illustration on how our brain can struggle switching contexts. It is funny because it is exacerbated at night when you are tired.

[CogitoCogito]

Yeah that’s totally normal. I don’t speak much German or Spanish anymore (which is too bad), but that doesn't keep me from responding to German/Spanish with English/Swedish when speaking to them. I think there’s something kind of nice about two people speaking different languages and having no problems understanding each other.

Anyway I only bring this all up because I’ve met so many people worried about confusing their kids with multiple languages. The fact is they _will_ be confused and that is _fine_. Besides kids lack an enormous amount of vocabulary in their language even if they’re monolingual and they do just fine. Parents tend to more worried about this than kids.

[matteoraso]

>Problem arise when there is no boundary in how which languages need to be used.

Yeah, that's probably it. Knowing my parents, they probably both used English and Italian to speak to me. In general, my family tends to use both languages randomly when talking to each other (e.g. start the sentence in Italian, switch to English halfway through, and then switch back to Italian to end it).

[eszed]

That's a very common pattern amongst people who a) fluently speak more than one language, and b) share a great deal of (assumed / sub-conscious) social context.

Out of curiosity: are you never / sometimes / always conscious, as you are doing it, that you are mixing languages? From my knowledge - and observations - some people (at least situationally) are and some people aren't, although I've never seen an explanation of what determines that. Do you have any ideas?

[matteoraso]

>Out of curiosity: are you never / sometimes / always conscious, as you are doing it, that you are mixing languages?

My parents mostly stopped talking to me in Italian when I was a toddler, so I'm not fully bilingual. Whenever I use Italian, it's done consciously, because I have to actively think about what I'm supposed to say. The only exception is with a few words that were only ever said to me in Italian, like basilico (basil). In those situations, I usually have to catch myself and remember to use the English words whenever I'm around people who aren't also Italian.

[ChristianGeek]

Think of anyone you’ve encountered whose native language is different than yours. Chances are they had an accent. The less fluent they were, or the more different their native language was to yours, the thicker the accent. The thicker their accent, the harder they were for you to understand.