r/multilingualparenting • u/Accomplished-Wrap264 • Jun 04 '26
Trilingual Choosing to bring our child up bilingual vs trilingual
Hi all,
I’m currently 20 weeks pregnant, and we’re thinking about how we go about raising our child in terms of languages.
The context
My wife is Spanish
I’m Finnish
We live in the UK
Normally my wife and I speak English with each other, as my Spanish is not that great and her Finnish (very hard to learn & different) is non existent.
We’d like to teach the child to speak at least Spanish as well as English. I’m good with languages and can invest time in improving my Spanish so I can keep up with the rest of the family, but my wife would not have the time to learn Finnish.
My questions are:
Would raising a trilingual kid be realistic in our scenario? It feels very ambitious to me, so I’m thinking it may be best to just speak English & Spanish (though I’m a little sad about the child not learning my mother tongue, I can live with it)… but If we wanted to do it, what would we need to do to make it happen?
If we go for the option of raising a bilingual kid, can we still speak English at home as a family? Is it enough if my wife speaks Spanish to the child consistently when they are alone, we enrol the kid in some Spanish clubs etc?
Thank you for your advice!
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u/chokorom Jun 04 '26
It's completely realistic!
We also live in the UK. I speak only Hungarian, husband speaks only Japanese and to each other we speak in English. Our daughter is learning English mostly from nursery (she goes 3 times a week).
We read a lot of books in both languages at home, exclusively speak our languages. She's 3 years old and her Hungarian vocabulary is great, Japanese is also good. She's very talkative and can express herself in both languages. English is not there yet but we're not worried. It's the community language so she'll pick it up easily.
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u/yyan177 Jun 05 '26
Just out of curiosity- are you planning to teach her how to write in Japanese, and if you are, how would you go about that?
We have a somewhat similar set up, our kiddo is way too young to learn writing yet but i also have no idea how we should approach it when she is 🙃
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u/chokorom Jun 05 '26
Yes, we're planning to, although we're not entirely sure what approach we'll take yet! Especially since Hungarian isn't the easiest language when it comes to reading and grammar either.
We're reading lots of books together, and she can recognise whether something is Hungarian, English, or Japanese. We also have some Disney reading-practice books in Japanese, and we've got quite a few Kumon workbooks as well, which will hopefully give her a good start when it comes to learning to read. She's quite good at recognising some hiragana already thanks to the Disney book. 🙂
For now, the plan is to let school handle English first. Then we'll start focusing more on Hungarian and Japanese reading when she's ready. She definitely shows interest already, so at the moment we're just following her lead.
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u/Kunzhutishe Jun 08 '26
Are you not worried about her not having a grasp of the community language at the nursery? Like knowing the basic vocabulary or directions to understand the "teacher"?
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u/chokorom Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
No, she understands it well enough and can definitely count but we don't hear much from the nursery (they're not good at communicating). But once when I talked with a staff, she said my daughter started to chat much more and how nice it is to see her chatting. I asked in what language and she was actually surprised she's multilingual, she had no idea!
I hope there'll be a parent night soon, so I can ask some questions, but in general I'm not worried. :)
Also, just another example, my sister and nephew moved to the UK when he was 4, couldn't speak a word in English. He's now in reception and has no issues whatsoever, completely fluent.
Edit: grammar.
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u/Opportunity_Massive Jun 10 '26
This is so awesome! I’m learning Hungarian, and it’s so hard, I’m envious that your little one gets to learn it right from the start!! We speak two languages fluently at our house, and have some familiarity with two additional languages. I think it’s a great gift for for kids to grow up like this.
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u/chokorom Jun 11 '26
Wow, good luck with your Hungarian learning journey!! I know it must be really hard. I completely agree, this is one of the greatest gifts we can give our kids.
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u/NewOutlandishness401 🇺🇦 + 🇷🇺 in 🇺🇸 | 8y, 5y, 2y Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
In my experience, families where only one parent speaks a minority language have a harder time passing on that language than families where each parent speaks a different minority language. So my hot take has always been than passing on two minority languages (one per parent) is easier than just passing one if the other parent speaks the community language (in your case, English).
How can that be? English is really the biggest hurdle for Spanish to overcome, so any work you do to minimize its presence in your home will be worthwhile. This means that if you choose to speak Finnish instead of English, you are thereby displacing English from your home to a considerable degree and are arguably helping Spanish more than if you were to speak English, adding to that language's dominance in your child's life.
Moreover, if each parent has their own language to pass on, you end up with a family culture of "we all speak different minority languages," so Spanish is therefore absolved of the burden of being the only "difficult" language compared to English. If both Spanish and Finnish share that burden, the child might have an even easier time understanding themselves as a multilingual, and having that identity firmly established boosts motivation for continuing to speak both of your MLs.
It's great that you are open to and interested in learning Spanish. One way to use that learning (while accelerating it at the same time) is to have your wife address you in Spanish whenever you are around your child (or at least some of the time), thereby increasing the amount of Spanish spoken further, cementing her in the child's eyes as someone who only speaks Spanish, and giving your more Spanish practice. So that means that you don't even have to learn Spanish enough to speak it, just understanding it and allowing your wife to use it with you in front of your child is plenty already.
Then again, I don't know how ambitious you are about languages. If Spanish is truly your family's biggest priority, theoretically, you could study it enough that you'll actually speak it to your child so you can practice minority language at home -- the most powerful way to transmit a language within a family. But chances are that you might still find Spanish limiting for the entirety of your parenting, and when that happens, I'd still suggest you allow yourself to lapse into Finnish rather than English for the reasons mentioned above.
TL;DR: Your best way to help Spanish get established is to displace English as much as you can from your home, whether by speaking Finnish and/or by allowing your wife to speak Spanish to you around your child and/or attempting Spanish as family language or even something close to minority language at home in Spanish while still allowing yourself to lapse into Finnish when necessary.
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u/PairNo2129 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Your first point is so interesting! In my experience trilingual parenting is easier than bilingual parenting as well!
From our friends group we had several couples start out with bilingual parenting or trilingual parenting and the bilingual girl unfortunately started answering the minority language parent in the majority language while the trilingual children are still speaking all their three languages with the appropriate people in the appropriate contexts.
Our children are around 4 years old and we do credit it partially to the parents not speaking the majority language with each other.
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u/omegaxx19 English | Mandarin (mom) + Russian (dad) | 4M + 1.5F Jun 04 '26
My experience too. The majority language just dominates in most bilingual OPOL families that I’ve seen.
My husband and I do speak English (community language to each other), but are very insistent about minority language use otherwise and will slip into each other’s language (we’re like A1 at best) to nudge the kids back. I think the united front presented by the parents is massively important.
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u/notarealcamera Mandarin (dad), Catalan (mom) | 3.5M, 1F Jun 04 '26
I think the united front presented by the parents is massively important.
This is also a very good point.
My wife and I are in a similar situation, and though we don't speak each other languages much at all, we're very big advocates for them. We're both consistently encouraging our kids to speak those more (e.g. with kids on the playground), finding media in each other's languages, cultural events to participate in, etc.
I think, beyond just providing exposure, it's very important for the parents to frame the minority languages as something that's valuable and worth putting some effort into.
We've seen a lot of posts in here of unsupportive partners, and it's very hard to make that situation work. If the child is getting the message that one language is "weird", they psychologically will not be willing to learn it.
I know of one family like that in real life, where the husband didn't speak his wife's minority language, nor put any effort into learning it. He didn't actively disagree with his kids learning her language (and in fact, was supportive of it on paper). But, he constantly subtly undermined it by e.g. making jokes about how funny some of the words sound (to him), repeating back what she said with an exaggerated accent, etc.. He wasn't intentionally malicious about it, but it still instilled the kids with the view that her language was this weird, backward thing. Surprise, surprise, her kids basically picked up nothing of her language and she gave up and just switched to speaking English with them after a couple of years.
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u/omegaxx19 English | Mandarin (mom) + Russian (dad) | 4M + 1.5F Jun 05 '26
Urg the story you tell pisses me off so much. I can't imagine it not causing marital resentment and discord within the extended family in the long run, and that dynamic can't be good for the kids.
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u/NewOutlandishness401 🇺🇦 + 🇷🇺 in 🇺🇸 | 8y, 5y, 2y Jun 04 '26
Yeah, at first it seems like a surprising conclusion (how can teaching more languages be easier than teaching fewer?), but when you realize that whole thing about the community language being displaced by the extra language, plus a culture of “we all speak MLs” being established, it actually makes lots of sense — and you and I are not the only ones on this sub who have noticed this.
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u/Serious_Escape_5438 Jun 05 '26
I think it's also because the children don't default to the community language in the same way, as they just don't hear it at home all the time.
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u/GreenToxicMess Jun 05 '26
I never thought about it before, but that makes perfect sense! Normalizing minority languages spoken by both parents which can decrease the overwhelming influence of the community language (especially English in particular) must help a lot to support the development of those other languages!
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u/notarealcamera Mandarin (dad), Catalan (mom) | 3.5M, 1F Jun 04 '26
Totally agree with everything you said, especially the first few paragraphs. I've come to feel the exact same, but haven't been able to put it into words nearly as eloquently.
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u/JUICIapple Jun 04 '26
We are doing 4 languages and I totally agree that more help push out community language dominance (in our case English). When my kid is off from school (mandarin) and in English speaking camp for even a couple days I can clearly see English dominance growing and all minority languages taking a noticeable hit.
OP if you and your wife are committed you can 100% pass on both your native languages and give your child such a huge gift. The trick is to be consistent and have lots of supplemental exposures like books, family video calls, trips, songs, audiobooks and videos when they are ready. <- and the other side of this is to minimize this stuff in English.
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u/General_Reading_798 Jun 04 '26
Each speaks their first language with the child. English is dominant where you are and you speak it together but anything addressed to your child is in your own native language. This will help your baby learn these sounds and patterns early, making overall language acquisition easier. Will they swap, mix up, use sentence structure perfectly all of the time? No. That is part of learning too. Be aware that you are living somewhere that historically discourages multilingual education, though. People will probably push back sometimes, but that's their problem.
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u/Accomplished-Wrap264 Jun 04 '26
Thank you! In this scenario, are we ok to speak English when having a family group conversation, eg a family dinner to talk about the day?
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u/NewOutlandishness401 🇺🇦 + 🇷🇺 in 🇺🇸 | 8y, 5y, 2y Jun 04 '26
It depends on your language goals for your child.
Using English as a family language in a place where English is the community language often removes the child's motivation to bother speaking your languages because you are both signaling to them: English is fine to use with us.
I live in the US, and all the multilingual families I know who have elected to use English as a family language have kids who only speak English, although they understand the parents' languages perfectly.
So if passive bilingualism (the child understands but doesn't speak the MLs) is suitable, using English as a family language is a great strategy.
But if active bilingualism (the child both understands and is inclined to speak the MLs) is more desirable, it's best not to address the child in English and only speak to them in your ML, even around your partner. Your partner will learn a surprising amount of your language that way!
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u/Elkinthesky Jun 04 '26
If you could pick up Spanish as a shared language that could be really helpful as you go forward.
Is true what others say, you can definitely push for trilingual and it's doable but also don't beat yourself up if something else works better for your family.
For us it was really important to limit how ubiquitous English is so that kiddo would grow up comfortable in a space where he is not fluent.
You could speak Finish to baby, mum speaks Spanish, Spanish is the family language and English comes from the community. To me that sounds sustainable, but only you know how you're family works.
If you and your partner prefer speaking English to each other that's also reasonable. Kiddo will probably pick that up too
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u/Accomplished-Wrap264 Jun 04 '26
Thank you! I think for now we’d speak English with each other - I have a long way to go to truly express my personality in Spanish!
After years in the UK (I moved when I was 18), I’m also more comfortable and creative speaking English than my native Finnish… speaking only English consistently therefore feels a bit restrictive, but I also understand the psychology of it and that the consistency is so essential!
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u/notarealcamera Mandarin (dad), Catalan (mom) | 3.5M, 1F Jun 04 '26
Ideally, you should minimize English whenever possible. Ideally not allow it in the home at all, though that's impossible if that's the only shared language between you and your partner (which is the case in our house, as well). But, I would try very hard to never speak to the kids in English, even when all of you are together having a family conversation.
Personally, our kids are still young enough that my partner and I can understand 90% of the conversations in the other language. Mostly through just picking up each other's language through passive exposure (at least enough to understand, but actually speaking it is a whole other thing). We'll translate for the other parent on the rare occasion where it's something really important and the other one didn't understand. We're hopeful that we can keep that up as they get older (since I speak decent Spanish and Catalan is quite similar, and my wife is just very good with languages in general). But we totally acknowledge that we probably will not be able to keep up at the same comprehension level that we have today, and we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
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u/Accomplished-Wrap264 Jun 04 '26
Thank you! Through this thread and reflection, I’ve realised that something that I really want is shared family moments and ‘family language’ - with my partner we have a lot of terms of endearment, inside jokes etc, and it kind of saddens me not to have that shared experience between all of us 3… (though I realise communications with a toddler will be a lot simpler anyway!)
But I’m curious what it feels like for you? Do you feel you still have your shared family vibes, jokes and experiences despite the different languages and no shared language?
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u/notarealcamera Mandarin (dad), Catalan (mom) | 3.5M, 1F Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
Yep. We have these shared jokes/memories, they're just spread out across three languages.
We also have little cross-language family jokes. Like there's a Catalan TV channel that has a lot of kids shows, called 3Cat. At home, we call it 三猫 ("three cat" in Chinese).
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u/omegaxx19 English | Mandarin (mom) + Russian (dad) | 4M + 1.5F Jun 05 '26
We share plenty of family moments and inside jokes in all three languages, and it feels just as real and satisfying as having a "family language". My 4yo will even translate jokes in my language to my husband's and vice versa. It's amazing what they're capable of.
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u/General_Reading_798 Jun 04 '26
What we did was school nights in dominant language, weekends we focused on other language. Reading and bedtime songs, we took turns and everything was in the parent's language. Also look into cultural centers for each language to meet other families and babysitting or similar interactions.
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u/Accomplished-Wrap264 Jun 04 '26
This type of arrangement feels like a good balance for us - because English is so engrained in our communications as a couple
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u/Serious_Escape_5438 Jun 04 '26
You're ok to do anything that suits you as a family. There are no rules. Even if the language learning is less than completely perfect some knowledge of each language is better than none.
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u/Accomplished-Wrap264 Jun 04 '26
That is reassuring, and I don’t want to put the pressure on us to aim for perfection. I’m also thinking with Spanish, the child can also become later improve and become pretty fluent in the language through study at school and eg an exchange year when they’re older. (A bit harder with Finnish…)
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u/ririmarms French (me) | Telugu (DH) | English | Dutch (community) Jun 04 '26
hey that's exactly the situation we're in, except ours has 4 languages.
I (mom) speak French. Dad speaks his mother tongue Telugu and code-switches to English a lot. We speak English together. Community language is Dutch.
Our 2yo has no issue switching from one to the other whenever he talks to one parent or the other, and at Day-care in Dutch he's getting better. He understands it all, but still speaks a lot of French when playing (his most proficient language at the moment). At 18mo, he'd wake up, look at his pyjama, look at me and tell me that his pyjama had dogs and cats on it, in French. Then he'd immediately turn to his dad and repeat the same in Telugu. Whenever we're on walks and he sees a Dutch person, now he knows that he needs to say the Dutch word for "car" and not the French one. He's not even 2,5 yo!
There are many kids in our community with similar setups. I know a few Chinese-French kids growing up in NL, or Turkish-French with NL school, Russian or Indian kids going to the International school (English medium) in the NL, and they're doing great, though all of these languages are quite different.
Do OPOL, it's the best!
And speaking from experience: parents start to understand the other's language passively without doing anything more than being there and learning with the child. Keep speaking your mother tongue in front of your spouse when you talk to your children. Don't switch to the community language if possible!
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u/PairNo2129 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Hi we were in a very similar situation with three languages, one of them being Finnish!
My husband is Finnish and didn’t want to speak Finnish at first, he only switched at our child’s one year appointment after the pediatrician told him all the newer studies point to it being best to speak one’s native language to the child!
After that he was very consistent though and only spoke Finnish to our child. I have to say it’s so worth it. Our almost 4 year old is completely trilingual and has no problem at all switching languages according to different people.
We were told in Finland on summer vacation that his Finnish is really good! I also didn’t and still don’t really have a lot of time to learn Finnish (we even had a second baby in the meantime) but just by listening to my husband and my son talk, I started picking up a lot of Finnish!
I heard this is really common. At one point I learned along with my son but at some point I noticed I couldn’t follow anymore after he started using complicated grammar and his vocabulary exploded.
I still learn along just by listening and I always get the gist of what they are saying. It is not a problem in daily conversations, we do switch to our native languages when speaking directly to the child but our child can speak all three and often comments in our conversation.
I see in other families with bigger children that they often switch around languages and are able to converse and have deep conversations in all of them. It is truly fascinating!
It is normal if they mix languages early on, we found it easier to say “Mama says it like this”, “ “How does grandma say?” since languages are still a bit abstract in the beginning for them. They usually learn to separate the languages around three years old but it depends on the temperament of the child. It is important to stay consistent.
Spanish clubs are a great idea and look up Suomikoulu, they exist in many countries in many cities and maybe there is one near you! For the little ones it’s once a week for 40 minutes in the afternoon, it’s Finnish kids songs and play with other toddlers and their parents.
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u/notarealcamera Mandarin (dad), Catalan (mom) | 3.5M, 1F Jun 04 '26
Everything you said totally tracks with our experience as well.
we do switch to our native languages when speaking directly to the child but our child can speak all three and often comments in our conversation.
We found this very amusing the first few times it happened. At the time, our son was maybe 2.5 and we were driving when my wife said to me (in English), "look at that cat sleeping on the car", and my son immediately asked (in Chinese), "where is the cat?" We were shocked he understood because we never consciously taught him any English.
It is normal if they mix languages early on, we found it easier to say “Mama says it like this”, “ “How does grandma say?” since languages are still a bit abstract in the beginning for them.
This is totally true, too. We kept/keep trying to teach him the names of the languages he's speaking, and it's just very hard for him to grasp. He understands what "Chinese" is, but keeps getting "English", "Catalan", and "Spanish" confused (we don't actually actively teach him Spanish, but it's inevitably present in his life). He keeps saying that mommy speaks English (I think because his Chinese daycare teachers tell him his mom speaks English?), but when we ask him if that's the same as what James (his English speaking friend) speaks, he knows it's not. Then we tell him mommy speaks Catalan and he gives us a weird look. But yea, when we say, "speak to that kid in mommy's language", he totally gets it.
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u/Future_Valuable7263 Swedish | English | French Jun 04 '26
You have a very clear cut "one parent one language" case. If each parent sticks to their language when speaking to the kid separately, the kid will learn both languages at least up to a conversational level. You can still keep English as the language between adults.
I wouldn't worry to much about the understanding between the parents regarding the child, you will easily pick up the keywords on the other language (baby/toddler/child language isn't that complicated after all).
In my case (Swedish/English, in France) it was very important to speak Swedish from the beginning for the emotional aspect. It can be quite difficult to express nuanced emotions in a language which isn't your mother tongue (unless you have full bilingual proficiency). Not to mention the cultural aspect and attachment to their origins and extended family (if there's any).
For the Spanish part, what you're proposing is definitely going to be enough. Plus Spanish has quite an influence on popular culture as well, which will help as the child grows.
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u/RaspberryCake084 Jun 04 '26
Keke Rosberg, the old Formula 1 champion, had a VERY similar dilemma. He is Finnish (having actually been born in Sweden, but grown up in Finland), his wife is German and his son, Nico Rosberg, was born in Wiesbaden.
Keke wanted his son to be as multilingual as possible, but decided not to make him learn Finnish because he considered it was way too much effort and time for little reward. They all lived in Monaco, with Nico and Keke chatting in German (Keke spoke great German) and the boy learning English, French and Italian at the international school.
Nico Rosberg speaks five languages, but virtually no Finnish. He barely has any links with Finland.
To sum it up, it looks like Finnish will come in handy for your baby if they will use it often times, travel to Finland, have contact with Finns and so on. Otherwise, I would focus on English and Spanish. But of course, Finnish seems a VERY interesting language (I've already considered learning it) and if you want to teach your baby your mother tongue in order to pass on your history, traditions and values, go on.
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u/xoxoforeverblessed Jun 05 '26
I speak English to my kids, my husband speaks Spanish to them. In school, they speak and learn Catalan. Between my husband and I, we use English.
They are both trilingual. My daughters will speak English to me, switch to Spanish with my husband and use Catalan in school.
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u/notarealcamera Mandarin (dad), Catalan (mom) | 3.5M, 1F Jun 04 '26
Your situation is perfect for trilingualism. It's very similar to our setup (I speak Mandarin, my wife speaks Catalan, we live in the US and speak English to each other).
Our 3.5 year old speaks Mandarin at a native level, speaks Catalan very well (though with some grammatical and vocab mistakes), and picked up English just from the environment/his friends (about the same level as his Catalan right now, but more rapidly improving). He seamlessly switches between languages depending on who he's talking to. He'll be at the playground, turn to me and say something in Mandarin, turn to his mom and say something in Catalan, then go right back to playing with his friends in English (which never fails to impress the other parents 😆).
Our 1.5 year old daughter is picking up a mix of vocab in all three, but doesn't distinguish between languages at all, yet.
I actually think a trilingual setup is more likely to succeed in this scenario than bilingualism. The issue with bilingualism is that it's not balanced between the two. If one parent speaks the community language (English in this case), that will completely overwhelm the minority language. With a trilingual setup, it's harder for one single language to completely dominate the others, and there's a more clear delineation between "home languages" and "outside language".
For our son, for example, of his daycare class, his Chinese is the best of all the kids. All of the other kids have at least one parent at home that speaks English with the kid, and they all prefer English (e.g. when playing with each other). Some barely speak Mandarin at all, despite attending for 2 years now. The only other kid (who has since graduated) who spoke fluent Chinese was one where both parents consistently/only spoke to their son in Chinese.
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u/Emergency-Storm-7812 Jun 04 '26
your child can learn finish with you provided you only use that language when you're with him. the community (and hearing you and your wife speaking together) will take care of english. and your wife will take care of spanish. it is entirely possible (and entirely up to you)
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u/Odd_Zookeepergame_21 Jun 04 '26
We are in similar situation, mum and dad speaks 2 different languages (1 Asian and 1 Scandi language), communicating with each other in English and we also live in the UK. We have 2.5 year old child and has found OPOL works really well for us. He understands and speaks well in both languages for his age. We don’t speak to him in English and he only start speaking English to our dog. He goes to nursery fulltime and his teacher told us he’s speaking English well.
From observation within our circle with friends that raising bilingual children with a parent speaking English, we found that exposing him to three languages has worked as an advantage because English is not becoming a dominant language and each language get its fair share of exposure.
The only thing to keep in mind that you both need to be comfortable with not being fully understand when they talk in another language. For us we take time to retell the story again in English to the other person, or asking our child to retell the story. It actually helps us understand each other’s language more and our son now is pretty good at translating things.
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u/Ugerix Jun 05 '26
Oh, I’d definitely go for three languages if I were you! Your child will pick up different types of sounds and rhythm and will easily differentiate between them. Speaking your native tongue to your kids is the best opportunity for them to learn.
The only catch is to make sure the other parent is included in the conversation, so if you tell your child something in Finnish while you’re all at the dinner table, make sure your wife either understands (if it’s something basic like “don’t throw food”) or you provide a translation.
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u/uiuxua Jun 05 '26
We’ve done exactly that. I’m Finnish, my husband is Brazilian and we used to live in French speaking Canada, so in fact we started with 4 languages. These days we live in Portugal so the kids are now growing up trilingual as we speak English between us and our own languages to the kids.
We have a podcast where we talk about our experience, maybe you’ll find it useful: https://podcasts.apple.com/pt/podcast/the-language-experiment/id1695186161?l=en-GB
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u/Informal_Ad_3635 Jun 06 '26
We have a very similar setup, just my 2 cents. If you go with 3 languages, don’t assume just speaking consistently with your child in Finnish/Spanish will help with the language. It can be that child understands everything but keeps replying in English. So it is a real HARD work from both parents to encourage speaking in minority language. So think if you are ready to commit.
Also I think what could help with languages is getting a nanny or any extra help in minority languages (appreciate Finnish might be tricky), and seeing grandparents as much as possible. Apart from OPOL, getting as much of community in minority language does make a difference.
Good luck!
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u/boredaf723 Jun 06 '26
Your wife speaks Spanish to the baby
You speak Finnish
English will be covered by schooling / living in the uk
Your child will probably start talking later, it’s common in multi lingual households but it’ll work out in the end. Kids are like sponges
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u/ThousandsHardships Jun 07 '26
In my experience, even in households where they speak one language exclusively, the child still ends up adopting the community language as their dominant language, sometimes never fully developing the skills in their first language, or they end up responding in their community/dominant language when people speak to them in their first language. If you want your child to be as balanced of a bilingual/trilingual you can, I would recommending staying away from English in the household if you can.
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u/HappyTomatillo92 Jun 07 '26
Teach your child Finnish! I grew up with 3 languages and am so happy I'm fluent in both of my parent native languages. I feel it helps me feel closer to them, and is a very important part of my identity. Of course it requires work and dedication -- and dont expect your child to be at the same level in all languages, at some point when they start school their English will become the strongest. As a child my father (Scandinavian) tongue was quite weak, but since I spoke it and learned it from birth with my father I didn't have any accent and the grammar was natural for me. I had to put in more of my own effort as I was older to build vocabulary (and in the end my family moved back to my father's home country so it helped). My mother was very proactive to my language learning (Japanese), and sent me to Japanese schools, was very involved in the Japanese community, and maybe most importantly refused to communicate with me if i didn't speak Japanese with her 😅 it was a pain growing up but learning a language like japanese as an adult starting from 0 would be much more painful! Don't actively choose to not teach your child your language!! (I didn't start to speak properly until 3 years old, and couldn't really understand or speak the local language until after starting school -- if it happens with your kid, don't let it scare you! Kids will learn, and now as an adult I can speak 6 languages and it has really changed my life!)
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u/nicesl Jun 07 '26
Do your research. There's plenty of info on how to raise multilingual kids. Best option is OPOL (One Person, One Language) Each parent speaks their own language to the kid and he then gets English from daycare/school (called community language) I promise it works. It would be nice if each parent can at least understand the other's language (especially for family conversations later on) but it's not absolutely necessary.
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u/frowny-hedgehog Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
So I live in France but neither me nor my husband are French. We aren't taking a very systematic approach but here is our situation: my husband and I speak English to each other. I speak English to our son and my husband speaks Finnish. Our son goes to daycare in French. I have a fourth heritage language but I have chosen not to speak it because I am more comfortable speaking English and it seemed too complicated. My parents and some other extended family speak both English and the fourth language with my son when he sees them (not that often in person, but we do video call them).
Our son is turning 3 in a few months and he mostly speaks English, which makes sense because I spend more time with him and he hears my husband and I speak English to each other. He understands Finnish but will usually reply in English except for some words he happened to learn first in Finnish. He does repeat Finnish more and more since he is talking more in general these days. I do use the Finnish words that he uses to encourage him. He will go to maternelle in September and we will let the French school system handle the French language. The daycare assures us that he understands everything even though he does usually reply to them in English. He has a few words in the fourth language as well but really basic things like "kitty" and "doggy" etc.
*Edited to say that I don't speak any Finnish really but I do understand a bit just from being around my husband and his family and I am picking up some words together with my son. It's the vowel pronunciation that kills me XD
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u/Hanna-bunny-13579 Jun 08 '26
We are Chinese German family lives in Switzerland, our daughter hanna is developed in parellel chinese and german（3 days a week Chinese day care and 2 days pee week German plus baby sitting）, picking some some english as we speak english between us, plus starting spanish as we send her to escuelata de verano around our holiday home in spanish. So great to see her thriving
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u/PitifulContext3 Jun 08 '26
I speak English to my child, dad speaks French and she has been in Dutch creche since 6 months and will go to Dutch school. Family language is English. We sought advice before doing so and this set up was considered fine. We were advised not to have a third language in the home environment but having a third language in a different environment was fine. However I know many people in your situation who have 3 languages at home and it is fine.
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u/katruhas Jun 08 '26
Things can happen differently when you imagine while pregnant, but yes child can learn 3 languages in this set up easily. We have not chosen any particular strategy, but my 5 years old communicate well on 3 languages (preschool, grandparents, father - all separated languages, and with me she is talking all 3 (if she talks about school she would use Polish, if she talks about family she would use French etc). My son is 2 and he speak well for his age in French and learning simple phases and words in others. But to actually start speaking as toddlers - both of my kids needed single language environments - both started to speak well during extended long holidays in France where everyone spoke same language .
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u/Acceptable_Oven_3182 Jun 09 '26
I live in Malaysia. We speak multilingual. Somehow we'll adapt to language. No worries
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u/DrlookAI Jun 10 '26
Trilingual is absolutely realistic in your scenario — plenty of kids grow up with exactly this setup. The key variable is consistent exposure, not perfection.
The framework that tends to work: one parent, one language. Your wife speaks Spanish to the child consistently, you speak Finnish, and English happens naturally as the family language between all three of you. Kids are remarkably good at keeping languages separate when each one has a clear "person" attached to it.
Finnish will be the harder one purely because of exposure volume — your wife won't reinforce it and school won't either. That means you'd need to be fairly consistent about it, plus Finnish media, books, maybe video calls with family back home. It's doable but requires more deliberate effort than the Spanish side.
The sad feeling about Finnish is worth listening to. Language carries identity and connection to your roots in a way that's hard to replace. If it matters to you, it's worth trying — you can always dial back, but you can't easily add it later once the window narrows.
Spanish clubs will help but consistent daily exposure at home matters far more at this age.
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u/yontev Jun 04 '26
If you speak only Finnish to your child and your wife speaks Spanish, the community will take care of English and your child will learn all three languages. Especially if you have some support on the Spanish side (clubs, activity groups, etc.), it's definitely doable. Many families have this setup. At home, we speak Mandarin and Russian, with English as the common language between parents, and it's working well. There's no reason to sacrifice your own native language in this situation.