I babysit my 2 year old great grandson and he is talking but often

[jwirr]

says his words without the first letters. I am wondering if any of you pre-school teachers can tell me if a child can learn two or three languages at the same time without any trouble? We watch Dora/Diego (Spanish) and Kai lan (Chinese) and he is saying their words as well as English but the English is less clear. My daughter, his grandmother, says that the tubes in his ears are probably not matured enough for him to be hearing correctly yet but that he will get over that.

[enlightenment]

1. My sister was 6 weeks old when my family went to

Paraguay in 1952 (I wasn't on the radar yet). My dad was assigned the Army mission (he was AF) to teach Paraguayan Air Force pilots to fly. She and my other sister and our brother (3 and 4, respectively) had a nanny who spoke mostly Guarani (the language of the indigenous people of the area) and a little Spanish. The nanny was the baby's primary caretaker for over two and a half years; the older sibs went to school and were taught in English and Spanish.

When the family returned to the States in 1956, my mother 'discovered' that my sister spoke very little English, but her Guarani and Spanish were quite fluent. So English really became her third language.

When she was 14 we moved to Japan. She learned Japanese fluently. Then she married a Filapino man and learned Tagalog, fluently.

When she gets to chattering or overly excited, she often just inserts words in whatever language pops into her head first (deciphering her sentences can be challenging . . .). She also has an interesting lilting accent.

I think your ggrandson will be just fine!

[pnwmom]

2. Lots of two year olds don't speak that clearly, and the tubes in his ears

means he might not be hearing well yet. Here's a link to an article about bilingual children and the possibility of associated language delay.

http://www.cal.org/resources/Digest/RaiseBilingChild.html

[roody]

3. A baby's brain can accommodate 7 languages easily.

[jwirr]

4. Thank you. Now I know how to handle it. I shall encourage him to

learn as much as he can of all three languages.

[JDPriestly]

5. Yes. My children were raised to be bi-lingual, German and English.

They easily learned third languages. Once your brain accommodates a second language, in my personal experience, it easily accepts a third or fourth one. I think that learning languages helps train the ear. That's just my theory.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. In 1984 when I taught kindergarten in a Harlem daycare, my program included

Mandarin Chinese
Spanish
Jamaican patwah
International sign language
English

The kids had no trouble at all. And recognizing the languages of my children brought us all together as a family and recognized their cultures.

[jwirr]

7. I am actually glad that he is being exposed to multiple languages

because I grew up as a child of a German American family during WWII and we were discouraged from learning German. Thus I learned a few special things but not the language. I was just concerned about learning all of these languages at one time when you are 2 years old. Those who answered this thread have given me much comfort on that issue. He is doing just fine. I was the one having the problem. Great grandmothers some times have hearing problems and that makes it even more difficult to understand a beginner.