Trilingual (Jap, Chinese, English)

[Kurozu]

My family moved to Japan a couple of years ago, and my son starting to go to a Chinese+Japanese school this year. He starting to pick up Jap from his friends, and he learns chinese from school. The schools emphasize more on Chinese than Japan (80%Chinese 20%Japanese). At home, he speaks mostly English.

The problem I am having is that he is becoming very inarticulate, and whenever we ask him to speak or express himself clearly, he simply just shrug and said "never mind!" or "forget about it!". We are a little worry that he may have problems with having to deal with 3 different languages. Moreover, he was comfortable in US where we lived for more than 7 years.

Does anybody has any experience raising a child in a trilingual environment in a foreign land? I need some advice.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Does anybody has any experience raising a child in a trilingual environment in a foreign land? I need some advice.

This is not advice but information from a similar situation.

In our situation it was slightly different so I'm not sure the correlation is the same. I'm a typical Yank in as much as I'm effectively monolingual. My wife, on the other hand is trilingual as far as it goes from a Singapore POV. She speaks good British English (with a US flavor! (sp! sic!)) (Singlish also can) as well as being fluent in Malay and Tamil (Reading, writing and orally in all three). My kids, on the other hand, took Mandarin as their second language and English at 1st language level. The fact that they grew up in a Tamil & English speaking environment simultaneously (both languages at home as I've always taken care of my MiL & FiL who speak almost no English). Therefore they speak western English, singlish & Mandarin and while they don't speak Tamil they understand it fluently but will answer in one of the other languages.

Not sure what advice I'd give. But, if you do like I did, you have to try to plan for your kids' future some 15 years down the road. That's the reason I went to war with the MOE all those years ago to enable my kids to take Mandarin as the 2nd language when I'm an American and my Wife is a Indian Singaporean (not a Singaporean Indian). If you lived in the US for 7 years then you know what I meant just now. If they stay here, then they are equipped with the 2 most common languages used in business here. If they go to the States and being non-chinese but being fluent in the language will hold them in good stead there as well. Malay and Tamil aren't used there at all so it would have been a total waste of education. I cannot see spending a fortune on lessons that don't have any practical future results, other than bragging rights to your next door neighbor.

What I find interesting it the fact the LKY has finally admitted that his insistence on bilingualism was flawed. A person cannot be effectively bilingual. There are sacrifices made in both languages that are easily spotted in you are a native speaker of any of the mentioned languages. The PRC's laugh at the local Mandarin and the westerners laugh at the local English (forget singlish) especially when trying to write business letters.

Doubt if this helps you at all, but just info from someone who has been down a similar road.....

[Kurozu]

Thanks for the advice SMS.

My wife is home schooling our son english, and maybe during the summer, we hope we can afford ($$=*sigh*) to sent our kids to US for summer school. Any good and cheap homestead program?

LKY had admitted he was wrong? That is a first! I thought LKY thinks he is the "king of the hill"