Is trilingualism all about language?

On Sunday, we went to visit our good friends who are also trilingual. He is Brazilian and she is Russian. They speak English to each other. When their first child was born, dad took the decision to speak English to him as he was worried that he wouldn't speak English well otherwise, and in order to avoid confusing him. Mum, on the other hand, spoke Russian.

This arrangement is still in place 10 years and two other children down the line, except that, progressively, Russian seems to be decreasing. During our visit, over 95% of the family conversation we heard was in English, with only a few small comments from mum in Russian. So, on first impressions, the family's trilingualism seems to be declining.

However, interestingly, nowadays mum speaks pretty good Portuguese (though dad's Russian has never really taken off!), so she is becoming trilingual although her children may not be at the moment. And they generally travel once a year to both Brazil and Russia and the children love these holidays. So they function well in those environments despite their lack of fluency and they have positive associations with these countries, which could provide a foundation for developing a later interest in the languages.

In addition, we were interested to see that, while our children may speak better Russian than theirs, in some respects their children have a far greater Russian influence in their lives: for instance, their Russian grandmother had just visited for a week from Russia and so their kitchen was full of traditional Russian foods (although the children didn't particularly want to eat them!). On the other hand, all our grandparents are here in London and are therefore fairly 'anglified' or, more accurately, internationalised when it comes to food: I can't remember the last time my mother-in-law cooked a Russian dish.

They have also recently moved house and have chosen a sparkling new-build. This is definitely a Brazilian influence: no cravings for period features in this family!

'Triculturalism' can take so many different forms - it will be interesting to see how this family continues to evolve: will language suddenly spring out of these influences at some point?

Work - the enemy of trilingualism?

On Saturday, I met an Italian lady who lives in London. She and her German husband speak their respective languages to their children but the children (well, the older one, as the younger one is only 18 months old) only answer back in English, though they do understand.

Although her son has a certain degree of trilingualism (he understands 3 languages so could be called a 'passive trilingual'), she sees this situation as a 'lack of success' in getting her son to be trilingual. This is especially the case as she knows of children who speak their three languages beautifully. So we discussed possible reasons for this (relative) failure. She felt these were mainly due to work and her child's personality.

1. Work
The fact that both she and her husband work full-time in demanding jobs could have an impact. They are not around much to pass on their languages and certainly this must make things harder. However, they do employ Italian-speaking nannies ... so, theoretically at least, the son should be exposed to the language as much as he would be if she were at home. Perhaps the nannies don't actually speak Italian to the child? Or perhaps nannies are not as important as parental input?

2. Personality
Perhaps it's something to do with the child's personality. There may well be children who are more easily coaxed than others into speaking troublesome foreign languages ... I wonder if her second child will be more likely to speak the other languages?

Solutions?
She feels that the only way for her kids to learn their other languages is to send them to an Italian or German school, but which to choose? And that would mean lots of upheaval as they'd have to move  her son away from the school where he is settled and probably move house.

We thought that perhaps an after school or Saturday language club could help. But obviously, fitting these all in is a challenge as you'd have to find a club for each language, and they'd have to be at different times. And then weekend clubs eat into the already limited family time that they have. Not an easy task!