Bilingual Families Connect

[Steve]

Hi, my eldest son is nearly three and is speech delayed. We live in England (Southampton) and my wife and I are teaching him Russian and German. My wife and I speak English to each other but only Russian and German to our son (OPOL).

I have tried to do some research about this to see if being bombarded with lots of languages can cause speech delay. My conclusion seems to be that all the academic literature states that bilingualism does not contribute to speech delay. Anecdotally, however, a lot of people going through the same process I have met have stated that their children were speech delayed. It seems that my (limited) practical exposure contradicts what the academics are saying.

I would be very interested in hearing what everyone else has to say about this subject – especially people teaching three or more languages and possibly where one is not your own native language. It is naturally important also to hear from people whose children are not speech delayed in their main language (i.e the language they use at kindergarten).

To give more information: -

My son is very outgoing and talkative – it’s just that he talks complete gibberish (English sounding gibberish), although occasionally we can work out the gist of what he says by listening with “German” or “Russian” ears.

I myself was speech delayed and only started talking when I was three and a third.

We have been concentrating on teaching him nouns by using pictures of everyday objects and asking him to point to certain things. He is very good at this and has a good (although passive) knowledge of many things in his three languages. He can say about five words in German that I can understand. I would love to move into teaching him some verbs but I want him to say a few more words first to show that he understands me.

When he counts up to five, this is what he says: - “Two, drei, four, pyat, six” – so it’s a good mixture, but he doesn’t yet seem to have accepted that he is learning more than one language. So another question I have is: How can I show him that he is learning more than one language?

Steve

[Emily]

Steve, I agree with you that all research I've seen indicates that learning multiple languages does NOT contribute to speech delay; rather, multilingualism tends to foster various cognitive benefits.

That said, it seems that speech issues are relatively common among all children of this age (monolingual or multilingual). If you are concerned, my advice would be to seek out a speech language pathologist who is supportive of/specializes in working with multilingual children. If you seek professional assistance, I think you need someone who will be supportive of your son's developing multilingualism and not view it as the issue.

Here are some UK resources I located:

Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice
http://www.helpwithtalking.com/
They have a page specifically on biligualism: http://www.helpwithtalking.com/speech-issues/bilingualism

Here you can search for a speech therapist with bilingualism as their speciality: http://www.helpwithtalking.com/find-a-therapist?specialtyID=4

AFASIC
http://www.afasic.org.uk/index.htm

Let us know how things go. I hope others will contribute their thoughts as well.

- Emily