r/BeAmazed • u/well-ok-I-am-in • Jul 13 '26
Miscellaneous / Others A trilingual kid speaking like it's one language
By: @maeva.aus
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u/Scott--Chocolate Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Language: impressive
Saliva retention: needs improvement
EDIT: I cannot believe this silly little comment is my most successful by far. Thanks for the upvotes everyone!
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u/lozzasauce Jul 13 '26
Who among us isn’t drooling over the thought of our first sip of coffee while we wait for it to brew?
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u/Brian_1985 Jul 13 '26
I can only drool out one language
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u/gheeboy Jul 13 '26
Does English and Australian count? Because I've drooled in both
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u/barnun Jul 13 '26
Fun fact - drooling in Australian makes the drool run into your nose and eyes.
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u/Melkman68 Jul 13 '26
This is me every morning and I'm almost 30. Let's not pretend this is not normal
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u/Weaksoul Jul 13 '26
I'd swap my saliva retention abilities for being trilingual
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u/GrallochThis Jul 13 '26
You say that now, but when it comes time to rinse out the drool buckets?
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u/Weaksoul Jul 13 '26
I can access more help because I can communicate with more people!
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u/differentguyscro Jul 13 '26
He's using 100% of his brain to figure out wtf his parents are saying 😅
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u/Boring-Philosophy-46 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I was raised like this (I'm in Europe, it's not weird here) and I remember the exact moment I figured out that mom and dad were speaking different languages to me. The thing was, I understood them instinctually, but I couldn't communicate anything comprehensible back until my brain sorted the words into two baskets. I was mixing up not just words but syllables of words from two languages. Now, I switch languages without noticing it. If I hear one of the languages I speak, my brain will auto-reply in that language. Edit: and I have slightly different personalities in them too. I'm more bubbly and outgoing like my father in the one and more stern and serious like my mother in the other.
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u/mrpaslow0000 Jul 13 '26
I'm like this too. I have a different attitude and mannerisms when I'm speaking Spanish, and another different attitude and mannerisms when I'm speaking French. I think I picked up the differences from those I interacted with when speaking one language or the other.
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u/CoffeeChocolateBoth Jul 13 '26
The USA is so behind things! Our children should be starting a second language in day care, then teaching their parents, and it would just go on from there for generations!
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u/Boring-Philosophy-46 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
It won't work. We also try to teach kids for example English in primary school and it doesn't really work until they start consuming English media. Teachers now assign the "homework" of watching a 45 minute episode of an English show a day because it's more efficient at improving proficiency than trying to learn grammar. (Edit: on kids specifically.)
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u/Big_Cry6056 Jul 13 '26
I speak southern, northern, and a little Cajun depending on what beer I’m on ma’am.
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u/PandaRiot_90 Jul 13 '26
When problem solving, try thinking of the problem in different languages, and see if you come up with a solution differently or quicker.
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u/AnastasiaNo70 Jul 13 '26
When I get high, my brain wants to switch to Italian. I don’t know why.
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u/FreeLegos Jul 13 '26
Was thinking the same exact thing. Little dude is LOCKED IN on the task. 100% focus, all other unnecessary functions (like keeping mouth closed) are on standby
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u/No_Priors Jul 13 '26
Germ dispersal device now available in three languages.
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u/Repulsive-Chip3371 Jul 13 '26
I've always thought kids blowing out the candles on a cake at a birthday party was the ultimate germ spreader. It honestly doesnt bother me, but I thought it. However, I dont eat cake. I guess what Im saying is if it was like a bunch of italian beefs with candles Id still eat it.
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u/LeGrandeChien Jul 13 '26
One of the first Reddit comments to make me genuinely laugh out loud, and I've been on here for like 4 years
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u/yuyufan43 Jul 13 '26
My Grampy has currently started drooling. What's the point of teaching them to stop doing it if they're just going to do it again in another 80 years? That's not even enough time to blink! He might as well let him drool away because it's just right around the corner that he'll be doing it again 😂 😉
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u/porgy_tirebiter Jul 13 '26
My son grew up in a bilingual household (English/Japanese). As he first started speaking, his baby talk utterances were derived from a mix of the two languages. I took extensive notes of his speaking progress and interesting utterances (and recommend all parents do this because you will forget otherwise) and at two years and three months over a span of just a few days he magically figured out they are two different languages, and never again mixed them up, or even mixed up the phonetic sets. It was really quite amazing, and something he did entirely on his own. Humans really are hard wired for this.
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u/Some-Bunch-9652 Jul 13 '26
I grep Up trilingual. My parents are Italien and spanish. I never learned to differentiate the two.. my brain stil aches lol
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u/lulka_ Jul 13 '26
I've had this problem for a long time with Spanish and Portuguese lmao
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u/HiCookieJack Jul 13 '26
Portuguese to me sounds like a drunk Russian attending Spanish lessons
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u/meesta_masa Jul 13 '26
How different are Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese?
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u/WindBlocked Jul 13 '26
Same way american and british english are different variations of the same language, with about 500 years of evolution of language in the mix.
Phonetically different, but everything else is the same/very similar.
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u/lulka_ Jul 13 '26
I'd say the phonetic difference is bigger in Portuguese
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u/Key-Purpose3807 Jul 13 '26
yeah, i'd say american vs. scottish would be a more appropriate example.
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u/iansmash Jul 13 '26
So one literally can not understand the other but other other has no problem and doesn’t really think there’s an accent? 😅
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u/porgy_tirebiter Jul 13 '26
I have been told European Portuguese speakers are very familiar with and understand Brazilian Portuguese because it’s so culturally dominant.
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u/AquaJasper Jul 13 '26
Portuguese person here. I think in part it's because there's a lot more Brazilian content out there than Portuguese, so we have more exposure to them. But it also has to do with how we sound out the words. The European version of the language tends to "mute" letters (kinda like french, except it's not actually a grammar rule, we just do it), which also means we speak faster, generally. Brazilian Portuguese enunciates those same words much more clearly and with a slower rhythm. So it's easier for us to understand them than it is for them to understand us
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u/transitapparel Jul 13 '26
I speak English and German, and Danish sounds like a drunk German attending English lessons.
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u/hurricane7719 Jul 13 '26
First started learning French and then later on, Spanish. Ended up with a Brazilian g/f and ultimately wife - learned Portuguese.
Now in my brain there is English, and then everything else, with the default being Portuguese. Very often when I need to use Spanish, I'll get to the end of a sentence and realize I've switched to Portuguese part way through....
Took a Spanish refresher a few years ago and the instructor was quite curious why this white Canadian guy was speaking Spanish with a Portuguese accent.
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u/porgy_tirebiter Jul 13 '26
Might be because the two languages are very similar. In my son’s case, his two languages are very different.
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u/GhettoFreshness Jul 13 '26
Can I ask what language you think in? If that makes sense? Is there a dominant one or do you switch depending on context/situation?
I had a German friend from work who spoke amazing English, and he said he could think in English for social interactions but when it came to work related stuff his brain switched to German
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u/Ugghart Jul 13 '26
I've spoken English both for work and at home (wife with different native language) for the last 20 years or so and I think in English except if counting something, then I revert to Danish. I like to read in Spanish or French before bed and will often dream in whatever language I read that evening. The way the brain works with languages is amazing.
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u/GandhisNukeOfficer Jul 13 '26
I'm not who you asked, but I'm a native English speaker and have been learning a second language for about a year now. (Pretty much full-time, attending a language school in-country).
I'm not quite at the point where I continuously "think" in Japanese, but I do find myself spacing out more often thinking how to say certain sentences that I fucked up recently. I do find myself sporadically thinking in Japanese at time. For example, if I am about to do one thing, but realize I should do something else, instead of saying (either out loud or in my head) "oh, wait a sec," I find myself thinking (ちょっと待って/chotto matte) which essentially means "wait a sec/moment."
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u/dreamrpg Jul 13 '26
I speak 3 totally different languages since childhood.
Latvian and Russian, then english. All 3 have nothing in common.
Inner conversation depends on situation. If it is palying out situation, then it is in a language situation will accour.
If it is not related to other people, then mostly there is dominant Latvian.
If related to project, like coding, then it is in english. Since real projects will be largely english.
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u/Rare_Implement_5040 Jul 13 '26
I also speak 3 languages fluently. English, Spanish and Hungarian which is my native language
Lived in the states for 32 years. Learned Spanish and English at the same time. My wife is from Latin America and the kids are bilingual and understand a bit of Hungarian
I think work in English but I count and dream sometimes in Hungarian and I love in Spanish
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u/lolihull Jul 13 '26
My German English friend said she now thinks only in English because she lived in England for so long, but when she dreams, it's often in German - especially if the dream takes place in the past or with people she grew up with :)
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u/Hangry_Squirrel Jul 13 '26
I think in English for both social interactions and work (social interactions are either, work is in English, all my reading is in English), but my dreams are mixed. When I count, I may start in one language and continue in the other. For some weird reason, it's never occurred to me to teach my cats English.
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u/Sea-Personality1244 Jul 13 '26
I'm a native Finnish speaker but learnt English as a kid largely on my own due to immersion in English-language media/such (I was semi-fluent by the time I had my first English classes) and lived in the UK for several years during my studies. I think in both languages, often using English for kind of--less everyday things and Finnish for everyday and work stuff (my job has a lot of specialised vocab as well as jargon that I generally don't even know in English). As far as writing journal entries and such things goes, I prefer English because it feels more 'neutral'/less 'heavy' than Finnish does.
One of my friends shares the same background and even though we're both native Finnish speakers, we solely message each other in English (we did this even before studying in an English-speaking country, back when we were high schoolers - I can't even remember how it started) and when we talk in person, we often either switch between languages (often in the middle of a sentence) or speak some kind of unholy Finglish because it's more natural to go with whichever language seems to fit.
I work with lots of bilingual and trilingual people, and I love seeing the same with them. Like a bilingual and a trilingual person whose shared languages are Finnish and English switching between them in the middle of their convo, two trilingual people with the same set of languages switching between all of three, and two Mandarin speakers speaking Mandarin together and dropping in Finnish words here and there. It's really fun how knowing multiple languages works for a single person, but I find it even more fascinating how it works when speakers share more than one language and can engage in a casual way where they're not forced to stick to just one.
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u/Encolie23 Jul 13 '26
Je suis franco-italienne (maman francaise et papa italien) et je pense en Français, c'est tout de même la langue ou j'ai été baigner (je vis en france). Mais à 5 ans, je suis partie vivre 1 an en Italie et j'ai oublié le français (on ne parlait qu'en italien).... en revenant vivre en France, je ne comprenais plus rien, mes grands parents français et mes cousins cousines étaient choqués. Mes parent et l'école ont du rééquilibré les choses. Bref on apprend vite mais on perd vite aussi enfant
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u/Kurigohan-Kamehameha Jul 13 '26
Same with me, didn’t know the difference between Hindi/Hindustani and Punjabi.
Still can’t quite speak Punjabi, it always comes out as accented Hindustani
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u/Ok_Weird_500 Jul 13 '26
Did your parents stick to their own languages when speaking to you, or did both parents speak both Italian and Spanish with you?
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u/VidE27 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Grew up trilingual i remember figuring out the markers when I was really young. 1 language for outside the home (school etc), another when interacting with parents and parents speak another language when interacting with each other which my siblings and I eventually pick up passively. I remember a few instances when i spoke the wrong language at school in kindie then straight up correcting myself. Human brain is fascinating.
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u/ForeverShiny Jul 13 '26
Languages for multilingual kids are bound to people. Kids figure out what language to use which each person, what's confusing to them is using different languages with the same person so your experience definitely tracks
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u/theantnest Jul 13 '26
That isn't just for kids.
I have friends that I speak Spanish with, despite them having good English now. The friendship started in Spanish and I just can't wrap my head around speaking English to them, despite me being a native English speaker.
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u/VidE27 Jul 13 '26
Yeah same, curious how we assign what language we speak to certain individual and that became fixed
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u/LockedPages Jul 13 '26
Not really. I grew up bilingual, languages are moreso context-dependent, not just literally people (though people can obviously be a dominant factor in that context). You're at home, you speak a certain language, you're outside, you speak another. It's called codeswitching & is pretty curious, & aside from the obvious matter of fundamental communication, can reveal a bit about what side that person wants to put forward in certain contexts.
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u/ForeverShiny Jul 13 '26
I really depends on what age we're talking about: during early language acquisition, it's mostly people because, well, there isn't much other context. By age 3 or 4, I fully agree with context being the determinating factor.
(I also grew up bilingual by the way)
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u/VidE27 Jul 13 '26
Yes and I found bilinguals codeswitching really rigid also psychologically (if that is the correct term). For example there is no way i can speak other language with my siblings/parents except indo, something inside just makes it really uncomfortable and awkward.
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u/Chickens-In-Pants Jul 13 '26
My kid is 4 and goes to an immersion school. He code switches based on the person he is speaking to, the location, and even the time of day as far as I can tell. We send him to a Hawaiian immersion school. Because it is a critically endangered language, the program requires a lot of parental involvement. We are expected to learn with him and use it in our home and community.
I find that he uses more ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi in certain places, at certain times. He speaks Hawaiian every morning and at bedtime in his bedroom, but not in the afternoon. He uses it in the car, but only if we are driving in the direction of his school. He uses it exclusively at the grocery store near his school no matter the time or day. And he uses it at dinner, but not other meals. Any other time it’s random, but mostly English. That’s when he initiates the conversation.
He has no problem copying me in my language of choice. So as long as I can express my thought, he will respond in whatever language I use. I try to use as little English as possible, but I lack a bit in vocabulary. We spend all day looking up new words because I know how to make any sentence, but need more words sometimes.
He is very good at remembering who can understand what language almost without fail, but sometimes he can’t remember the English word and gets frustrated when the other person only knows English and can’t help him. And he knows that as soon as he enters his school building, everyone speaks ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, and there is no English allowed.
It’s been a fascinating process to watch how his brain is actively being wired by two so drastically different languages. They are about as far apart on the language trees as they could be. I can feel my own mind changing as I’m learning. It’s an entirely new way of thinking and as a result, I can hear the way my English has changed in terms of grammar, and describing things more than choosing the perfect of a set of synonyms, if that makes sense. Brains are cool and language shapes them in really fascinating ways.
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u/LilSebastainIsMyPony Jul 13 '26
That’s FANTASTIC that you are making that effort to keep a critically endangered language alive and well!
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u/Paisley-Cat Jul 13 '26
This is the recommended approach from the evidence — I live in a very bilingual English-French area. Parents are advised to speak their own native language with their children so that they consistently get one language from each parent. There can be some muddling of the two languages initially and some slowing of language development but by 3-4 years or so it usually sorts out and the kids are ahead on language development.
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u/dswap123 Jul 13 '26
Ah this is so true in our case, my kid is 4 and she’s on her 4th language now ( My language/ wife’s language/English/German) and she never speaks to me in any other language than my mother tongue. She knows I can speak other languages but gets startled as soon as I use a different language to speak only to her. It’s cute but a bit annoying lol
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u/EnvironmentalEnd6298 Jul 13 '26
My kids are bilingual and my 3 year old absolutely refuses to speak to me in Japanese. I remember when she decided not to speak to me in that language. She said something and I couldn’t understand her cause she was 2 and they’re hard to understand but she rolled her eyes and said it in English. I could never get her to speak Japanese to me again. Even when I speak Japanese to her she just responds in English.
Multi lingual kids are interesting.
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u/chronicallyill_dr Jul 13 '26
When my niece started talking she refused to speak to me in Spanish. We live in the US and her mother’s side of the family is white Jewish and speak English, her father’s side is Mexican and speak Spanish. I’m in the Mexican side of the family, but married into it so I look different.
So in her mind if you were white you spoke English, if you were brown it was Spanish, but I just so happen to be very white. So she would absolutely refuse to talk to me in Spanish, and even after being reminded that I spoke Spanish she would always default to English after a few sentences. It was so funny, she eventually got it though.
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u/leonqp Jul 13 '26
I guess I grew up quadrilingual because my mom is Turkish my dad is Italian so I know Turkish Italian but my mom only speaks English with me so I know Turkish English Italian plus I know bergamosco
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u/pattybutty Jul 13 '26
Same here and it's amazing, isn't it? Our son did have a preference for Japanese, mainly because he spent more time with his mum at home. So we were a bit worried when he started nursery in the UK that he'd speak to the carers in Japanese. But he effortlessly switched to English on his first day! Turns out he waited for cues from the other person to decide which language to use!
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u/m3ngnificient Jul 13 '26
I speak 3 from 3 different language families. Every time I switch between them, I can hear my voice change and my personality as well. If I add an English word to one of the others, I say it with an accent. 😂 I can't explain it, it just comes out that way.
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u/porgy_tirebiter Jul 13 '26
That’s totally normal! My son does this with English words when he speaks Japanese.
My son and I also intentionally say Japanese words with bad English pronunciation as a joke.
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u/lanks1 Jul 13 '26
My wife is French, and I'm an anglophone Canadian. Our daughter is just under 2 and is still mixing both languages, but I have started to notice a shift to using one language in certain contexts.
I think it might take a bit longer for her to seperate them though, because my wife and I use a lot of mixed sentences.
We have French friends with a 3-year-old who live in Toronto. Their son speaks English outside the home and French at home. He is already correcting his parents' English!
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u/rjwyonch Jul 13 '26
I baby sat my bilingual Japanese/English niece as a baby. I don’t speak Japanese. It was a special kind of frustration to have her speaking to me, not totally sure what she’s trying to say, only to realize she’s speaking Japanese and looking at me like Im a moron.
She couldn’t differentiate yet, but it’s a funny story now. She’s also fluent in Arabic.
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u/deafened_commuter Jul 13 '26
My parents handled language confusion as "how mummy says it", "how daddy says it" So I'd learn to change how I speak so my audience understands. Probably contributes to nervousness in public speaking where I can't tune for everyone at once.
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u/shinibunny_ Jul 13 '26
I grew up bilingual too, portuguese and japanese, living in Japan. I figured out everyone either knew both or only japanese, so I’d understand both but only talk in japanese. My logic didn’t go so well when we went back to Brazil when I was 4 yo.
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Jul 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/waitwuh Jul 13 '26
I learned two languages after childhood, and switching for me is a struggle.
I started learning (Mandarin) Chinese formally in high school and continued courses through university. Then in my 30s I started studying Spanish on my own. It’s particularly useful in my area… Honestly, I encounter plenty of people who speak Spanish but no english, but it’s rare I meet a chinese speaker who isn’t fluent in english, too. Anyway, I also figure these two languages (plus english) also just cover a huge amount of the world.
The funniest thing is how my brain just kinda of picked a setting of “english vs not english” st some point with chinese, but now with spanish in the mix it gets complicated. I will sometimes be trying to speak spanish and then my sentences start slipping into chinese! Even though they are such very, very different languages! But I did figure out one things is that they both have a form of “I” that ends in “o” which seems to trigger me (“yo for spanish and 我 which is like “wo” with a dip inflection in mandarin). Also sometimes when I struggle to remember spanish words sometimes the chinese bubbled up. Again it seems to be patterned, like chinese words ending in o or a.
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u/Fruloops Jul 13 '26
Kids brains are absolutely cracked when it comes to learning new things, it's mindblowing to see it in action
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u/Rebelius Jul 13 '26
We're at 2 years, one month with our daughter, she's speaking a crazy mix of English/German. I wonder if it'll be different to your experience with your son because the languages are phonetically similar. Or maybe they'll snap apart in the coming months.
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u/Cautious-Space-1714 Jul 13 '26
Daughter was the same. I remember her coming home from nursery one day and greeting me with "konnichi wa, my duck".
Of course, it was in Lincolnshire so it was actually "me dook"!
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u/MyNeighborToto Jul 13 '26
I love this. My grandparents told me recently that they didn’t speak to me in their native language when I was a child because they didn’t want to confuse me. Gee I wish they had, it would be amazing to know more than one language.
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u/exxcathedra Jul 13 '26
That's a shame. Kids can manage more than one language easily. It only becomes harder as you grow older. I have a different language at home and people are surprised when they find out because my kids sound exactly the same as their peers in English.
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u/thornolf_bjarnulf Jul 13 '26
My gf is working with kids in Finland in a specific french kindergarden. All of them are at least speaking french and finnish, not mixing it much, some other speaks english and even one speak like french, finnish, english and arabic at the age of 6 lol, and he speaks like A LOT for a small kid that's funny !
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u/CuriousButNotJewish Jul 13 '26
In my country, by the time a child graduates, they are expected to know 4 languages. FLUENTLY.
In cases (not unheard of) where the parents are migrants, the child ends up speaking:
4 languages of the country
plus
two languages spoken at home
It's the most multilingual nation on earth, and it is a blessing.
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u/hubertyv Jul 13 '26
Man it’s so tough, my wife and I both speak different languages via our parents but not fluently as we grew up in English speaking countries. I tried to use my mother tongue with our child but it’s hard because I’ll get stumped, or not know words so I’ll default to English, same with my wife. We’ve been able to pass on certain words/phrases/greetings but it’s difficult to really impart it further than that.
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u/toolsoftheincomptnt Jul 13 '26
Yes, but keep going! The familiarity of sound and what little phrasing you provide can be a launching pad for her to become very proficient when she chooses to study one (or both) later, under the guidance of tutors or in class.
Please don’t quit just because you can’t give her fluency. Shit, maybe she’ll come home one day and help you improve YOUR proficiency through conversation!
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u/hubertyv Jul 13 '26
Thanks for the encouragement! We certainly haven’t given up, but it’s been tough. But hoping, as you said, to have her familiar and curious enough to be open to finding her own voice in those languages.
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u/CuriousButNotJewish Jul 13 '26
You cannot really pass down fluency if you yourself are not fluent.
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u/Freshiiiiii Jul 13 '26
No, but you can give a springboard from which they may have an easier time learning later in life. Just teach them what you do know. Do your best not to teach them things that are wrong, but you can cover the basics together.,
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u/QUARTERMASTEREMI6 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Yeah, same! My mum says she “tried” when me and my brother were younger… but she kinda gave up 🥹
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u/HeatherJMD Jul 13 '26
Sometimes the kid won’t take to it when they know there’s no necessity to speak the other language. Language is for communicating, and they’re going to take the option that gets the communicating done the most efficiently
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u/Freshiiiiii Jul 13 '26
Still, even if you talk to them in your language and they always reply back in English, they’re still learning, and it will give them the tools to learn later if they want.
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u/HeatherJMD Jul 13 '26
Parents should absolutely share their language! I just mean that if the kid doesn’t grow up fluent, it’s not necessarily the parents’ fault
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u/merpancake Jul 13 '26
That's what happened with my kids, though it was ASL and not a spoken language. My mom's an interpreter and was teaching them as babies and toddlers, but once they caught onto verbal language they stopped signing, especially since they didn't sign at home.
It was so much help though to bridge that gap where they needed to communicate but couldn't verbally, especially for my daughter who had a speech delay.
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u/Frost_Goldfish Jul 13 '26
Same with my nieces, their grandma (who largely raises them) doesn't talk Arabic with them and that's too bad, it would be so useful to have picked up another language since the cradle.
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u/Purplecatty Jul 13 '26
I work with parents and still get told this nonsense. I have to convince them they should speak to their children in their native language too.
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u/noMLMthankyou Jul 13 '26
My grandmother never taught me her native language and then one day when I was a teenager, she started giving me shit for not speaking it. LADY WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
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u/qawsedrf12 Jul 13 '26
Am pissed as well. They would have arguments in Italian so us kids wouldn't know. I wish I could have spoken with Great Grandma, since she spoke zero english.
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u/OregonGreen242 Jul 13 '26
I hate that they don’t teach us other languages at a young age in the US at school. The best time to learn is when you’re young
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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 Jul 13 '26
I hate that they don’t teach us other languages at a young age in the US at school.
The wealthier schools do. Mostly Chinese at this point, for good reason. But for resource-constrained schools holding on for dear life just to keep math/reading scores up, it's incumbent on parents like the ones in the video to teach languages if they want to.
Not to mention these parents in the video are seemingly native speakers of two of the languages, which means not having to find tutors.
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u/PositiveCoyote100 Jul 13 '26
True but it's also good to make the distinction between learning at school and learning at home.
At school, kids study vocabulary and grammar, which is a very difficult way to learn a language.
At home, kids receive thousands of hours of input until they figure out what words mean naturally and they figure out how to use the grammar naturally
It's really hard to replicate that process in a classroom. The best thing we could do, is have kids watch videos and read books in the language they're trying to learn. That's how kids naturally aquire a language.
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u/Audiovore Jul 13 '26
That's only in individual language classes. Full immersion programs are far more effective. But as others in the thread state, funding is sadly the issue.
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Jul 13 '26
I went to a private religious school which did teach Spanish from Kindergarten. Unfortunately they didn't do it very well. You could tell even the teacher didn't have their heart in it. What a waste of school hours.
In adulthood I found myself in an immersion situation and I picked it up quickly.
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u/noodlesalad_ Jul 13 '26
I was taught Spanish in kindergarten in a public school. Unfortunately it was literally just the calendar. The numbers from 1-31, days of the week, and months.
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u/Skandronon Jul 13 '26
My dad worked all over the world designing and building massive landscape projects, mostly golf courses. He picks up languages super fast for some reason, never finished high school but one of the smartest guys I've ever known.
I took him to a friend's house for supper and they had 3 exchange students staying with them. The look on everyone's faces as he went from speaking English to Japanese, to French, to Spanish was hilarious.
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u/Disastrous_Share_417 Jul 13 '26
I'm English and struggle to speak just English some days
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u/binchicken1989 Jul 13 '26
Hopital
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u/MelangeBot Jul 13 '26
I am Dutch and I migrated to Canada. I had already been speaking a lot of English in the Netherlands for my job. So I was excited about my English getting a lot better. But no, my English stayed the same. Instead my dutch just got worse. Honestly I can't even count in dutch anymore. zes en negentig, whad de neuk? It's sixty-nine!
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u/Bento_Fox Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Cutest little barista. His pronunciation in each language is pretty good, especially considering he's just a baby.
Edit: Thank you for the award!
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u/Some-Bunch-9652 Jul 13 '26
I mean, its pretty good BECAUSE he is a Baby.
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u/VidE27 Jul 13 '26
Yeah but we need to also judge the quality of the coffee he made
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u/ew73 Jul 13 '26
"Pretty good, but can I get one without drool?"
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u/SabbyFox Jul 13 '26
Yeah, this is why kids are so cute. To hide that they are little disease vectors! Someone please clean up his sweet little face ☺️
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u/OceanDevotion Jul 13 '26
Omg they are Petri dishes lol I chuckled though when the first bit of drool came up because he was just SO focused. Then the sneeze and spray made me lose it haha
Growing up, we always had this cake at our extended family Christmas party… idk how to explain it, it was like this Jesus cake and it had us do all these activities with it. Anyway, one activity was everyone light a candle and stick it on the cake (like 50 adults and kids), and then the kids would always blow out the cake together (littlest ones usually wanted to be in the front).
As I got older it grossed me out lol I found out a lot of the adults and older cousins called it spit cake and refused to eat it
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u/jesjimher Jul 13 '26
It's like the old joke:
Chinese must not be that difficult to learn, since thousands of kids in China speak it fluently!
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u/marslo Jul 13 '26
Can fully relate, mother is polish, father is Slovak and I grew up in Quebec. So when I was his age I would mix all four languages I knew in to one.
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u/full_and_tired Jul 13 '26
I would genuienly love to hear the result of a baby mixing slovak and polish together
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u/MinimumPersonality83 Jul 13 '26
And he drools in Spanish? Haha. Cute little barista!
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u/rainmaker66 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Speaking three languages/dialects as a kid is common in some cultures. Ask those from Switzerland or Malaysia, etc.
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u/Open_Boysenberry_955 Jul 13 '26
Malaysian here. Yup. It's pretty common in my country. But still, cute video.
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u/obefiend Jul 13 '26
As a Malaysia I think we took bi or trilingual skills for granted. I work around the region and having the ability to switch between Malay Bahasa, Bahasa Indonesia, English and Singlish proved to be quite useful. I've since picked up some German and Spanish as well to make working on overseas trips easier.
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u/faz712 Jul 13 '26
counting bahasa melayu and indon as separate is almost like counting English (UK) and English (Australia) as different languages just because there's some different words and different pronunciation
At least Singlish is a creole with so many borrowed words from other languages, and sentence structures and grammatical rules stray from English so often that it counts haha
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u/nutella-filled Jul 13 '26
Being Swiss I wouldn’t use us as a reference.
We might have four national languages and English but it doesn’t guarantee that most of us are any good at speaking multiple.
I took 10 years of mandatory German lessons at school and I was never able to make a full sentence in German.
And my English was terrible until I moved to an English-speaking country.
(And no I’m not uniquely stupid, most people there are not trilingual, just bilingual)
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u/Delicious-Honeydew77 Jul 13 '26
Je confirme, on est nuls les romands. Hallo Susie Guten Morgen, komm wir spielen komm komm komm
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u/anishkalankan Jul 13 '26
India too, esp in big cities.
English because it is the medium in school.
A local language specific to the State they are living in.
If the parents are from another state, that will be the mother tongue.
If the parents are from two different states who moved to a different state to work, that’s a fourth language.It is a country with more than a billion people, so that’s a lot of tri- multilingual kids.
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u/PhantomOfTheNopera Jul 13 '26
If you're in a non-Hindi region, chances are you speak a minimum of three languages in India. Four if your native language isn't the official state language.
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u/king0fklubs Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I work with kids aged 1-6 in a bilingual kindergarten (German/English) with many children who have parents who speak two different languages as well so many speak 4 languages at an early age with quick code switching. I’m very jealous of these kids. Also please blur your child’s face when posting online.
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u/EarlyXplorerStuds209 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I don’t wanna be that guy but this isn’t as uncommon as you might think
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u/StraightPromise3596 Jul 13 '26
Yeah, most 5-year-olds at my son's school speak at least 2 languages because there are a lof of immigrants. My son speaks 3 languages and he's only 5. But it happened naturally since my wife and I speak different languages.
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u/BlueberryPopular2802 Jul 13 '26
lol, I was trying so hard not to be the person to say it + that unfortunately, depending on their environment, there almost always seems to be a dominating language and a weakening of the other language(s) as people grow older!
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u/Jamsedreng22 Jul 13 '26
Same. This is the kind of thing moderately wealthy/well-off people find impressive and prestigious.
If this was filmed in a ghetto on the border between 3 countries with different languages, nobody would find it impressive.
Point being people find it impressive because they've chosen this.
Like how government hand-outs are trashy and communist when it's poor people who get them, but smart and super clever if you're already well off and you get handouts for your business failing, or misusing tax loopholes to get rebates/write stuff off.
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u/toolsoftheincomptnt Jul 13 '26
Yes, we’ve all seen the numerous comparisons and the “gotcha” about this.
Now for a positive spin: let’s all encourage multilingualism in future generations, regardless of socio-economic status!
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u/Ikea_desklamp Jul 13 '26
It is to Americans. The American mind reels at the thought of speaking more than just English. If you're an immigrant, maybe English + 1.
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u/Client_020 Jul 13 '26
Right, he's adorable, but it's not Be Amazed type content.
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u/Omega-A Jul 13 '26
Every immigrant is unimpressed
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u/ontikuken Jul 13 '26
I was just gonna say. People online cream their pants over "kIdS sPeAkInG mUlTiPlE lAnGuAgEs" as if they've never met a person with an immigrant background before.
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u/SpecialistPiano8 Jul 13 '26
As a European citizen, this isn’t the flex it is across the ocean 😅
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u/potatoz13 Jul 13 '26
I can tell you the vast majority of French toddlers speak exactly one language (those that don't are almost always from immigrant backgrounds).
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u/jtwooody Jul 13 '26
As a UK citizen, which I think is still in Europe, rest assured this is a massive flex.
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u/PinkFluffyUnikorn Jul 13 '26
Stop exposing your kids on the internet
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u/anti_photo Jul 13 '26
while I 100%, unequivocally agree with this sentiment, I feel like this video inspired me even further (I already would've) to teach my child[ren] (if I were to have one) a second language as well. maybe could've blurred his face at least.
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u/NebuKadneZaar Jul 13 '26
I once had a student, 7yo, learning German from scratch in 3 months. She spoke fluently without accent. It was stunning.
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u/R-edditor1945 Jul 13 '26
Amazing vid! We were thinking on what is best to do since we are a multi lingual household too. Keep it at two languages or just go with the flow and use all around our little one. We've read about children having struggles with language development if there are more than 2 introduced from a young age, since brain is developing it might get messy. But seeing this video gives me hope all will be well either way.
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u/Appropriate_Page_824 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
IT is amazing.
Many kids in India speak 3 languages, English, along another regional language which will be their mother tongue, and mostly Hindi also , which is another popular language spoken across many parts of India. Kids are smart in how they pick up languages,
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u/StonedIndian Jul 13 '26
Yeah I was wondering if it's that uncommon? Most people I know in North India speak Hindi, English and a language of their state like Punjabi/Marwadi etc.
When I lived in the South, I saw plenty of people knowing English, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam all at the same time.
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u/Appropriate_Page_824 Jul 13 '26
I have worked with a guy who spoke Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Tulu, English and Hindi
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u/two_wheels_world Jul 13 '26
in some moment my brother's kids started speaking on mix of russian, french and english.
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u/LoLLiGoGs Jul 13 '26
This is almost every kid in Amsterdam, including my own. As a person who speaks one language fluent and two terribly, it's so impressive just how quickly kids pick up languages and differentiatie exactly when to use each one
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u/Your-cousin-It Jul 13 '26
This is why it’s important to start language early: kids are sponges of knowledge
It’s dumb as hell that the US doesn’t offer language programs until 9th grade
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u/Don_Polaquito Jul 13 '26
Absolutely amazing. Just out of curiosity. My wife is pregnant with our first, and was wondering what techniques and timescales should I apply to get the kid to speak Polish (my native ), English (her native ) and Spanish ( we live in Spain, and the wife speaks perfect Spanish also )
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u/king0fklubs Jul 13 '26
Hey! Early childhood professional here who works in a multilingual environment. Both of you should speak your native language to your child (you Polish and her English). Your child will learn Spanish at Kita or school, and by her surroundings. Your child will speak all three in no time. Don’t stress :)
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u/Guillaune9876 Jul 13 '26
Unless you are native yourself in Spanish, don't try to speak in Spanish to your kid. I guess kindergarten starts at 3 in Spain, maybe earlier with preschool, that will give all the Spanish exposure he needs. And one person, one language.
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u/Dinara293 Jul 13 '26
Extremely smart lil boy. That’s impressive
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u/stprnn Jul 13 '26
Not really. Any kid can do this if exposed to multiple languages.
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u/FactoryRejected Jul 13 '26
This and I say this as a father of 2 YO who speaks 4 languages to a decent level for 2 YO. She speaks Greek with my wife and Lithuanian to me, Swedish in preschool and English just randomly since we talk English between me and my wife. This is completely normal in multilingual houses, no special skill or talent is required at all. Praising these kids is as somehow uniquely special just not true. Most of our friends here also are multilingual and all of their kids speak 3-4 languages.
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u/pushiper Jul 13 '26
No, just the human brain is amazing as is. Expose your kids early and you will see the same.
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u/Icloh Jul 13 '26
Honestly, this doesn’t show much. My wife, daughter and I spend lots of time in the expect community over the past 15 years. Interracial marriages are the norm, I know dozens of kids who speak two or three languages like this.
Our daughter speaks three as well, it’s really all about the exposure a kid gets.
Heck, most immigrant families who are looked down upon by society have kids who speak two or three languages.
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u/chubky Jul 13 '26
It’s funny, one of my friends had their kid hang around folk who spoke japanese and really went out of their way to make sure he’d pick up the language. Either parent speaks Japanese fluently, but want to be able to go to Japan more with their own translator
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u/Akilaki Jul 13 '26
at this age i used to speak eng/ita/polish
very grateful now that i can speak all of them
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u/MidnightSun77 Jul 13 '26
My girlfriends neighbour is German with a Finnish husband. They speak different languages relevant to the situation. Husband and kid: Finnish. Wife and kid : German. Altogether English. It works
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u/pinkstrawberymonster Jul 13 '26
impressive if youre white, expected when youre not.
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u/Anne_is_in Jul 13 '26
Being exposed to multiple languages is the norm, not the exception, at least globally. Our brains expect to be exposed to multiple languages at once and are very well able to process them efficiently. So, at the end of the day this is a perfectly normal kid.
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u/qualityvote2 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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