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Question: Can my new baby learn two or more languages at home?
Similar questions: Can my toddler learn a second language at home before starting school?
My spouse speaks language X and I speak language Y, can we teach our children both languages?
My infant is a year old and has not learned to talk, why not?
Will I confuse my child if I mix languages?

Answer provided by Deborah D.K. Ruuskanen, Professor of English Linguistics, University of Vaasa, Finland.
Mother of three bilingual children.

Yes. It is entirely possible to teach an infant two or even three languages, and four is not unheard of. In Europe, a great many toddlers learn four languages with little or no difficulty. The main requirements for this learning are: the parents speak only their mother-tongue to the child; the child has some reason to learn the languages (motivation); and there is reinforcement of some kind for these languages, preferably outside the home. If the language of the environment is a third language, then the child will easily learn the third language once they start playing with neighbourhood children.

Parts of the article:

This is probably a good place to remind parents that a multilingual environment is also a multicultural environment, and that it is very difficult if not impossible to separate language from culture. Without a context (culture) for the language, the child will have difficulty making sense of the meanings underlying the words.

who want to teach their child to read at home should remember that linguists think it is impossible to teach a child to read before they have learned to talk: first the child learns a system of sounds that have meaning, and how to put these ‘meaning’ sounds together in a larger system; then the child learns a system of symbols (letters or ideograms) that have the same meanings as the sounds and/or combinations of sounds

Problems will arise when the child starts playing with neighbourhood children who do not speak the language the parent is trying to teach them. This is the stage when a lot of parents give up. The child does not want to be ‘different’ from their playmates, and speaking a ‘foreign’ language certainly makes you different. If the parent refuses to answer the child, or to give them what they want until they ask for it in the parent’s ‘own’ language, the process of learning the language will continue. Some parents make an agreement to talk to the child in the language of the playmates when the playmates are around, and the ‘home’ language when only family is ‘home’: personally I think this does not work well. The problems will increase when the child starts kindergarten. The parent must keep speaking only their ‘own’ language with the child, or the child will lose the language.

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