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Good afternoon, and thank you for your wonderful website and hard work. I’m sending this email because my partner and I are a German-Spanish couple living in Norway and we speak English to each other at home, so our 21 month old daughter hears four different languages on a daily basis. A few months ago she began to say many words in all four languages, but she has stopped saying many of those works. Now she only uses 4 or 5 words total. Is this normal? I spoke with her doctor and pediatric nurse, and they are not worried about it, but I am. I suppose I’ve been worried about her having four languages since she was born.

Thank you,
Maria

Hi María,
First, I’d just like to clarify a few points. From what I understand from your question, you speak Spanish to your daughter, your partner speaks German and you live in Norway. Your daughter’s English is passive, since this is the language you speak to each other as a couple. If this is true, your daughter is trilingual, with passive exposure to a fourth language.

From there we can move on to another important factor: the amount of time and quality of interaction your daughter receives in each of her languages. Language acquisition is a fairly complex process which requires, among other things, a large quantity of time in which to learn to understand the world, the objects in the world and the relationship between objects, people and the world. For this reason, it usually takes children between 1 and 2 years to start “using words to speak”.

For children who are exposed to several languages, this process is even more complex, since they are constructing these hypotheses and the relationships between objects, people and the world in different codes. It’s very normal for multilingual children to begin to pronouncing words in different languages they are exposed to when those particular words become easy and useful for them. At some point during this process, children begin to progress in their hypotheses and they may experience a sort of “mutation” phase in which they suddenly stop speaking, and it seems like they lost the words they used to be able to say.
This phase, which is relatively short, is necessary for them to continue progressing in their acquisition of several languages. This is because children begin to progressively learn new words and the relationships between those words, and they need time to clarify some of the rules about each of the languages they are exposed to.

Now back to the two important matters we discussed at the beginning of this response. In order to “help” children along in this process, as adults we must give them clear models of linguistic codes, where there are certain rules. It is not a good idea to constantly mix languages with your child by using all of the languages you know. At home you’re giving a clear message, but what happens when you’re with your neighbors? If you want to stimulate your child’s Spanish and English, you can speak Spanish (or whichever language you’ve chosen to naturally and comfortably speak with your child) in your daily life, except when you are playing a certain game or doing a certain activity, in which you will be speaking English. This gives a clear message: Spanish except when we’re playing this game in English.
This is one way to help children with their linguistic organization so that this analytical process going on in their brains will be effective and will help them to communicate efficiently in all of their languages (though they are generally more comfortable in one language than in another).
With regard to exposure time in each language, bear in mind that your daughter will need to be exposed to each of her minority languages (in this case, Spanish and German) for at least 20% of her waking hours per day. So if your daughter has begun to participate in activities with other children in Norwegian (playgroups, preschool, sports, workshops, etc), it is possible that this “mutation” phase is due to the fact that her Norwegian is growing stronger because of a diversity in stimulation in this language.
In any case, it is very normal and you shouldn’t be worried. However, if this should continue for a long time, don’t hesitate to consult with a specialist.

Best,
Mariana Lombardo

Mariana Lombardo is an experienced children speech therapist. She does clinical work at SINEWS with bilingual families in the expat community in Madrid. Mariana is in charge of the workshops for bilingual families offered by SINEWS and she also gives personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families. For more information, please visit www.sinews.es