The Complexity of Trilingualism

One day, my family and I were dining in a restaurant on a trip to Chicago. A middle-aged couple at a table near ours kept eavesdropping on our conversation. Before they left the restaurant, the woman came to us and asked, 'How many languages do your kids speak?' We answered, 'Three'. 'Oh boy, oh boy!' she cried out, 'Three languages, just like that! My goodness, these kids are so smart ...'. She mumbled her way out of the restaurant, saying, 'It's really a miracle that these kids can switch from one language to the other ...'.

Another time, when my family was shopping in a jade store in Beijing, several shop assistants dropped what they were doing and gathered around us just to compliment me about my children's ability to speak such good Chinese in addition to other languages (though they had no clue what the other languages were).

Still another time, at a New Year's Eve party given by my in-laws in Neuchâtel, my husband's elementary school teacher Madame Guillaume was so impressed with our older son Léandre's trilingual ability (our younger son Dominique was still prelingual at the time) that she literally spent the entire party following him around to listen to him switching languages with multilingual guests and family members.

Although my husband and I have felt flattered by many such compliments over the years, we have also had some unpleasant experiences. For example, a few years ago, a man approached my husband at our community swimming pool to tell him off, saying, 'It's about time you speak English to your boys. If you continue to speak your language, they will not be able to speak English. You know, they live in America!'

When our children were younger, a Hungarian woman in our neighborhood bet with us that in a few years our children would give up their French and Chinese and switch to English, based on her 'evidence' that her son dropped Hungarian as soon as he had entered elementary school. One summer evening, she stopped me on my routine stroll and told me with a grin that her prediction had proven to be right. She said that she had 'caught' my children speaking English to each other that afternoon. She was blissfully unaware that Léandre and Dominique were actually talking to their English-speaking friend Galo who was playing on the floor of the terrace and could not be seen by her.

When Léandre was in first grade, one of his classmates told other children that Léandre had 'something strange on his tongue' because he could speak weird languages (after he had learned that Léandre could speak other languages).

And, in Dominique's third week of kindergarten, he brought back a consent form from a school-district language specialist seeking parental permission to enroll Dominique in a therapeutic language session. Alarmed and nervous as any parent would be, I immediately called to ask what led her to this decision. The language specialist explained to me that as part of her routine entrance screening, she had read a school information sheet which noted that Dominique was trilingual, and it also seemed Dominique was not able to open his mouth wide enough when speaking. Puzzled by her rationale, I asked her whether she had observed Dominique speaking in other circumstances as well, such as with his peers or his classroom teacher. She said that she had not. I suggested discreetly that she observe him a little longer before deciding what to do. I never heard from her again.

I could go on with such stories. The point of sharing a few of them with you is not to blow my own horn with other people's compliments or to be bitter about their not-so-flattering comments, but to show that many people may have extreme and skewed reactions, opinions and even biases toward trilingual children. In our conversations with people, we noticed that few realize that the process of becoming trilingual is not as simple and straightforward as they imagine. The small linguistic 'miracles' that my children have demonstrated involve many layers of complexity. As Colin Baker, a bilingual education expert in the United Kingdom, lucidly points out, bilingualism is a simple term that hides a complex phenomenon. In my opinion, the same goes for trilingualism.

This chapter discusses the complexities and intricacies of the trilingual phenomenon. The questions that are explored include: who is trilingual, why equal competence and performance in three languages are unlikely, why purity in three languages is an illusion and why trilinguals should be treated as a separate group instead of being 'judged' according to the standards of monolinguals and bilinguals. The purpose is to weed out many of the commonly held myths and misconceptions regarding trilingualism and to present a realistic picture of what it means to be a trilingual.

Who is Trilingual?

The complexity of trilingualism begins with the question, 'Who is trilingual?' The American Heritage Dictionary defines a trilingual person as someone who is 'using or able to use three languages, especially with equal fluency or nearly equal fluency'. Most people probably will accept this definition without questioning, as shown by my survey of 200 preservice education graduate students, in which 96% think the definition is accurate. The truth is that if we use this definition, particularly the 'with equal fluency or nearly equal fluency' part, as a yardstick to measure trilinguals, I am afraid that very few of them would qualify. To put this discussion in context, I would like you to consider four individual cases.

Are these four people really trilingual? Are any of them more trilingual than the others? Perhaps to your dismay, all four of them are indeed trilingual! According to linguist Jasone Cenoz, there are at least four types of trilingualism distinguished by the order of acquisition:

Types of Trilingualism

Type 1: The three language systems are acquired consecutively.

Type 2: The third language system is acquired after the simultaneous acquisition of the first two.

Type 3: The first language system is already acquired before the simultaneous acquisition of two other languages.

Type 4: Simultaneous contact with three language systems.

Based on Cenoz's categories, Joanne belongs to the Type 1 trilingualism. Her three language systems were acquired consecutively (first Korean, then English and finally German). Philippe belongs to the Type 2 trilingualism. His third language system (English) was acquired after the simultaneous acquisition of the first two (French and German). Andrea belongs to the Type 3 trilingualism because his first language system (Polish) was already acquired before the simultaneous acquisition of two other languages (German and English). Maria belongs to the Type 4 trilingualism. She has had simultaneous contact with three language systems...