Is a Tri-lingual Baby Possible?

Yes, you can do it.

I speak English to my kids only. My Husband speaks French, only. Grandma speaks Japanese and English to them.
My kids know ALL languages. They are now 3 and 7 years old. They are FLUENT in all languages. NOW, at their ages.
We taught our kids multi-languages because we are multi-cultural and it is good for kids to learn other languages and cultures.

Kids are sponges... they can and do learn MULTI-languages. In Europe, many people speak even 5 languages just fine.

BUT... You CANNOT except that their "spoken" language and reading ability in those languages... to occur at the SAME time. Children's cognitive AND "language" development occurs in STAGES and PER their age.... as their brain develops. So keep that in mind. At this age, the brain is not even FULLY developed nor its synapses and connections. The brain for that matter, is not even "fully" developed until you are in your 20's.

Now, the fact that your BABY says "Ball" is good. AND She probably cognitively understands the word "ball" in ALL the other languages too.... but she is speaking it in English. At this time. That is fine. When she gets older and develops more, she WILL say it in other languages. Just do NOT rush it. Trust in that.

My kids, even before 1 years old, understood EVERYTHING that was told to them in other languages. Completely. Then, once they started to "talk" they talked in English. THEN, when they got older (about 2-3 years old), they started to speak in ALL the languages, gradually... ON THEIR OWN, per their development and age AND ability. They are completely Fluent in all. We did not pressure them.

The thing is... don't make it something irritating for the kid or that they have to "study" for it or "learn" it or be tested on it. It is everyday normal life and they are just, through exposure, absorbing all the different languages. NATURALLY. Like many many many kids and people do.

It has to be natural learning. A child WILL understand... and you will not confuse them. It is the way they grow up.

BUT, if I were you, I would speak to your child in only ONE language. YOUR main language. The caution here is that: if her parents (You and Hubby) speaks to her using multi-languages within 1 sentence all the time... then the child may learn an improper way of talking/sentence structure etc. She will learn THAT way of "talking" because you/everyone is talking to her in spliced sentences.

And NO... multi-languages does not "cause" a speech "delay." Meaning, it does NOT cause a child "NOT" to be able to talk.... nor to understand. The child may merely be "organizing" everything in their heads. So do not assume that all multi-lingual children automatically will have a speech delay and that it is bad and something is "wrong."
Einstein did not talk until 3 years old.

The other relatives, will just have to wait AND understand that... until your daughter is old enough AND mature enough to speak in all languages. It will take time and most of her formative years. And until then, you WILL have to translate for her AND them. But do NOT pressure her. My kids, HATE being 'nagged' to speak in other languages by their other relatives or being "tested" on what they know, or being told "Say something in french,japanese,english etc." Or that it is a competition to see how 'smart' they are or that one language is 'better' than the other.

The main thing being: you NEED to allow the child to learn at their own pace, naturally, and to grow INTO it... per their age and maturity and developmental based stages.
AND, you cannot control what kind of "accent" the child will have... when speaking all the languages. Not even adults have perfect accents. It is attained, in time. Even within America or Europe, there are different "accents" or dialects. So there is no single "accent" that is the proper accent. It depends on where you grew up in or are exposed to most of the time. Even linguists... don't have "perfect" accents in ALL languages.

A child, will be forming their language "ability" all their lives, whether it be in 1 language or multi-languages. And they will have their own preferences too.
For example: my friends, have multi-language kids too... and she has 3 kids. BUT, one of the kids went through a "phase" where he would ONLY speak 1 of the languages... even though he was capable of speaking/understanding the other languages. It was a phase. And you have to allow for that too. Its just growing up.

All the best,
Susan

Yes!!! It is definitely possible and the earlier you start, the better it will be. My friend is fluent in English, Spanish and Korean and her daughters (1 and 3) are learning to speak all three. Here is how they do it:

Father speaks only English to the girls. Parents speak English to each other

Mother speaks only Spanish to the girls, even if non-Spanish speakers are around. If she is directly addressing the girls, it is always in Spanish

Grandparents care for the girls during the week while the parents work. They speak only Korean

I know you can do it! Plan to teach mostly English and Japanese in the home, since she will easily pick up Italian living in Italy and being out and about, playing with Italian friends, etc.

Good luck!

You go girl! Raise your baby to be tri-lingual!

You are doing it perfectly, just speak Japanese to her as well.

This mistake I made with my daughter is that her heavy accented Colombian father spoke to her in English. My daughter's English was horrible because of it. LOL!

She was bilingual when she was little but lost it. I'm sorry for it now.

Keep up the great work!

Definitely. Our friends raised their kids trilingually. The mother only spoke Spanish to them, the father only spoke German, and since they were living in the U.S. at the time they heard English from everyone else. They are now fluent in all three languages, although their daughter had a German accent in English and Spanish when she was little as she was a Daddy's girl.

Thanks for your question, M..
I wanted to ask the same thing as well but you beat me to it! : )

I don't think i can help you out much but just wanted to share my own experience.
I'm also a japanese-american living abroad with a litle daughter who i want to have speaking japanese and american( : )) if possible. I live in Switzerland (german speaking part) with my swiss husband and our 7 month old daughter. I'm speaking to her only in English (i'm more comfortable with it), my husband swiss german and some english, and my mother when she comes to visit in japanese. We are planning on hiring a babysitter one afternoon a week who will speak japanese to her and we occasionally attend a nearby japanese group where they have other japanese children and moms to interact with.

I heard (and from my own experience) that the language which will be spoken at school is the "strongest" and so i am wanting to have as much English and Japanese as possible and yet at the same time,i heard that the parents should speak in only one language to the child as much as possible to avoid confusion. So now i am confused if I should speak some japanese part of the time or just stick with english.

On a different note, what japanese DVDs & children's songs are you & your daughter watching/listening to?

When my cousin was small they lived in Austria, and had people living with them (refugees from World War II( that spoke German and Polish. She quickly learned all three languages.

We had friends that decided that they would only speak French to their son. The problem was that they were very rigid about it, so even when they were in our play group, they wouldn't answer him if he spoke to them in English. That used to really upset him, since he knew they spoke English, and were speaking to the other children and parents in English. I think such rigidity isn't good. He grew to be a rather withdrawn child -- a bit of an odd-ball, and I think that may have had something to do with it. I think it would have been fine for them to speak French in the home with him, but they should have been more flexible when he was with his playmates.

Four of my own children were adopted and only spoke German. We spoke German to them at first, but when they went to school, they quickly started to switch to English. I think it's great that your daughter will be able to speak all three languages, and hope that she will retain them. That's the difficult part, since children do have minds of their own and may just quit with a language if they move away from that country. That's what really happened with both my cousin and my own children. The same thing happened to my second husband. He spoke only Japanese when small and went to Japanese school every Saturday, but resented not being able to have free time on Saturdays and speaks very little Japanese now.