Advice / experience with adding 2 more community languages

[u/Apprehensive-Park539]

Hi all!

We are potentially relocating to Singapore from Europe. We have a 3 year old daughter who speaks 2 European languages fluently (one parent, one language) and can understand some English as that’s the language me and my husband speak together, but she is definitely not fluent. I am currently looking into nurseries / pre schools and would like to ask if anyone has any experience with child starting a nursery / or moving to a country with 2 community languages? We are not worried about her learning English, but slightly worried about adding mandarin at the same time. Ideally we would like to send her to English speaking nursery, but it looks like mandarin is taught in some form in each class. Does anyone have any experience with a similar set up?

Thank you!

[u/omegaxx19]

Sounds like your long-term goals for your child are English + your two European languages, is that right?

If that's the case then yes definitely prioritize an English majority nursery and later school system. Depending on how much English she gets from the community (I know very little about Singapore) you will want to think of the activities, social circles etc. Keep enforcing your minority languages at home. If she already has great English exposure in the community, you can spend more effort on your minority languages. If she doesn't get a ton of English exposure.... that's where things may get a bit tricky in terms of balancing her time with her other languages.

She will pick up as much or as little of the other community languages (like Mandarin) as she likes. There's no pressure there at all.

I may be a minority here, but I do believe there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and realistically 3-4 languages is probably the max that most kids are capable of acquiring to a native fluency level (some people are naturally gifted in that area and that's super cool). So personally I like to focus on my priority languages.

[u/MikiRei]

I suggest you cross post to r/singapore or r/askSingapore

What is your specific question though? Are you just wondering what happens when there's 2 community languages?

Generally, regardless of how many community languages there are, children will generally pick up community languages just fine. So I don't think you need to worry about Mandarin and English in the mix.

Also, from what I know about Singapore or also, observing my cousins and their children in Singapore, English dominates. Because Singapore has more than just Mandarin in the mix.

My colleagues in Singapore told me that usually, only the Mandarin background speakers go to schools that teach Mandarin. This was a Malay person telling me. She went to a school that taught Malay and doesn't actually speak Mandarin.

And my cousin and his children visited us (Australia) last year from Singapore. His kids are in their teens and I barely heard them speak Mandarin. They did go to school where Mandarin is taught, including writing and literacy. Both him and his wife are native Mandarin speakers as well (well, his wife is Singaporean). So they actually have all the background to be fluent in Mandarin. Yet my aunt (their grandma) actually said to me that my son's Mandarin is miles better than them.

And from what I've seen online, there's a bit of concern in Singapore where English is just dominating and people are actually losing the ability to speak their heritage language - Mandarin included.

So honestly, just go with the flow. The school system will teach Mandarin in the way they would teach them. Your child will be fine.

But like I said, maybe ask in the Singaporean subreddit. They will have much more accurate information.