So, this describes both my and my wife’s situations as kids, and now my kid’s situation.
Let me tell you, three languages is a stretch. In both my wife’s and my cases, the languages which got used stuck - and I don’t mean our parents didn’t speak them all to us - just that in our respective cases the utility value of the third language, which was in both cases an ancestral tongue not related to where we lived or spoken by both parents, was not adequate to make it stick. We each acquired the family language and the local language.
Our kid, we speak English with at home, Portuguese in the public sphere. She’s acquiring both and not muddling them to any great degree.
There’s a notion we share that other languages we each speak fluently would be good for her to learn, but based on our own experiences we intend to take a different approach. Once the two languages which will actually present utility to her day to day are in place pretty firmly, it’s time to ship her off to her grandparents for the summer, where she will be immersed in a tongue that will in that circumstance provide her utility. It was how I ultimately acquired my third language - two months with cousins and their family, aged 7.
So in short, your mileage may vary, but each of us found learning a third language that only one parent and nobody else spoke a chore, and it did not stick via primary language acquisition mechanisms, but had to come later.
Let me tell you, three languages is a stretch. In both my wife’s and my cases, the languages which got used stuck - and I don’t mean our parents didn’t speak them all to us - just that in our respective cases the utility value of the third language, which was in both cases an ancestral tongue not related to where we lived or spoken by both parents, was not adequate to make it stick. We each acquired the family language and the local language.
Our kid, we speak English with at home, Portuguese in the public sphere. She’s acquiring both and not muddling them to any great degree.
There’s a notion we share that other languages we each speak fluently would be good for her to learn, but based on our own experiences we intend to take a different approach. Once the two languages which will actually present utility to her day to day are in place pretty firmly, it’s time to ship her off to her grandparents for the summer, where she will be immersed in a tongue that will in that circumstance provide her utility. It was how I ultimately acquired my third language - two months with cousins and their family, aged 7.
So in short, your mileage may vary, but each of us found learning a third language that only one parent and nobody else spoke a chore, and it did not stick via primary language acquisition mechanisms, but had to come later.