Help, My 5 Year Old Wants To Learn All The Languages He's Coming Accross

Thank you for the tag @Srama .
Hi OP
I am very happy to read that your child has a flair and interest for learning languages.
All the responses are good.
I am the least qualified to offer any suggestions.
Both my children had neither flair nor interest, in learning languages. They take after their father whose has declared his mother tongue is Fortran.
So, I wont say anything for it will add no value.

 

@pumpkin01 at this age it is the fascination with languages the twist and turn of the tongue during pronunciation. if you have a flair for languages or interest you ears perk up when you hear a new language spoken around you. I was and am like that.

my son does the same. the kids speak 4 languages and one of them is a foreign language and i see them sliding in and out of all the four easily. when ds was 5 he would talk to a hindi speaking in hindi and switch to tamil to the tamil speaking kid in a blink of the eye. and from that experience i say he will get there.

i agree on the mother tongue. i presume he picked bengali easily because of its closeness to odia. so speaking your mother tongue is more than roots, family it is something neyond that and you can relate to it. being from a multilinguistic country as ours it is common to see people talking in more than one language.

i still assume he has a flair for it and just let him explore. the structure is something you can work on.

and these days i am more on the duolingo app looking at languages keeps me engaged and learn something new..

and yes make videos and audio vlips of his learning and speaking a language. a beautiful memory to hold on to..

all the best..

 

Others have given you excellent answers.

Just one small thing from my side...

Teach him his mother tongue first. It is important that he learns it, understands it and able to think in that language.
Mother tongue is a necessary step for the kids intellectual developments.

Even though you live in the UK and embraced foreign culture, I believe you still represent India and its culture in your day today life style.
The food you eat, the culture you follow, the festivals you celebrate and more importantly the language you speak at home (with your better half) makes you an Indian regardless of your citizenship.
Besides, it is hard to embrace ones culture without knowing the language.


Secondly, enroll him to a proper language class. At this age, if he is willing, there is no harm in teaching many languages to him.
But these you tube channels may be confusing his little brain.
A trained language teacher with ample experience with kids may have a proper curriculum and that helps
It is important that he continues to stay in touch with the new language he learns, else most likely he will forget it once he grow up.

I learnt Hindi when I was 5 or 6. I was fluent in it.
But then, I moved to France, learnt French, and then English, moved to different countries etc.. and had absolutely no touch with Hindi.
Now that I work with people who speak Urdu, and I can really understand them. But I am not that fluent in Hindi anymore.
But I am still very comfortable and good at my own mother tongue, in spite of not speaking the same for long.

 

Hmmmmm ... apart from having been a five-year-old in the distant past, I know next to nothing about them. So I may not be the right person for this. Since @Srama tagged me, let me see whether I can add anything useful to what has already been said. Bear in mind that I'm just thinking out aloud.

Kids are wired to absorb languages with minimal effort. This capacity works best in an immersive environment. Learning a language that is not spoken around you is a different endeavor. In such cases, all other things being equal, I would choose languages for which high-quality teaching/learning resources are available. In general, I think learning resources for Indian languages are poor, compared to those for the major European languages. That makes things a bit harder.

You need to know what the nature of his interest is. It is possible that he has a natural aptitude for languages. It is equally conceivable that this is a passing fancy. Kids have many of those. Why Kannada and Telugu? Where did he find out about them?

A five-year-old is not equipped for grammar, conjugation, and declension. What you need is a sort of functional literacy - an ability to say "May I please have a cookie?" in as many different tongues as possible. For French and German, even Latin, there is a range of resources targeted at children. In the US, some schools offer Mandarin as part of the curriculum. Trump's five-year-old granddaughter, Arabella, privately tutored, impressed the Chinese with her skills. For a mere $75K a year you too can send your son to such a school, but what I am trying to say here is that such child centered resources are available, even for cases where immersion is not possible.

For example, I think the Pimsleur method is affordable and might work well with children (I have no evidence for this, just speculation), but apart from Hindi/Urdu, I don't think other Indian languages are available. Sanskrit is not.

So, languages with good teaching/learning resources could be a useful starting point.

 

In more general terms, as a parent, you may want to keep the following in mind:

(1) From your point of view, his interest in languages need not be about languages alone. You can leverage that interest to teach him things that will stand him in good stead in other ways as well. Looking up a dictionary, using flashcards for vocabulary and phrases, putting up post-its around the house labeling things in various languages and so on. The idea is to start wherever the child wants to. If it is dinosaurs, you work with that. If it is cars or fighter planes you start there. This sort of structure can be a part of "learning to learn". If you are motivated, you could both learn a language together. That may be a good way to make memories!

(2) You can send him to a class. In this approach, he would be encouraged to focus on one language seriously (apart from English), while fooling around casually with as many as he wants to. The idea here is both for him to be doing something he likes and for you to gauge the depth of his talent, motivation, and commitment. There are no wrong answers. You are simply paying attention to your child so that you can help channel his drive.

(3) I second Rihana's comments about 'screen time' - that definitely needs to be limited. Based on what I have learned from observing friends of mine who are exceptional parents, I would say there are two goals you want for your child: Ensuring that (a) they "succeed" in life professionally and materially, in the sense that they grow up to be independent, not a burden on society or others, while contributing to the extent they can and (b) they have a measure of refinement that helps them enjoy living. This would mean an investment in one sport, one musical instrument/dance, one foreign language and perhaps some sensitivity to the visual arts, cultivated as convenient.

All of that requires time and energy. Non-immersive language learning (of multiple-languages) that is "screen centered" has the potential to detract from these other goals that you may have for raising a well-rounded child. For an unusually gifted person or someone with a relentless drive, allowing one interest to dominate over all others in a quest for excellence is fine. When dealing with a child, this needs great sensitivity and continuous fine-tuning.

OK, that's enough waffle for now!