lichtrausch wrote:BezierCurve wrote:His parents did what was best for him.
Well, even better would be to teach him both languages. I know people who raised their kids multilingually. And the kids can handle it amazingly well - even if they have to learn the third language on their way (say, of the country they live in); I heard it just takes consistency - each parent has to keep speaking to the kid in his own language.
Sure it's possible but it's quite difficult. It requires both parents being around the child quite a lot (many fathers can't do this because of work). The most likely outcome is that the child will speak 1 or at best 2 of the languages well and then the 3rd with low proficiency. That's assuming the parents don't give up entirely on the very time and energy consuming endeavour somewhere along the way.
My friend is an American who speaks fluent German. He moved to Germany, married a German woman, and now they have 3 kids together. They also speak French. They now live in the US. They speak German to each other, Mom speaks French to the girls, and Dad speaks English to the girls.
His 5 yr old is completely trilingual. She sees English as Daddy's language, so when Mom accidentally speaks to her daughter in English, she says C'est la langue de papa!. They are very diligent and their goal was to make their kids multilingual.. Our kids are amazingly multilingual as well. My son learned Yoruba when I was in Nigeria (He was 6). He just picked it up from the locals. Our other friends (they're photo-journalists) had a foster child and they moved to Bulgaria 3 years ago and took him with them. He was the translator for the first 3 months! I honestly believe kids in a foreign country have a stronger motivation to learn the language in order to make friends and to fit in. Children are sponges. They absorb EVERYTHING.