On growing up with several languages: the perspective of an English-Dutch speaking Swedish-American family in Arabic speaking Egypt

It’s finally spring break at AUC, and a lot of our friends left town for a week. Most of them are going to a beach resort; El Gouna, Dahab, Sharm El Sheik. I would have liked to go as well, but Courtney has to finish his dissertation, and it’s a good chance for the boys & me to get ahead on school work, and even finish one or two main subjects. Our history program for this year is nearly finished, August reads very well and has gone through most of the material for math, writing and grammar. Although we won’t abandon any of the key subjects entirely, I’m planning to shift the focus to a few projects these next couple of months; the boys’ Swedish, piano lessons and art. We are going to spend July in Sweden, and when we get there, I want them to be able to keep up with conversations, answer simple questions, and most importantly have a good base for building their vocabulary. They’re very excited about it, and it’s amazing how fast they learn.

A lot of people wonder why I don’t speak Swedish to my children; it’s the language I grew up with, and wouldn’t it be more profitable for my children if they learned the two languages from birth? I often feel bad that I didn’t try harder, but when August was born I had been living away from Sweden and Swedish for so many years, and all my pre- and postnatal support, in fact, my entire environment, was in an English or Dutch speaking setting. It didn’t feel natural to me to suddenly start speaking Swedish again, especially not with my English speaking family, so the boys grew up with English as their mother tongue and Dutch as their second language. They have a basic feel for the Swedish language though; they’ve heard it every so often throughout their lives, they have a small basic vocabulary and know a lot of songs, and I’m trying to give them more and more, so that when they’re older, they’ll be able to function in Swedish as well as in English or Dutch. I speak Swedish, English and Dutch fluently without an accent. I’m proficient in French and German, and speak basic Arabic. I do it, and so can they!