11 months

Poor little V, how was she to know she would be born to a linguist? Not a linguist who knows much about language acquisition, nor multiple language acquisition, but a linguist nonetheless. Many of the books we have on multiple language acquisition are unabashed case studies of the author's own child(ren). In keeping with tradition, I feel it is my duty to report in some form, somewhere, what V is doing at what stages. And here you have it.

V has just turned 11 months old. The languages to which she is systematically exposed are Finnish, Swedish, and English. Her mother (that's me) is a native speaker of English, her father is a native speaker of Swedish (he's bilingual, actually, in Swedish and Finnish, which is a story unto itself--but let's not talk about him right now), and we live in Finland. V has Finnish speaking relatives, friends, and babysitters. I speak English with my husband, he speaks Swedish with V and his other daughter (she doesn't live with us fulltime). We speak Finnish to our dog. All of us have a basic understanding of all three languages that are spoken in our home. Except for the dog, that is.

I would say that at this stage V is exposed to English 75% of the time, Swedish 20%, and Finnish 5% or less.

That's the backdrop. So here are the most interesting bits I have observed so far. V's comprehension of Swedish and English is already quite high. She responds to such questions in Swedish as "Var är lampan?" by pointing up at the lamp. She responds the same way to the question in English: "Where's the lamp?" She responds to "V är duktig" by clapping her hands. (It means that she's a good girl. :-)) She responds similarly to "where is...?" questions in both languages (ie, "Where's Daddy?" "Where's Mommy?") She understands basic commands in English, such as "Give Mommy kisses," "wave bye-bye" and "pat the doggy." I'm not sure at this point what she understands in Finnish, if anything. I'll have to ask her babysitter.

In terms of production, most of the words seem to be in English. V says bread in English, and also bröd in Swedish--or so it seems. She says both pappa and daddy, but she doesn't say mamma (although she knows what it means). Other words are pat, tickle-tickle, and woof (as in "what does the doggy say?").

It seems quite clear, then, that she has command of her stop consonants (p, t, k, b, at least). Her vowels probably still require a little bit of imaginative listening.