In a world where monolingualism often takes center stage, multilingual families in the US face a unique set of challenges. The Trilingual Families Project is here to shed light on these challenges and offer practical solutions for raising trilingual children in monolingual societies.

Multilingual families find themselves at a crossroads, trying to nurture and sustain multiple languages within societies dominated by a single tongue. This challenge is even more daunting when compared to bilingual families. Imagine a child growing up with two heritage languages, both of which are minority languages, alongside the dominant community language. It’s a delicate juggling act, with inherent competition between the heritage languages and the community language and between the two heritage languages themselves. Over time, parents may feel tempted to give up on one or both of the heritage languages in favor of promoting the community language. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. There are strategies to prevent and overcome language maintenance challenges and successfully raise trilingual children.

Immigrant and transnational families in the United States face additional complexity. They grapple with linguistic colonialism and monolingual policies that put their heritage languages at risk. The potential loss of these heritage languages can adversely affect all family members’ well-being. But just like other multilingual families, they, too, can overcome these challenges.