Looking at some introductory examples of sociolinguistic issues, the topics of language loss, death, and maintenance typically show English as "the killer language" that decimates any L-varieties (typically foreign languages of immigrants) that happen to exist.
I find myself in an interesting position as an L1 English speaker, L2 Japanese speaker who lives in Seoul, South Korea with a Korean spouse and daughter. English is highly valued as a skill here, but only minor steps have been taken to institutionalize it. Why should it be institutionalized in a country where the vast majority share a common language, after all?
Although our first daughter (3.5 years) is trilingual, English is primarily a receptive skill for her. When I speak to her in English, she typically responds in Korean or Japanese. If the studies that show that peers have the largest impact on language development and our daughter ends up going to school in Korea (as she does now at a Korean day care), English may end up being stigmatic. She already has a non-Korean name and non-Korean physical features, so I anticipate that she'll hide any foreign language ability in class.
I'm doing as much as I can to ward off any language loss in the family, and I suspect that our second daughter (due early September 2010) will have an affect on our first daughter's language choices. My wife is also brushing up on her English skills so that our house operates primarily on English. We're doing our best to maintain trilingual children.
In the position I'm in, English is not so much a "killer language", but instead a victim of language homogeneity.
my niece and nephew are half Japanese and half Filipino american. My niece was born in Japan so she's retained most of what she was exposed to there, primarily Japanese. but my nephew being born in the states and is equally reared by his parents who speak a mixture of English and Japanese, and the rest of the family who speak to them primarily in Tagalog and English. So I'm kinda concerned he won't be as "intuitive" as his sister. I really don't want them to forget their Japanese. Both their parents speak to them in Japanese at home occasionally code switching into English. So I totally understand your situation in trying to raise trilingual kids. On top of that since we live so close to the border with Mexico we get a good dose of Spanish too. I hope the kiddies aren't receiving language overload. Keep those post coming. They really keep me informed with the linguistic world.
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