My father was raised in Chile speaking French at his first school, German with his grandparents, Spanish with his friends, and English at home and at his second school. He subsequently learned Cantonese as a result of World War Two and then Dutch because he worked for Shell. He spoke several languages at home, using German primarily when we had done something wrong, French for telling stories, and Spanish at the dinner table.
As a result all of us kids are fluent in Spanish. My brother additionally speaks Portuguese (Brazilian version). My sister added Norwegian and Italian to her knowledge base and may have added some Tibetan or Dzongkha because as a Buddhist she has made pilgrimages there. I have studied and upon occasion muddled along and gotten by in French, German, and Portuguese. I have also studied Japanese and Mandarin, and have picked up odd phrases in a number of other languages, including Farsi, Tagalog, Indonesian, Italian, and Russian.
When my parents offered to host a foreign exchange student the organization had difficulty choosing the right one because they wanted the student to be forced to use English and thus required the host family to be unable to speak the student’s native tongue. Eventually the organization arrived with a perfect solution: they sent us an Australian.
Little did they know that my grandmother spoke fluent “Strine.”