Yau Wing-yi knows the Japanese-language playgroup sessions her son attends are paying off when they visit the supermarket. Strolling down the aisle, four-year-old Chan Long-kiu points out the ichigo (strawberry), ringo (apple) and remon (lemon) to his mother.
Long-kiu seems to have a flair for languages, she says.
'He could rattle off all 26 letters of the English alphabet when he was one,' says Yau, a housewife who speaks Cantonese and English. Recognising her son's gift, she signed him up for a Japanese playgroup before he turned two. Now Long-kiu knows all 50 basic Japanese sounds and can sing Japanese nursery rhymes.
Yau has since also bought kits for him to learn Spanish and French.
'I often play the discs at home so that he can familiarise himself with different languages,' she says. 'It will be much easier if he wants to learn languages when he grows up.'
Government policy calls for literacy in two languages (English and Chinese) and fluency in three (English, Cantonese and Mandarin). However, eager to prime their children for the challenges of a globalised age, more parents like Yau are making their children pick up a fourth or even fifth language. This has turned the pre-school sector into multilingual learning hubs, with playgroups and kindergartens adding more languages to their usual curriculum.
However, forcing many language classes onto children may prove a hindrance if there is inadequate support outside the classroom.