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When I was in the first grade our teacher decided to teach us French and I remember almost everything thing she thought us (40+ years ago). In the fifth grade, the University of Utah decided to use their educational channel (pre-PBS) to broadcast French to the elementary schools. We took lessons once or maybe twice a week. I remember a bit of that. Then my freshman year in college I took a year of French and remember almost nothing.

Somewhere in my past, I heard from several experts that young children are very capable of picking up languages and not mixing them up. I think the example that was used, was that mom could speak just English to the child, the dad could speak French, while the maid spoke German and the cook Spanish and the child would be able to converse with each as they grew older and not confuse the languages.

A few years ago I read about a study that showed that the ability to make certain sounds is set in infancy, just from regular exposure to the sound, in this case language. After that point (under a year) the throat, mouth and tongue are set for making those sounds. I find that my mouth and tongue just don't work right to roll my r's when I attempt a Spanish word with an r. German gutturals are even harder. My former brother in law is Hispanic and while the kids know very little Spanish, the youngest, who heard more Spanish from her father (we had a hard time convincing him to talk to the kids in Spanish) can roll her r's with the best of them.

I think that even if you don't plan on teaching a child a different language, you would be doing them a huge favor by playing tapes or music featuring other languages so that they are physically prepared should they wish to speak another languge in later life.