Growing Up with Languages

Reflections on Multilingual Childhoods

Claire Thomas

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781847697141
• eBook ISBN: 9781847697172
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

A unique new insight into multilingual families, this book views multilingual childhoods from the point of the child and is based on over 50 interviews with adults who grew up in multilingual settings. The book charts their recollections of their childhoods and includes many different types of families, discusses many of the common issues that arise in multilingual families, and draws examples from all over the world. The book fills a significant gap in the literature and resources available to multilingual parents. It was researched and written by a self-help group of multilingual parents and thus the book remains very practical and gives clear and realistic advice to multilingual parents facing choices or dilemmas. However, because of its unique viewpoint, this book also includes much new material that will be of interest to researchers and students of bilingualism.

PART 1

Different Types of Family and Issues that Only Affect Some Kinds of Family

1 Issues for Families Speaking More than One Language at Home

2 Issues for Families Using One Language at Home, Another in the Community and at School

3 Interviewees who are Bilingual Solely through Attending School in Another Language

4 Interviewees who Learnt Languages Solely from the Community

5 Changes as a Result of Divorce or Separation

6 Changes as a Result of the Death of One Parent

7 Changes as a Result of Advice Given to Parents

8 Changes as a Result of Interviewees’ Choices or Decisions

This section discusses the experiences of four main different kinds of multilingual settings that children grow up in and the factors and facets of life that affect only or primarily that type of family. I then discuss some of the families that experienced changes in their multilingual setting during their childhoods due to divorce or bereavement and then some changes due to the children’s own choices.

The first group is composed of all the mixed-language families where each parent speaks a different language to the children. Here there are often decisions to be made about who speaks what language to the child(ren) and what language(s) the adults speak to each other. The second main group includes the families who speak one language at home and another at school and in the community. Many of these have moved – whether internationally or within a country. I discuss the different experiences of children who themselves remember moving as against those who were the children or grandchildren of migrants. I discuss what interviewees said about whether their parents could speak the majority language fluently or not. The third group is made up of the interviewees who learnt a language solely through attending a school that used a language other than the one they spoke at home as the main language medium to teach all or most subjects. These interviewees have learnt a language in isolation and have used it in quite limited settings and for limited purposes, and they may feel that they have some gaps in their vocabulary. Unless they continue to get input in the language after they leave the school, they will usually lose it. The fourth main group is those interviewees who learnt a language solely through their interactions with the community. It is interesting to discover that some children did learn a language quite quickly from what must have been quite limited input, although others in the same setting did not do so as they were not motivated to interact with the community as much.

I then share some accounts of how significant changes took place during some interviewees’ childhoods as a result of divorce, bereavement, and as a result of advice given to parents. Finally in this section, I recount some remarkable instances of how children were active in making very positive and, in some cases, conscious choices about the languages that they spoke.

1 Issues for Families Speaking More than One Language at Home

Some issues are particularly relevant in mixed-language relationships, where the mother and father have different mother tongues. This may mean that at the outset of the relationship, or when children are born, parents have some choices to make about which language to speak between themselves and to the child(ren). This is even more the case if one or both parents are bilingual. So this chapter is for those who want to know more about how families have made these choices, how children remember them or what they were told about them and their impact as the children grew up. Interviewees discussed choices about what languages parents used to speak to the children, including where parents who were themselves bilingual made choices, where parents decided to speak a language other than a mother tongue to the children and what languages parents spoke between themselves. We also cover some examples where grandparents and other relatives were important in bringing another language to children.

Mixed Language Relationships – Languages Parents Used to Speak to the Children

It might seem automatic for those in a mixed-language relationship for each parent to speak their own first language to the children, and in most interviewees’ families this was the case to the extent that it was almost taken for granted, and so many interviewees did not comment on this or raise it as an issue. Some families remember making decisions, or there was some doubt or discussion on this point. Where one or other parent decided not to speak their first, most fluent, or strongest language to the children, there was more awareness and usually some justification for the decision that was shared with the children later.

Armelle was the child of a Spanish-speaking mother from Argentina and a French father. Her mother who was then living in France sought advice about what language she should speak to her children: ‘My mother told me that she went to a paediatrician [in France in the 1970s] when we were very young and she asked whether she could still speak Spanish to her children. He told her that she should speak Spanish to her children because she would be able to communicate her feelings better in her own language’. Armelle’s mother followed this advice (very consistently despite the fact that her children did not always reply to her in Spanish, and despite some adverse comments from other family members – see p. 99). (Please note that not all doctors are as well informed about bilingualism as this one was. In fact, medical training does not cover this subject so if you want advice seek out a specialist in bilingualism.)

Helen was the child of an English father and a Dutch mother who had met and were living in Holland. When Helen was born, her father wanted her mother to speak English to her instead of Dutch. Dutch was Helen’s mother’s first language and she was not very fluent in English. Helen’s mother found speaking English very difficult, and felt that it was artificial and preferred to speak in Dutch to her children. ‘My father did feel a bit let down about this as though she didn’t try hard enough, but she didn’t feel natural’. This seems to have been an unsuccessful attempt to achieve a more equal balance of English and Dutch within this family living in Holland. Although some individuals seem to have succeeded in speaking a language that was not their first language to their children (see Claudia, p. 22), others find this very difficult (see also Sylvia, p. 188).

Is a Mother’s Influence Greater Than a Father’s?

In our group, parents quite often wonder if it makes a difference whether a language is spoken to the children by a father or a mother – this concern often arises where fathers will be spending less time with young children. In our sample, this did not seem to be a significant factor. Where families did use a ‘one person, one language’ system, interviewees had as children learnt languages primarily from both mothers and fathers. This was the case even where schooling and the community were both in the mother’s language and thus, together with the fact that the mother was spending more time with the children, this meant that quite a high proportion of a young child’s input was in one language. So Helen’s only input in English was from her father and from holidays in the UK – her mother spoke Dutch and the language used in the school and community was also Dutch. However, Helen speaks fluent English. Parvati’s mother spoke a mixture of Hindi and English to her. Her father spoke only English to his children. Parvati’s schooling was in English and she was raised in the UK, with occasional holidays in India. Nevertheless, she speaks fluent Hindi. Those interviewees who resisted speaking a parent’s preferred language did so whether this was their mother’s language (e.g. Ingrid, raised by an English-speaking mother and Swedish father in Sweden) or their father’s (e.g. Helen. For more on this, see Chapter 11 on resistance).

One Bilingual Parent – Which Language?

In mixed-language families, where one or other parent is bilingual, there are three potential languages that can be spoken to the child(ren). In these families, it was more common for children to be aware of decisions or discussions about who spoke what language to the children. Several families who had the option seem to have decided not to raise their children trilingually. This was despite the fact that these families all included a successful bilingual adult, and so should not necessarily have been influenced by myths about children becoming confused by hearing several languages. Isabelle’s Polish-Canadian father elected to speak English to his children. As he was married to a French woman this meant that the children still learnt two languages. In fact, Isabelle’s (monolingual French) mother was keener on the children being raised bilingually than her already bilingual father was. Isabelle remembers that her mother argued for Isabelle to attend a bilingual French-English school: ‘She was quite into languages herself … she saw the value of it. It was because of her that we had the bilingual upbringing that we had. My father was much less fussed about it. He was like “they should integrate”‘.

Adeyinka’s parents and Helen’s mother both decided not to speak their first languages, which were local dialects to their children. In Adeyinka’s case, he grew up speaking Yoruba at home in Nigeria but attended an English-medium school. Both his parents spoke different dialects of Yoruba, but they both spoke mainly standard Yoruba to their children, meaning that the children only learnt standard Yoruba and neither of their parents’ dialects. In Helen’s Dutch-English family, her mother was a bilingual Dutch and Frisian speaker where the family agreed that it might be too confusing to try to bring the children up speaking three languages and Frisian was not spoken at home, although Helen learnt at least some Frisian from her Dutch grandmother who she saw regularly.

When faced with a bilingual parent who has a choice between two languages, there seem to be two opposite ways that a family can go: either to opt for a more widely-spoken language, often a language widely perceived as having a higher status or being seen as more useful, or to opt for a dialect or less widely-spoken language. Thus standard forms can be preferred over dialects, national languages over local ones and, as mentioned above, in Isabelle’s family in Canada, English was preferred over Polish. However, some families do take the other tack, and choose to speak either a dialect or a less widely-spoken language to their children in preference to a more internationally used language. So Josune has decided to speak Basque and not Spanish to her children (who are also learning English and Czech), and Saad has decided to speak Kurdish and not Arabic to his children. Josune specifically explains her decision in terms of the children having little chance of learning Basque in later life if they did not learn it from her, whereas they would have a much better chance of learning Spanish from other sources. In several cases where the family decided to opt for a more widely-spoken language, either the child or the parent regretted this decision later. So, for example, Adeyinka wished that both his parents had spoken the same dialect so that he could have learnt that and become trilingual, and Helen’s mother has said that she regrets not raising Helen to also speak more Frisian.

In multilingual Luxembourg, Charles’s bilingual French/Luxembourgian-speaking father chose to speak French to his children, whilst his bilingual Dutch-French mother started out speaking to them in Dutch. The children also heard Luxembourgian in the community at large. Charles thinks his mother’s decision to speak Dutch to her children was a reaction to her own childhood ‘because when she was growing up… She grew up in Holland and her mother wanted them to speak French rather than Dutch so her and her sister were speaking in Dutch and her mother wanted them to speak French. In Holland, back in those days, [French] was a sign of high society. She wanted us to know Dutch, because she really liked Dutch language and she was very proud of it’. In fact, as the children grew older Charles’s mother struggled to stick to her initial decision and gradually switched to speaking more and more French.

Two Bilingual Parents – What Mix of Languages?

Some interviewees grew up in families where both parents had been bilingual since childhood; a Spanish-speaking family in Texas, a family speaking Occitan and French in south-western France, a Welsh family in London and Wales, and a family speaking Hindi and English in the UK. In these families there is inherently more choice and more flexibility in both the languages used between adults and in who speaks what language to the children. In two of these four examples, there was considerable use of both languages by both parents as well as by the children, including some switching or mixing of languages.

Pedro was born and brought up in a small town in Texas, in the United States of America. Most people in the area spoke Spanish at home. In Pedro’s family, his parents primarily spoke to the children in Spanish. His father was more consistent in speaking Spanish; he did not mix English and Spanish, whereas Pedro’s mother would mix the two languages freely: ‘With my Dad, whatever language he spoke to you, you responded in that language … if he spoke to you in English, you responded in English, if he spoke in Spanish, you responded in Spanish. With my Mum if she spoke to you in Spanish, it was OK if you replied in English’.

His father would query if the children spoke ‘Spanglish’ or a mixture of Spanish and English to him. ‘One thing we didn’t do was speak Spanglish to him. He didn’t tolerate that. If you spoke Spanglish to him, he would let you know. He would say “Speak English, or speak Spanish, don’t mix the languages”‘.

Pedro says that his father’s choice of language did not follow a particular pattern but: ‘It depended on what mode his mind was on …’. He gives the example of when his father had been watching TV (which at that time was only in English) he would be ‘in English mode’ and would probably speak in English.

Another example of parents switching or mixing languages concerns Sophie, who was born and brought up in south-west France, not far from Bordeaux. She grew up in an extended family where her parents, and initially four grandparents and an ‘adopted grandfather’, all lived in adjoining buildings close together. The whole family ate lunch and dinner together every day and there was a close connection between them all. The whole of her family spoke both French and Occitan. Occitan has some similarities in vocabulary and grammar to Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. Linguists regard it as a distinct language, but in France it is commonly seen either as a dialect or a degraded version of French. When she was a child, Sophie’s grandparents and parents would speak to her in both French and Occitan at home. She thinks that generally one of her grandparents would initiate a conversation in Occitan and her father would reply in either French or Occitan, while her mother would reply more often in French. Thus she heard both French and Occitan at home, whether spoken directly to her or in conversations amongst the adults. Sophie herself mostly responded in French, however, and only occasionally spoke Occitan herself.

Marion

In contrast, although Marion’s family could all speak and understand both Welsh and English, there were very clear and fixed patterns within the family about who spoke what language to whom. Marion grew up in South London where she was living with her Welsh family until the age of nine. She lived in a house that was split into two flats. Marion, her parents and her older sister lived on the top floor, and her grandparents (from her mother’s side) lived on the bottom floor. She spoke English with her mother, sister and grandfather, and Welsh with her father and grandmother. There were distinct ways of using language in the house that cut across the three generations. Her grandmother spoke fluent Welsh (from South Wales), but her grandfather (from the border) spoke some Welsh, but not fluently. ‘He mocked my grandmother at speaking Welsh … it being old fashioned. You wouldn’t get ahead if you spoke Welsh’.

In contrast, Marion’s father was very pro-Welsh: ‘Although he worked for the [British] government at the time [my father] was still very Welsh, very pro-Wales, a supporter of Welsh nationalism and his family is from North Wales, and North Wales is the bastion of the Welsh language. My mother, very much sided with her pro-English father, spoke English all the time, although she could understand Welsh completely and she read fluently, but she refused to use the language, almost consistently through the whole of the time that I knew her. My sister was very much like my mother and has very little Welsh …’.

Marion’s father spoke Welsh to his mother-in-law and English to his wife. Marion’s father’s mother in Wales spoke no English: ‘All her grandchildren had to speak some Welsh’.

‘When I was growing up, my father was committed to make me Welsh speaking and I spent a lot of time being looked after by my grandmother, because my mother went back to work. And my father also took a lot of responsibility for me and we did everything in Welsh. I must have grown up with a kind of mix of English and Welsh until the age of five. When I got to school in London, where nobody spoke Welsh, I was more comfortable with Welsh’. Marion’s early education in English was not straightforward (this is described on p. 111).

Marion clearly feels that the disputed language division in her family was not helpful. This contributed to her decision not to raise her own children fully bilingually: ‘I don’t want to build up an environment in the way that I grew up where it really divided the family into two. I was very much my father’s daughter, and my sister was very much my mother’s daughter. It [language] really split the family down the middle’. Marion’s advice to other families is to avoid such a split occurring: ‘It’s very important the child is aware that the family is not divided and that both parents are seen to invest in the two, three languages, so that even if one of them doesn’t speak it they are clearly happy with the other one speaking it’.

The final case involves Parvati, whose Indian father had first learnt Hindi as a very young child, but increasingly switched to English after learning it at school and he spoke almost exclusively in English to his children. Parvati’s parents were both Indian and moved to the UK in the 1960s as young adults. Both of her parents spoke Hindi and English (Parvati’s mother also spoke Urdu and Punjabi). Parvati’s mother had learnt English informally as a child. She had travelled to the UK for short periods during her childhood, and she had fluent colloquial but not academic English. Parvati’s father had learnt English at school and attended a high-status English-medium university in India. Parvati’s mother spoke to her husband in a mixture of Hindi and English and he replied almost always in English (unless he did not want white British people around to understand what he was saying). Both Parvati and her older sister were born in the UK. At home Parvati’s mother spoke to her in a mixture of English and Hindi, but her father spoke exclusively English, and both girls spoke only English to him.

Parvati explains that her father: ‘left India to seek a better life for himself and his family in an intellectual sense … he really wanted us to have educational opportunities. He was not a typical Indian man, a lot of Indian families have a Bollywood culture in the background, (i.e...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Different Types of Family and Issues that Only Affect Some Kinds of Family
• Part 2: Issues at Home that will Affect Most, if Not All, Families at Some Time
• Part 3: Education
• Part 4: Language Policies and Politics
• Part 5: Interviewees as Adults
• Part 6: Overall Analysis and Recommendations
• About Waltham Forest Bilingual Group and How This Project Got Started
• Annex 1 – Questionnaire
• Annex 2 – Language Self Assessment
• Annex 3
• Glossary
• Index