Remembering myself

September 22, 2006 2:29 PM

What would a child adopted from a foreign country at the age of five, and brought up as a Westerner, remember of their infancy, and mother tongue?

Let's say that until you were five, you lived in Russia and spoke Russian. When you were five, your parents died and you were taken to America, where you grew up in a series of foster homes, speaking English exclusively, and were never told of your background.

Now you're an adult in your twenties. What do you remember of your parents, if anything? Of the plane ride? What happens when someone speaks Russian? Do you understand? Can you converse? Basically, is it possible you could simply *not know* about your background?

Personal anecdotes very welcome. As you might imagine I am trying to work out the rules for a piece of fiction.

posted by unSane to Society & Culture (18 answers total)

Normally the language would be forgotten - at least that's what happened with friends who had immigrated with their families, who then insisted on speaking only English.

There'd probably be some memory of the early life, though - Think to what you can remember from before you were five. Why would an adopted or foster child have much difference?
posted by dilettante at 2:45 PM on September 22, 2006

I know a girl who was born in China and came over to America at about the same age (mid-20s now). She says she can remember nothing about China. I don't remember exactly, but I think she also doesn't remember the plane ride. She can speak the language, but only because her parents kept up with teaching her and she still does some translation/interpretation for them.

So yes, it is entirely possible to forget totally about your "homeland", and unless you are using language all the time, to forget it. Perhaps you would remeber some words or phrases, or hearing the language might trigger some sort of vague memory...
posted by blind.wombat at 2:48 PM on September 22, 2006

I seem to remember from way back when (college circa 1994) that they did a study of British citizens who had been raised in India by Indian nannys and returned to Britian before the age of 5. Although they did not remember any Hindi, they could still distinguish between the nuances of language sounds used by Hindi speakers that would be indistinguishable to the average english speaker.
posted by echolalia67 at 2:59 PM on September 22, 2006

I can't address the language question, but the memory would vary dramatically between people.

I remember a great deal of my early childhood, including a few snippets of traumatic injuries at 18 months and 2 years old. I also remember parts of a trip to Hawaii at age 2.

My husband claims he can't remember 3rd grade. I make fun of him, but he says he's serious. He has no memories prior to age 9 or 10. He's had nothing terrible happen to him, just a crap memory.
posted by peep at 3:02 PM on September 22, 2006

A friend of mine moved to Canada from Sweden when she was three or four, and thought she couldn't remember the language at all, but visited Sweden in her forties and was able to understand everything said to her after the first two or three days there.
posted by joannemerriam at 3:03 PM on September 22, 2006

Five is pretty old. I grew up overseas in the Middle East, exposed to arabic quite a lot. We left when I was 5 and I remembered most of what I knew then when I returned to the Middle East at the age of 12.

I also have a lot of distinct memories from when I was 5 of my parents, school, my home, my surroundings, vacations, everything.

As I said, 5 is quite old... push that back to 4, maybe 3, and it becomes a different story.
posted by empyrean at 3:04 PM on September 22, 2006

I moved around the UK at 5 years old, 10 and 15 - and most of my lasting detailed memories only go as far back as 10 years old; between 5-10yo I can remember feelings, impressions and general places, but not really any specific events (e.g. one picnic out to the park was pretty much the same as another; I can't specifically remember any one event). Stuff before 5 years old? Almost nothing - just a couple of quite vivid events that, similar to peep's recollections, were traumatic (at least at the time!). Other memories I think have been generated from family stories and photographs.

Although everyone has different mental capabilities, I suspect that this pattern will be similar for everyone (nice sweeping generalisation there for you!) - perhaps moving around various foster homes would serve to "blur" past memories (or perhaps it would have the opposite effect, as you'd try to hold on to your past more tightly?). Regarding losing the parents, and the flight overseas - if they were sufficiently traumatic, then perhaps they would be remembered - maybe as an aversion to flying?

Language would definitely be lost without practice, although there's a possibility that the odd word or inflection would remain. I certainly inadvertantly pronounce some things in the accent I had when I was a toddler, especially after a couple of drinks.. :)
posted by Chunder at 3:14 PM on September 22, 2006

My cousin, adopted from Russia at the age of 5, now 11, says she remembers no Russian.
posted by nathancaswell at 3:24 PM on September 22, 2006

At a minimum, you'd have an ear for the language - that is, you might be able to separate one word from another rather than hearing it as one long stream of phonemes, and you'd probably find it easier to learn than someone without the experience.

That was my experience, anyway, having spoken a 2nd language fluently as a young child and then stopped speaking it when I was about that age. I've been exposed to it since then (first at age 13, I think, though only for a few weeks, then in college language classes), and have found both of those - the parsing and the ease-of-relearning - to be true.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 3:49 PM on September 22, 2006

Along the lines of echolalia67's comment: The accent and phonetic stuff sticks (or can stick), even if grammar and vocabulary fade. I know someone like this, who knows a tiny bit of her native language but speaks with a perfect accent -- so perfect that when she visited her native country as an adult, people didn't believe her that she was American and couldn't understand them.

And for what it's worth, I have a lot of memories of things that happened to me before age 5. These are partly influenced by what stories the adults around me tell. So if you want your protagonist not to remember, you could have the adults tell a story that makes different sense of her memories. (Eg, she remembers plane ride and long wait, parents describe this as vacation; she remembers walking down main street in town of birth, parents describe this as a theme park made up to look like foreign country)
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:54 PM on September 22, 2006

My sister-in-law, who's 13 or 14 now, was adopted from Russia when she was 4. She was fluent in Russian, obviously, and didn't speak any English when she got here.

But now she's a pretty normal American teen -- though physically very slight and a year behind in school, because her parents held her back to give her time to catch up with her peers.

She no longer speaks any Russian. She says she doen't remember Russia, though I suspect she has dim fleeting memories. She's also accutely interested in all things Russian.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 3:55 PM on September 22, 2006

Re: memory, the age of first memory varies whidely from person to person. I have detailed memories dating back to the age of two. My husband doesn't remember anything before age 8. My best friend claims not to remember much before middle school, and definitely nothing before fourth grade.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 3:58 PM on September 22, 2006

I was fluent in Japanese at four (or as fluent as a four-year-old is). We moved back to the States when I was four or five (I forget which) and I almost instantly forgot it. When we went back to Japan some years later I had to start from scratch, although the phonetic map was probably in there and the language-learning capability was definitely activated.
posted by languagehat at 4:01 PM on September 22, 2006

I have a few memories of my first home, which I moved out of when I was three. The memories seem to be 'recycled' or 'refreshed' i.e. memories of memories.

From what I understand, parts of the brain that do memory go through a change as the brain develops around 3 years old. So that's usually a 'cutoff' but some memories survive in some people, but not in others.

But yeah people definitely forget childhood languages.
posted by delmoi at 4:08 PM on September 22, 2006

As far as memories go, I can remember things from the house we moved from when I was two and a half. Not events so much as textures, colors, and shapes, particularly anything that was below the height of eighteen inches. I have a photographic memory of the carpet and the linoleum in that apartment. I do remember events from various preschools (when I was three), probably because I hated them all and we tried quite a number of them. I also remember the torturous swimming lessons from around the same time. So it seems that memories can be highly variable dependng on the person.
posted by oneirodynia at 4:13 PM on September 22, 2006

As for remembering events that occur before one turns five, see this article about the "reminisence bump" wherein children four and younger can remember events from earlier in their lives, but as children reach age 10, those earlier memories generally fade out of reach forever. Anecdotally, I can testify to this -- my four year old remembers trips he's taken as a two year old whereas my earliest memory is reading aloud to the class in kindergarten. More troubling, he and his 22-month old sister (along with me and my wife) live with their beloved grandmother, who has cancer. Our genuine fear is that she will not make it past the reminisence bump in their lives, and that they will have no memory of this person who now, every day, means so much to them, to whom they give so much love, and from whom they receive so much love in return. As much as we will grieve her death and her absence afterwards, my wife and I would grieve this loss of memory in our children as well... She turned 65 today, so thanks for letting me derail (somewhat) with some overly personal sentimentalism that has nevertheless preoccupied my thoughts recently.

To return to the thread about remembered language, my family left Vietnam when my older brother was three (and when I was a newborn infant, so I have nothing to add personally). Vietnamese was commonly spoken in our house in Vietnam, but not in our home in the US (my family is ethnically Chinese and we grew up speaking English and broken Chinese). I still speak no Vietnamese, and neither did my brother until he returned to Vietnam for a year in his late 20s. He says he learned (or relearned) Vietnamese very quickly, and he attributes that to his hearing Vietnamese, and speaking it for at least a year, as a young child.
posted by hhc5 at 11:35 PM on September 22, 2006 [1 favorite]

Sorry to derail but just to say to hhc5 (no e-mail addy in the profile) that many, many children actually have "created" memories, which are perfectly natural. That is when a family tells a favorite story, or recounts a dear memory, children too young to remember the event will often claim they remember it vividly. It makes them feel part of the warm family feeling that goes with that memory which is a good thing.
So in your case, I would choose some of the nice stories about your children's interaction with their grandma and recount them several times, at family events, etc., if possible using a couple of different pictures of their granma each time. Do this regularly and forget the reminicence bump, it will allow your children to feel a very important part of stories which are going to be told anyway, since your love and affection won't change for this person.

I agree with all the posters, the child will forget the language, but will have a good ear for it and could potentially pick it up again. Very very few memories, especially if the stories aren't re-counted a couple of times.
Many adults underestimate how many of our earliest memories are actually "created" that is we heard our Mom or Dad talk about a paticular event that happened while we grew up and we imagine ourselves there.
posted by Wilder at 5:03 AM on September 23, 2006

My old co-worker was born in Tanzania to Indian parents and grew up speaking French, Swahili, Hindi and Urdu. He later moved to Florida and ended up learning Spanish and English, but in the process lost almost all French and Swahili because he never spoke them.

I was always intrigued by that.
posted by atomly at 10:47 AM on September 28, 2006