How do you bilingual?
November 10, 2018 9:53 PM Subscribe
Bilingual families, how do you ensure that both languages are getting a fair shake in your house?
Also, how do you finagle a party where two languages are represented and speakers of one don't speak the other? Moreover, how do you finagle a coffee date with two friends/relatives that don't speak the same language - are you interpreting nonstop? Any other helpful hints for a newly bilingual family?
Also, how do you finagle a party where two languages are represented and speakers of one don't speak the other? Moreover, how do you finagle a coffee date with two friends/relatives that don't speak the same language - are you interpreting nonstop? Any other helpful hints for a newly bilingual family?
Also, regarding parenting, generally the rule of thumb is one adult doing one language but it is best if everyone understands both.
posted by k8t at 10:18 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by k8t at 10:18 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
I guess it depends on how the family is bilingual.
Like, in most of the bilingual families I've known in the USA, both parents speak both Examplese and American English. When the kids came along, they made the decision to only speak Examplese at home, figuring that if the kids didn't pick up enough English outside the home, they would be immersed in it soon enough once they got to kindergarten. In that case, I guess both languages aren't getting a fair Shake, but it's not like the country's dominant language needs anyone to advocate for it in the long run. I got the idea, though, that this isn't the situation in the family you're asking about?
Every time I've been to a bilingual party, it's basically become two parties. People who speak both languages may flip back and forth between the two groups, but basically most people gravitate toward the conversations they're most comfortable and relaxed with.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:02 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
Like, in most of the bilingual families I've known in the USA, both parents speak both Examplese and American English. When the kids came along, they made the decision to only speak Examplese at home, figuring that if the kids didn't pick up enough English outside the home, they would be immersed in it soon enough once they got to kindergarten. In that case, I guess both languages aren't getting a fair Shake, but it's not like the country's dominant language needs anyone to advocate for it in the long run. I got the idea, though, that this isn't the situation in the family you're asking about?
Every time I've been to a bilingual party, it's basically become two parties. People who speak both languages may flip back and forth between the two groups, but basically most people gravitate toward the conversations they're most comfortable and relaxed with.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:02 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
One parent one language has worked well for us so far,which works OK, with a little bit of weird Han Solo/Chewbacca speaking in cross-languages with my spouse*.
Occasional interpreting with friends or relatives, and some acceptance that not everything will be translated.
* I'm Chewie
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 11:30 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]
Occasional interpreting with friends or relatives, and some acceptance that not everything will be translated.
* I'm Chewie
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 11:30 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]
Growing up in Montreal with one anglophone parent and one francophone parent meant that my French should, at least theoretically, not be awful. And it's true, it's not bad. But it's not amazing. I attribute this to three things:
1) I went to an English school and wasn't in French immersion.
2) While my mother (and her mother) spoke French to me, she (and her mother) didn't exclusively speak French to me.
3) Almost all of my media consumption in my childhood (books, music, TV, movies) was English, barring some French-language kid's shows, but that number was dwarfed by the English ones.
As a result, my French isn't as strong as it could -- or should -- be. Meanwhile, my younger brother went to a French preschool and was in French immersion throughout his school years. As such, his spoken French is better than mine and he's got a better accent and I am forever jealous. That said, my written French is great compared to his, since I've used it more regularly than he has.
My brother and his wife have two young kids and are trying to get them to be more bilingual than my brother and I are, so his wife is speaking to the kids exclusively in French. The eldest will talk to her in English and she'll respond in French and occasionally have him ask for things in French. My brother is the exclusively English speaker. Everyone in both families is at least passably bilingual, so we'll have conversations in both languages when we all get together and the comprehension, at least, is pretty great in the eldest. (The younger one isn't even 18 months old and so we're just happy he's saying things like "car" and "balle" (ball in French), but he does seem to understand a lot of what we're saying in either language.)
The rest of your question is tough -- my dad's mom didn't speak French but my mom's family was all passably bilingual, so we mostly spoke English at family dinners with my paternal grandmother there. Still, sometimes, the francophones would lapse into French, so I'd translate for my grandmother for a side conversation. But they still did speak some English, so I can't say I'm all that familiar with situations where one group of people knows one language only and another group only knows another. Truly, I'd probably end up translating things as we go if it's me who understands the two languages, but I can't say it'd be a great conversation.
Finally, one last bit of anecdata: I took Italian for a couple of years in university and picked it up pretty well. Most of it is because the syntax and grammar is so similar to French, but I have a decent Italian accent, as it happens. I attribute this to a friend of my mom's who lived a few doors down, an Italian lady from the Rome area, who spoke Italian at a lightning-fast pace, with my mom (who had taken a few years of it, herself). I heard it regularly as a kid, like several times a week, then only very occasionally after we moved away. And yet it's the accent I use when I speak it now. (I mean, I'm not fluent, but I sound pretty darn good compared to non-Italians.)
So I'm all in favour of acclimating kids to the different sounds when they're young. It makes a huge difference. It's almost certainly why my brother speaks better French than I do and I think it's why I speak Italian as well as I do. Getting them used to the different sounds in the different languages is key -- the French R is different from the English R, which is different from the Italian R, for example.
My dime's worth. :)
posted by juliebug at 2:54 AM on November 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
1) I went to an English school and wasn't in French immersion.
2) While my mother (and her mother) spoke French to me, she (and her mother) didn't exclusively speak French to me.
3) Almost all of my media consumption in my childhood (books, music, TV, movies) was English, barring some French-language kid's shows, but that number was dwarfed by the English ones.
As a result, my French isn't as strong as it could -- or should -- be. Meanwhile, my younger brother went to a French preschool and was in French immersion throughout his school years. As such, his spoken French is better than mine and he's got a better accent and I am forever jealous. That said, my written French is great compared to his, since I've used it more regularly than he has.
My brother and his wife have two young kids and are trying to get them to be more bilingual than my brother and I are, so his wife is speaking to the kids exclusively in French. The eldest will talk to her in English and she'll respond in French and occasionally have him ask for things in French. My brother is the exclusively English speaker. Everyone in both families is at least passably bilingual, so we'll have conversations in both languages when we all get together and the comprehension, at least, is pretty great in the eldest. (The younger one isn't even 18 months old and so we're just happy he's saying things like "car" and "balle" (ball in French), but he does seem to understand a lot of what we're saying in either language.)
The rest of your question is tough -- my dad's mom didn't speak French but my mom's family was all passably bilingual, so we mostly spoke English at family dinners with my paternal grandmother there. Still, sometimes, the francophones would lapse into French, so I'd translate for my grandmother for a side conversation. But they still did speak some English, so I can't say I'm all that familiar with situations where one group of people knows one language only and another group only knows another. Truly, I'd probably end up translating things as we go if it's me who understands the two languages, but I can't say it'd be a great conversation.
Finally, one last bit of anecdata: I took Italian for a couple of years in university and picked it up pretty well. Most of it is because the syntax and grammar is so similar to French, but I have a decent Italian accent, as it happens. I attribute this to a friend of my mom's who lived a few doors down, an Italian lady from the Rome area, who spoke Italian at a lightning-fast pace, with my mom (who had taken a few years of it, herself). I heard it regularly as a kid, like several times a week, then only very occasionally after we moved away. And yet it's the accent I use when I speak it now. (I mean, I'm not fluent, but I sound pretty darn good compared to non-Italians.)
So I'm all in favour of acclimating kids to the different sounds when they're young. It makes a huge difference. It's almost certainly why my brother speaks better French than I do and I think it's why I speak Italian as well as I do. Getting them used to the different sounds in the different languages is key -- the French R is different from the English R, which is different from the Italian R, for example.
My dime's worth. :)
posted by juliebug at 2:54 AM on November 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
I think your question implies that these are problems that need to be 'solved' and that there is a right answer.
I think it works best if parents simply speak their native language / mother tongue with the children. I don't this is an issue which is 'solved' with fairness or rules. It always seems unnatural to me when parents are speaking a language just to make sure a child is bilingual. Simply speak that language that you grew up with in a natural manner to your children.
For the party, I also wouldn't try to 'solve' this . Simply invite your friends and let people speak with whomever they choose. Concentrate, like any host would, on making sure your guests feel comfortable, are introduced to other guests, have enough to eat and drink. People who see friends and family will generally speak to each other in their native/common language. It might feel rude, but it is very hard not to lapse into the common way of contacting each other.
For your coffee/party, it is simply very difficult for people to spend time together who can not speak a common language. You will prob. translate a bit and then there will be a lot of time spent while people are politely engaging without speech.
posted by jazh at 3:45 AM on November 11, 2018 [3 favorites]
I think it works best if parents simply speak their native language / mother tongue with the children. I don't this is an issue which is 'solved' with fairness or rules. It always seems unnatural to me when parents are speaking a language just to make sure a child is bilingual. Simply speak that language that you grew up with in a natural manner to your children.
For the party, I also wouldn't try to 'solve' this . Simply invite your friends and let people speak with whomever they choose. Concentrate, like any host would, on making sure your guests feel comfortable, are introduced to other guests, have enough to eat and drink. People who see friends and family will generally speak to each other in their native/common language. It might feel rude, but it is very hard not to lapse into the common way of contacting each other.
For your coffee/party, it is simply very difficult for people to spend time together who can not speak a common language. You will prob. translate a bit and then there will be a lot of time spent while people are politely engaging without speech.
posted by jazh at 3:45 AM on November 11, 2018 [3 favorites]
For your coffee/party, it is simply very difficult for people to spend time together who can not speak a common language.
This. I live in a country where multiple languages are spoken. I don’t have a good enough grasp of French or Italian to converse in these languages. My colleagues who speak primarily French or Italian can’t converse in German either. So we use English with each other. It requires everybody to try and we manage just fine in the end.
We also have a lot of English speaking expats who speak none of the local languages. When they are involved in a conversation people will speak English. But the room will not switch to English just because they are in the room. If they want to follow the conversations they are not involved in, it is up to them to learn the lingo.
But this is in a professional setting where there is an expectation that people have some English and that they keep learning it if their command of English is only basic. In the real world you’re sometimes just out of luck and scrape around for words and play with google translate.
In my family my German aunt is married to a Brit, well, technically both her husbands were British. And my uncle made a strong effort to learn some German when they met so he’d be somewhat operational in German when they were visiting the country or visited by German speakers. But he finds it very tiring because he has to concentrate so much. So they talk to each other in English, not least because by the time they met my aunt had lived in the country for many years and was fully fluent.
If I am dealing with people who speak both German and English fluently I find that we switch back and forth between languages, sometimes mid sentence or mid email. Shortly after I moved to the uk i also had a friend who had studied German and he wanted to keep that going. So we had bilingual conversations because I still wanted to improve my English. He’d speak German and I‘d speak English. Let’s just say we got some odd looks down the pub. But it is worth noting that we both spoke both languages fluently, so this was more a game than it was something requiring significant effort on either side.
So this really depends very much on circumstances and every situation is different. But as a rule, it is on the person who doesn’t speak the majority language to recognise it is on them to learn or make do. People will always try to accommodate but there is a limit to how sustainable the extra effort they need to invest is. And forcing a whole group of people to work extra hard to accommodate you at all times is not generally the way to go.
posted by koahiatamadl at 5:49 AM on November 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
This. I live in a country where multiple languages are spoken. I don’t have a good enough grasp of French or Italian to converse in these languages. My colleagues who speak primarily French or Italian can’t converse in German either. So we use English with each other. It requires everybody to try and we manage just fine in the end.
We also have a lot of English speaking expats who speak none of the local languages. When they are involved in a conversation people will speak English. But the room will not switch to English just because they are in the room. If they want to follow the conversations they are not involved in, it is up to them to learn the lingo.
But this is in a professional setting where there is an expectation that people have some English and that they keep learning it if their command of English is only basic. In the real world you’re sometimes just out of luck and scrape around for words and play with google translate.
In my family my German aunt is married to a Brit, well, technically both her husbands were British. And my uncle made a strong effort to learn some German when they met so he’d be somewhat operational in German when they were visiting the country or visited by German speakers. But he finds it very tiring because he has to concentrate so much. So they talk to each other in English, not least because by the time they met my aunt had lived in the country for many years and was fully fluent.
If I am dealing with people who speak both German and English fluently I find that we switch back and forth between languages, sometimes mid sentence or mid email. Shortly after I moved to the uk i also had a friend who had studied German and he wanted to keep that going. So we had bilingual conversations because I still wanted to improve my English. He’d speak German and I‘d speak English. Let’s just say we got some odd looks down the pub. But it is worth noting that we both spoke both languages fluently, so this was more a game than it was something requiring significant effort on either side.
So this really depends very much on circumstances and every situation is different. But as a rule, it is on the person who doesn’t speak the majority language to recognise it is on them to learn or make do. People will always try to accommodate but there is a limit to how sustainable the extra effort they need to invest is. And forcing a whole group of people to work extra hard to accommodate you at all times is not generally the way to go.
posted by koahiatamadl at 5:49 AM on November 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
I grew up in a family where all the adults were bilingual, and started daycare at 18 months or so, where English was dominant. I was more or less fluent in both languages until I was 6 and we visited my extended family and my older cousins teased me about my accent in Heritage Language. I stopped speaking it because I was afraid of being laughed at, with the result that I now have no functional use of the language outside childhood phrases like "I am hungry, give me food." I've tried speaking it as an adult, but the grammar is complex (3 genders, multiple cases) and even when I can hear that something I've said doesn't sound right, I don't always know how to fix it, and that's frustrating. I don't know anyone who speaks it aside from my family and some of my parents' friends, so there's not much opportunity to practice, and no Heritage-Language workbooks or classes at all.
So in addition to all the suggestions above, encourage the child to speak in both languages, or to flip back and forth mid-sentence if that's what works for them. But don't make fun of their mistakes, and don't let anyone else mock them either.
posted by basalganglia at 7:42 AM on November 11, 2018 [4 favorites]
So in addition to all the suggestions above, encourage the child to speak in both languages, or to flip back and forth mid-sentence if that's what works for them. But don't make fun of their mistakes, and don't let anyone else mock them either.
posted by basalganglia at 7:42 AM on November 11, 2018 [4 favorites]
Even as I'm Finnish I lapsed at some point speaking Finnish at home and thus my kids don't really speak it. However, they go French immersion program at school plus their babysitters have been French for the past 7 years. Kids are always asked to speak French only with them.
This has gotten them a fluency to the point that they can argue in rapid fire French amongst themselves even if their reading is better in English. The middle one feels that classes in French are slowed down as some of the kids can't follow fast French. Thus we've tried to have them consume more French media (Asterix movies) to get used to people speaking fast and increasing the vocabulary. Need to find a French language NPR channel to run on the background.
posted by zeikka at 5:35 AM on November 12, 2018
This has gotten them a fluency to the point that they can argue in rapid fire French amongst themselves even if their reading is better in English. The middle one feels that classes in French are slowed down as some of the kids can't follow fast French. Thus we've tried to have them consume more French media (Asterix movies) to get used to people speaking fast and increasing the vocabulary. Need to find a French language NPR channel to run on the background.
posted by zeikka at 5:35 AM on November 12, 2018
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There is a lot of research on this, most of it based in Montreal. It is called Communication Accomodation Theory.
In my own experience being with him and his family, they accommodate to me by speaking the language I know best but then I make time for them to converse without me involved to give them a break.
posted by k8t at 10:16 PM on November 10, 2018