Growing up bilingual

the following was published by Global Study Magazine (2006) and appears on the web here, but is backed up on this site for my convenience. -TL

If you are planning an extended trip abroad, you may be worried about the small children in your life, the one(s) you have now, and the one(s) you may have while you're there. Besides medical and social issues, there is also the language issue: what will happen to my child's language development?

By Thomas Leverett

If you are planning an extended trip abroad, you may be worried about the small children in your life, the one(s) you have now, and the one(s) you may have while you're there. Besides medical and social issues, there is also the language issue: what will happen to my child's language development?

The child will learn primarily from the parents at first, but increasingly from the world around him/her, so it will matter a lot where he/she spends daycare and early school hours, or if those are all spent at home. Studies have shown that children in truly bilingual situations take longer before they start speaking, but when they do, they do fine in both languages, or even in more than two. It's almost as if they have more to figure out, as they survey their world and get the information straight before they start producing. But once they get started, they are more or less bilingual for life; they may have certain vocabulary gaps (not knowing school words in the parents' language, not knowing kitchen words in the school language); but, in the big picture, they have a huge advantage, as their pronunciation and grammar are native in all senses and for all languages that they are truly immersed in.

They have another advantage, also. Though I am no expert, I explain it this way. The monolingual child, at some point will fuse native-language labels to their concepts of the things in their world; (for example, the word for "tree" is the label for the concept of "tree"); all new information about "trees" must now pass through that label. The bilingual, however, will forever keep the words separate from the concept, knowing at a deep level that fusing them is inefficient, especially in getting back and forth from one language to another. The bilingual child thus becomes a more flexible language learner as an adult, because new languages don't have to be processed through the native language in order to be understood. If he/she embarks on a new course of language study, a third language or perhaps a fourth, previous experience will be a great benefit and learning will be much faster; the first language won't be as much of a barrier.

Language is bound up in culture, and the bilingual is also getting clearer vision on that front. The cultural differences in the worlds that he/she lives in become clear, partly because of constant translation, constant moving back and forth between the worlds. This sense of biculturalism, if you will, will be even more useful to the child in later life, because a whole range of cultural differences affect our communication, and the monolinguals among us have trouble even seeing them. It's hard to know what's cultural within you, when as a child you accept everything in a monolingual, monocultural world as the only reality there is. And this sense of culture encompasses everything from the way we greet strangers and talk to them, to the things we choose to talk about with new friends, the nuances of body language, and our attitudes toward money, friendship and romance. The child, then, is absorbing two or more whole sets of cultural ideas, and learning to operate within each of them fluently.

So, is there any disadvantage to bringing up a child or children this way? If you're wondering if your own native language or culture might be compromised in any way, that's a valid concern, especially if the family is completely isolated, with no other expatriates of the same language background in the area. This child's view of his/her native culture may be limited by having so few examples of it. Going back to the native country and experiencing a range of dialects, attitudes, or uses of the language may be something of a shock for this person; it may take some learning to adjust to it. But even this is somewhat minor, compared with the great advantages of having more native languages and cultures than most other people. Your child, in the end, will probably be grateful.