MULTI TONGUE KIDS

This post is meant as an entry for the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism which I will be hosting on April 2nd.
Come back in a few days to check it out!



When our sons were born, we found ourselves having to deal with a complex linguistic situation, being both parents native speakers of different languages (Italian and Dutch), living in a third country (France) and communicating in a fourth language (English). After some research, we opted for the OPOL method, and, 6 years later, we can honestly say it has worked well for us. Although the Belgianite and I are both multilingual, it was natural for us to decide to use our respective native language with the kids.

However, what happens when the parents are bilingual from birth?

Consider Elena, a bilingual native Italian/French speaker: she is married to another bilingual native Spanish/English speaker. The couple resides in the UK. Their 6 months old daughter has all the chances of growing up quadri-lingual. Elena has opted for speaking Italian in the mornings and French in the afternoons, yet she wonders if it is going to really work.

I attended recently a conference of the Café Bilingue here in Paris, where Ranka Bijeljac-Babic, a CNRS researcher, specialized on bilingualism, shared some of the latest research projects on bilingual kids (I am writing a separate post on this conference). Several bilingual parents like Elena asked the same type of question: did they really have to choose one of their native languages? It is easy to relate and understand their resistance to this notion of having to choose. They grew up with 2 languages, each expresses a strong aspect of their personality and is linked to a cultural patrimony that these parents desire passing on. To choose between one or another is like asking them to get rid of one of their arms or legs!

However, specialists seem to be wary of one parent carelessly addressing the child in 2 (ore more) languages during the first 3 years, that is in the delicate phase when the language structure is building itself. The advantage of OPOL is that the child has a clear and well defined identification to a specific parent for each language. This schema provides the necessary linguistic boundaries so that each language can build itself consistently, progressively and separately.

But a careless OPTL (One Parent, Two Languages – note, I am making this up!) can be potentially harmful and lead to all sorts of problematic situations.
The fact that you are bilingual, Elena, is a richness, and you have all the due motivation (and right!) to pass on your cultural heritage, and to stay true to yourself. Moreover, since you probably speak French and Italian (and obviosuly English) on a daily basis, your child has already "heard" you while she was in uterus: research shows that 7 months into the pregnanacy the auditory system of the foetus is complete, hence your baby has grown accustomed to hear you speaking these different languages.

However, since your child is also confronted to 2 additional languages (Spanish from your husband and English from the environment), you have to consider the child and the potential difficulties she might have in dealing with such a complex linguistic arrangements. For bilingual/multilingual children, language acquisition is indeed more complex. The baby has to differentiate the languages (s)he hears, avoid interferences and learn that language is arbitrary.

Here in France pediatricians and speech therapists would strongly recommend you give up one of your 2 native languages. They have an expression I have heard several times, which I find irritating: "faire le deuil d'une de ses langues maternelles," that is, literally, mourning one of your mother tongues. I personally find this unnatural. I think your project is doable, but you need a well defined family language strategy, and loads of motivation, perseverance and patience. Think of the child: try to make things flow. You could, for instance, intensify the presence of other Italian and French speakers in your daughter’ routine. Ideally, you should find a care giver (a nanny, baby sitter) who would speak one of your 2 languages only, let’s say French, and you would only speak Italian. At least until the age of 3.

Alternatively, you can look into language play groups; on top of the different timings devoted to the 2 languages (Italian in the morning, French in the afternoon), you could also link each language to specific moments/activities/places: the bath, the playground, etc.

Finally, don’t be afraid to explain to your child from early on that you speak 2 languages, and why; to tell her your story, to show her on the map these 2 countries. Do not underestimate the meta-linguistic awareness of [multilingual] children!

I find Elena fascinating because she represents a preview of my children’s adulthood: when (if!) they will become parents themselves, they will be confronted with the same issue: will they want to speak Italian, Dutch or French to their kids? Unless their future partner will be a native speaker of any of these three, inevitably some of these languages (and a facet of their personality?) will be lost…

But even before getting to their future parenting issues, I have often wondered and written about their national, linguistic and cultural identity. And, alongside, dwelled on the notion of mother tongue: in Elena’s or my children’ case, we are obliged to use the term ‘mother tongues’:

"Mother tongue: the language a human being learns from birth.” [Language, by Leonard Bloomfield]

“Mother Tongue: the language that the speaker speaks best. In either case, a person's first language is a basis for sociolinguistic identity.” [The native speaker: myth and reality, by Alan Davie])

I have heard people claim: your mother tongue is the one you feel at ease counting in! Plausible: my mother tongue is Italian, I grew up monolingual and learnt languages as an adult. When it comes down to complex calculations (and mind, counting the rest from the baker for me qualifies as a complex calculation!), indeed, I have to resort to Italian. I still manage to do simple operations in English, but God forbid in French! On the other hand, I seem to have a hard time giving out my (French) phone number in English and Italian. But when I have to type in the pin code for my (French) credit card, it's definitely in Italian that I mentally recite the digits.

However, Milo (6) and Zeno (3 and ½) can both count easily in French, Italian and Dutch, so will the same ‘rule’ apply to them? Probably not. What language does Elena resort to for counting? I’d like to know!

“Your mother tongue language is the one you dream in!” I’ve also heard. Milo is a sleep talker and I have heard him on more than one occasion dreaming in French or Italian. Which makes sense!

Nav recently left in a previous post an intriguing related question: “Which language do you think on, when you are not conversing?” I started paying attention to my inner discussions, and I realized that the language varied with the environment or situation. At home it’s mostly Italian. On the way from school to work in the morning it’s French. But at work, or on the way home at night, it’s mostly in English. Basically, it depends upon the language I have been using actively moments earlier. Since I speak these three languages daily in both my personal and professional environment, I happen to think in all three as well.

There is another mother tongue indicator which is pretty infallible: anger! When I am truly upset, words pour out of me in Italian! Milo and Zeno as well, when they fight, it’s in Italian. Will it stay that way over time?

All in all, we, multilinguals and parents of multilingual children, "have to stop thinking that something more complex is necessarily less efficient," as a VP of a top French corporation recently oddly stated. With the rapidly changing demographics of our children' generation, so will change the way we define items like mother tongue and national identity.

"Pas male, ik!" claimed proudly little Zeno (now 29 months old), using all of his three active languages in one sentence. This has been happening more often than not, and it is quite striking the difference with his older brother Milo, who had a similar vocabuary at his age, but did not mix.

Zeno learns a handful of new words each day, but seems to have a harder time at sorting out in which linguistic pool they belong. His mixing takes place mostly at home and especially when Milo is around. At his daycare they reassured me that he has long ceased speaking Italian, and his French level is perfectly comparable to that of monolinguals his own age.
But once he' s at home, his linguisting boundaries vanish and anything can happen!

One reason I can trace is that we ourselves have been less strict than before with OPOL; I catch myself replying in French to Milo when he uses French to tell me something about school; or, when he's tired he'd squeeze some French words into an Italian sentence ( "Mamma, i trois petits cochons hanno catturato il lupo e l'hanno messo nella marmitte"; "Non si deve mangiare i bocconi grossi se no le...joues...esplodono"). Milo often makes mixed setences (IT/DU) when talking to his dad, using Italian when he does not know the corresponding Dutch (ex: "Papa', perché metti de lenzen in de ogen?"). The Belgianite also might reply in Italian to Milo. And we code-switch frequently mid-sentence, inadvertly...

Secondly, Zeno looks very much up to his older brother, who uses indiscriminatingly all of the three languages throughout the day at his own will and need; therefore, Zeno has been lacking some strict parameters and boundaries.

Milo addresses him less and less in Italian, and more in Dutch and French depending totally upon environmental circumstances and topics. Zeno follows the flow and always replies in the right language. Within the day, their exchanges are equally spread among the three languages and they can switch back and forth from one to another within a matter of minutes, depending upon who's with them and the topic of their conversation. Zeno's meta-linguistic awareness however is lower compared to that of Milo's at the same age. Personality-wise he is much more outgoing, open and communicative than Milo at his age, he also benefits of his brother's established social network; as a result, he just goofs around in whatever language comes to his mind!

We have decided to pay more attention and came up with a few guidelines for this phase:

1/ We are back to strictly usig OPOL and doing our best not to mix anymore
2/ When Zeno addresses us in French I make sure I provide him with the proper corresponding vocabulary in Italian, and the Belgianite does the same for Dutch
3/ I try to read a book in Italian to Zeno alone every day
4/ The Belgianite and I try to spend some time alone with Zeno, especially during the weekend, in order to clar the semantic confusion in his head, and provide him with some solid and fluid blocks of time where Italian and Dutch are spoken only, by us respectively and specifically with him.
5/We begun naming languages for him again (In Italiano we say...in French they say...etc.)

On the positive side, Zeno seems to be more at ease with us speaking the other languages, while Milo used to be uncomfartable when I'd speak French to him in a public situation (that is when I needed to be understood by the people present). In general I dare to say that it is just harder to provide the same quality time and stimulation to the second child: the time is just not there...but that is not an excuse to fail our second MTK!

In our particular case, what this arrangement has provided is a fully French environment and person of reference for Milo, in order to apply correctly the OPOL method.

In fact, our nanny is originally from Morocco, and if we didn’t already have all these languages to deal with, I would have been keen on her speaking Arabic to Milo. But we commonly decided that she sticks to French, so during the day Milo is in a 100% francophone environment.

This has been proving very fruitful: this week Milo pronounced his first full sentence in French:
“Elle est partie ma maman ?" (Has my mum left?)
It was originally “Elle est partie ta maman” (Has YOUR mum left), since it was Antoine who posed the question and Milo kept on repeating it. The nanny eventually corrected him and personalized it!

At night the nanny keeps me up to date on new words learnt and topic addressed, so that we can provide the Italian and Dutch counterpart, and viceversa on Monday mornings. So far we feel he has progressed rather homogeneously in all three languages.

Sometimes I wonder, had I been a stay at home mummy, the advantages would have been others, of course, but how would we have handled the French language acquisition?

This is the issue that a couple of friends are currently facing, and they decided to sacrifice their own languages, unfortunately. Here’s the case study:

The Mum is Egyptian and speaks Arabic, Italian and French fluently. The father is Anglo-Italian and has been raised in both English and Italian. Their 20 month old Gabriel is looked after at home by his mum (together with his 3 months old sister) and is being raised in French primarily. The parents switch easily between Italian and French among one another. They fear that if he does not hear French enough he’ll have a hard time once he’ll enter school. Hopefully he’ll pick up all of the other languages later on.

In a seafood restaurant in Boulogne-sur-Mer, on a warm September Saturday evening, Milo was attracting the attention of patrons by loudly repeating his new word "fish," both in Italian ("pesce") and Dutch ("vis"), at the request of his mum and Belgian grand-parents.
The owner, a middle-aged French lady, asked me:

"In what language do you speak to him?"

I proceeded to tell her about our quadri-lingual experiment and relative fears and hopes. The lady shared some of it: she was married to an Irish man and had two children, a 7 year-old girl and a 3 year-old boy. They were both born in Ireland, and moved to France when the kids were aged 5 and 1.

Today they speak English at home, as the father does not speak French, but when they were living in Ireland, she tried to speak French as often as possible, to ensure that the kids could learn it [this method is known as the Minority Language (spoken) At Home (a.k.a. mL@H)]. As a result the girl is fluent in both languages and has no accent, she’s a native speaker of both. The boy, on the other hand, understands English perfectly but refuses to speak it, even to his dad. When he does utter some words in English, he speaks it with a thick French accent. For him, French is his one and only mother tongue. The lady has no doubt that, thanks to consistent exposure to English, the boy will eventually start using it, but she feels sorry for the anxiety he experiences using the language.

This case illustrates very well the Family Language Strategy concept, as described by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa in her book "Raising Multilingual Children." She claims that a multilingual family should determine its language strategy (i.e. which language will the parents speak at home with the kids) early and stick to it, despite the change in circumstances or environment, for the sake of the children’s consistent language development. Our strategy so far has been the classic "one parent, one language," (a.k.a OPOL).

But I am particularly intrigued by accent development:

• My Italian friend Francesca, who is married to a French man and lives in Paris, has a 4-year old boy and 2-year old girl. The kids are perfectly bilingual, and when speaking Italian, showcase a French accent.
• My Portuguese colleague Joaquim, married to a Portuguese woman, has two boys, born and raised in France, both perfectly bilingual. They are now learning English and they speak it with a French accent.

What determines these accents in early multilingual kids?

Dr. Steven Weinberger, director of the Linguistics Program and the Speech Accent Archive at George Mason University explained that accents are a natural phenomenon as a result of acquiring a second language after a certain age (approximately age 6). When learning a second language in adult age, the range of sounds we can produce is limited; often the sounds of the second language do not exist in our native language, so our best effort to imitate them, determines the accent.

Professional linguists say that people who start learning a new language after puberty can never completely get rid of traces of their original tongue.

But for kids who are multilingual from birth, their story is different: their language acquisition resides in a different part of the brain, and their attitude to language learning is completely different, less self-conscious, more playful.

So, why would they develop an accent? Stay tuned for the reality behind early accent development, in one of the next entries…