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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask a friend to stop speaking her own language?

434 replies

jujujbel · 13/02/2015 12:23

I have a very dear friend who is from another country but has lived in the UK for 20 years. Her DC are bilingual. Often, when we are together, she will break off the conversation to speak to her DC in her own language. This makes me uncomfortable and I find it rude but I have never mentioned it. However, a few days ago my DD came home from spending the day with my friends DD (they spend a lot of time together). She talked about how she hated it when they talked in a different language in front of her as it made her feel excluded. I explained that i had felt the same way and that it was actually considered bad manners to do this. I told my DD that if she felt uncomfortable she should say to her friend in as nice a way as possible and that I would do similar with the mum. The very next day, my DD did do this when the situation arose again and explained how it made her feel. She came home quite upset as she had argued with her friend about it.

We were all meeting up later anyway. When we got together my friend immediately said to me 'have you hear detox?' She then went to say, I'll speak to your dd to explain that I'm not talking about her it's just how we speak. I then said that I agreed with my DD and it made us both uncomfortable. My friend was shocked that I found her rude. I explained that it was only in the context where we are all having a conversation in English and they then break away to speak in a different language. Although I know they are not saying anything bad about us it is a horrible feeling and I don't understand why they feel the new to do it. I compared it to whispering. I have been very clear that it is only in the context of a group conversation being started in a shared language and then being continued in a language that not all of the group can understand.

My friend has now told me she will not speak her own language in front of my DD but that she will distance herself from us. She feels I am the inconsiderate one and that I am discriminating against her.

I am so hurt and confused. I guess I am just looking for a bit of MN perspective.

Sorry for the essay.

Thank

OP posts:
MrsSchadenfreude · 13/02/2015 22:01

Denise van Outen's from Essex... Hmm

UncleT · 13/02/2015 22:03

If you've learnt English since two then you certainly cannot legitimately claim it to be a second language, certainly not in the terms that the description would normally be understood. If people call BS on the claim then I'm afraid they're right.

MrTumblesBavarianFanbase · 13/02/2015 22:13

If language were just a tool this thread would not even be happening.

duchesse · 13/02/2015 22:28

Uncle, since the neural pathways to a child's mother are laid down in the first year (hence why very early exposure is crucial) I strongly dispute what you just said. Unless you have heard a language from earliest infancy (and age 2 does not count I'm afraid) transmitted by a loving carer (also I strongly dispute the notion of "language as pure tool" in an emotional vacuum), then it's not really a mother tongue.

FightOrFlight · 13/02/2015 22:44

Denise van Outen's from Essex...

Point proven, English isn't her first language Grin

talkclacton.myfastforum.org/archive/essex-english-phrasebook__o_t__t_544.html

UncleT · 13/02/2015 22:52

Right, but in the normally-accepted sense it's not your second language - you admit your mother tongue has become rustier. What happens between one and two years old is splitting hairs when most people start learning languages in later childhood or even adulthood.

Saz12 · 13/02/2015 22:55

GreatAuntDinah - yes, I do wish I'd learned Dad's MT, but seriously doubt I ever will now. He enjoys speaking his MT and gets stuck looking for the right word when he speaks to his family in English, even though he learned English at around 7-years-old, was educated in it from then on, and has lived in Scotland for the last 50 years.

FightOrFlight · 13/02/2015 22:56

Its your 2nd language if it's the one you learnt .... 2nd

When people have dementia they will eventually revert to the language they learnt first even if they haven't spoken it for 60 or more years.

Not entirely sure what point I'm making there but I'm sure its relevant. I have, however, been on the cognac tonight

< drifts off in a French alcoholic haze >

marfisa · 13/02/2015 23:13

Duchesse said above:

I think YABVU. When you are bringing up bilingual children, speaking to them in your mother tongue is the only way to maintain a language in an overwhelmingly English-speaking world. If you are trying to bring up your children bilingually the only real choice you have is to speak to them all the time in your mother tongue, or in a short time they will refuse to speak the language to their parent(s) and will only speak in English as that seems to them to be the prevailing culture.

Yes, this, absolutely. I have a number of friends who come from other countries and who speak to me in English and then turn aside to speak to their children in some other language (German, Swedish, French, whatever). Their children are bilingual precisely because one or both parents speak to them all the time in the foreign language. Consistency is hugely important.

I have never considered these friends to be rude in the slightest. If anything, I'm envious that they're able to give their children the invaluable gift of growing up bilingual. TBH, I'm amazed that anyone would consider it rude for someone to speak to their own children in their native language. It's utterly obvious why they're doing it. The language and the cultural heritage they are passing on extraordinarily precious.

mymoonandstars · 13/02/2015 23:19

YANBU.

Sitting down to a dinner at my in-laws and then suddenly a whole sub-plot of conversation begins... and goes on... and on... and I have no notion of what is being said because they all talk around me. Rude.

Tisiphone · 13/02/2015 23:20

These threads baffle me - - there seems to be such a sense of entitlement and a suspicion of the foreign behind the expectation that you could legitimately ask a friend not to speak her mother tongue to her own child in your presence! I think you would be outrageously rude to do so.

marfisa · 13/02/2015 23:21

are extraordinarily precious, oops.

It's not sentimental to say that language is more than 'just a tool' - it's fact. Words and expressions in one language often have no exact equivalent in another. Culture shapes every language and makes it distinct. Your understanding of a country and culture will be greatly limited if you don't understand the language. Understanding the language is essential to understanding how the members of that particular culture think - how they view the world.

marfisa · 13/02/2015 23:24

mymoon, I think your case is very different from the OP's. If your in-laws speak English, then yes, it's very rude of them to exclude you from a conversation around the dinner table.

The OP is talking about a mother who speaks English to other English-speaking adults, but speaks her native language to her child. So there is a pedagogical aim in what she's doing.

UncleT · 13/02/2015 23:25

There's no such official definition. I'm pretty sure many people consider your 'first' language in most contexts to be the one you're most proficient in and use most. Whatever the semantics there are, if you've learnt a language pretty much your entire life and speak it like a native, don't be surprised when people say it's not your second language. In real terms it's not. In disingenuous semantic bollocks arguments then it could be.

mymoonandstars · 13/02/2015 23:28

No sorry, I still think if its a joint conversation it should continue in the language it was started in - the language that all involved in the conversation can understand.

Otherwise its still rude.

Bugsylugs · 13/02/2015 23:35

marfisa that is not what the op said. She has clearly explained that a lot of the time they speak English together so the mother does not only speak the other language to her daughter but English aswell and it is only to this child she switches to another language and not her other children. In these situations it is excluding and exclusion is rude.

Op says she is kind to others she has a very strange way of showing kindness if it is to make someone uncomfortable and a child upset. OP this friendship unfortunately had a onesided bias.

Coyoacan · 13/02/2015 23:42

Haven't read the entire thread, but I personally think you were incredibly unreasonable.

I moved from Mexico to Ireland with my Spanish speaking 4-year-old and her friends made her feel so bad about speaking Spanish that as soon as she could get by in English she refused to speak it. Next time she went to visit her Mexican grandparents, when she was 8 she had forgotten all her Spanish, which made it extremely difficult for all concerned.

MistressDeeCee · 14/02/2015 01:15

OP's friend speaks English to all of her children bar one? Really?! Now, that translates as very odd.

When there's quite a lot of "YABU" something else is nearly always drip-fed later on to switch more opinions the other way.

Bugsylugs · 14/02/2015 06:06

At the beginning of the thread op explained it and there were not lots of YABU more the friend was being rude so not a drip feed at least that's how I read it I gave up when lots of people started talking about how you bring up multilingual children and this was not at all what was implied.

TeaPleaseBob · 14/02/2015 06:57

Speaking to a child in her first language so that child is taught the language is not the same as adults speaking to each other and excluding company. The generally accepted method of teaching bilingual children language is that each patent speaks their first language to the child.

If the mums language is only spoken by her (whilst english is spoken by friends/ nursery/ strangers they meet in public etc) then if is important to stick to this. If the mum stopped speaking to her own child in that language around English speakers then she probably would barely use first language except at home. The child would be unlikely to become truly bilingual.

YANBU to feel the way you do but I think you need to realise that's your own issue. YABU if you expect your friend to stop speaking to her child in whatever language she chooses. Why risk that child's language development because someone feels a bit insecure. I think you and your daughter should make an effort to learn a little of your friends first language.

Hygellig · 14/02/2015 08:19

I think you are being a bit unreasonable although I do sympathise with your daughter if she felt excluded when she went to stay at her friend's house. I think maybe she could continue to address her DD in her own language, but switch to English if you are having a group conversation.

It must be quite difficult to bring up a fully bilingual child when surrounded by English and your friend probably has to speak her own language as much as possible, even in front of other people. It might also be that it would seem strange to her to speak English to her daughter if she is accustomed to always speaking to her in her own language. They might also get in the habit of speaking more and more English and then the DD could lose proficiency in the minority language.

My dad never spoke to my sister and me in his native language and on our occasional trips to his home country to visit his mother (who spoke fluent English) they would always chat in their mother tongue despite us not being able to understand anything, then speak to us in English.

TheHomicidalPowerOfaTypo · 14/02/2015 08:55

I don't think anyone can possibly understand how difficult it is to speak to their children in a language that isn't the common one in the home and not the mother tongue unless they've done it. I will always speak to my children in English as that is the language that I spoke to them as babies and is the language that conveys the emotional link between us. And no, language is not just a tool.

I have a really strong feeling of humiliation when I try to discipline my children in French in front of french people because, to my ears, I sound like a twat trying to pretend to be something I'm not. I'll happily natter way to them and their/my friends in French but when it comes to something with an emotional attachment (anger, concern, love, etc) it's just so false if I use a language other than English.

GreatAuntDinah · 14/02/2015 08:57

Oops, I could have sworn I read somewhere that Denise van Outen was Dutch... Blush the point stands for the other two though!

sashh · 14/02/2015 09:26

Do these families who keep strictly to one parent / one language never have a conversation in one language that includes all the family then? Seriously?

They try, but get told off by the children for one of them using the 'wrong' language. It's very common for bilingual children to do this.

Also people who are fluent in a second language are not always fluent in all the registers of that language, we speak to children differently to adults, the mother in this case may not know the baby talk in English.

olympicsrock · 14/02/2015 10:14

Well I am with you OP. It is good manners to include guests in the conversation. It can feel very awkward to sit there for several minutes listening to a conversation without understanding. I think there are some very passionate bilingual people on this thread but i suspect the majority of the population would feel uncomfortable just as your daughter does.