parents who speak French to their tots who aren't actually French

[becstarlitsea]

pretentious, non?

I've got a friend and an acquaintance who do this. I excuse my friend on the basis that although she isn't French, her grandmother was, and my friend does speak very good French. I still think it's a bit teensy bit barmy, especially as both of her kids are so far behind in their speech development for their age (in either language) but each to their own, and no doubt they'll catch up later...

But then the acquaintance doesn't actually speak very good French - it's just about post-A-level standard. But she insists in speaking French to her kids who are all under 6. None of the kids can talk at all in either language - not un mot.

Bourgeois pushy parenting or a sensible addition to their children's cultural life? (Must admit my DSs cultural life consists of Diego and Dora marathons when I've got flu)

A small amount of french is really part of the native language of a certain type of slightly pretentious middle class english parent. Like mine for instance.

"Allez, salut maintenant!"
eighties
(This is a seperate point to the above)

No, afraid I'm not, Anna- I'm one of these tedious academics who prefer references to real studies on statistically relevant material rather than appeals to my supposed intelligence.

There is no reason why a child in the situation described by the OP should not acquire a precise command of the majority language, assuming that he/she is out and about in society, speaks the majority language to friends and other relatives, goes to toddler group, preschool etc.

Under those circumstances to have a less precise additional language does not seem to be harmful at all. If it were harmful, surely all language teaching at junior level ought to be banned?

And what about communities who practise diglossia? Where one of the languages may only have a limited range- will individuals be damaged by being taught this?

Surely any damage would only occur if a child was never given the chance to learn a decent range of any language. This does sometimes happen in expat communities where parents do not have enough time to nurture their children's language and there is insufficient exposure to the majority language- or the majority language changes every few years because the family moves. The only people I have ever come across for whom this has been a problem have been expats, who have typically spent time in boarding school and moved around several different language areas.

I would have thought that would be far less likely to happen to a child that is rooted in a community, even if one parent does speak another language to him/her.

And what about those countries which have

"And what about communities who practise diglossia? Where one of the languages may only have a limited range- will individuals be damaged by being taught this?"

I grew up in a country where this is the case and can categorically say yes, the population is hindered.

Ok, that's interesting. The people I have met (mainly from the Indian subcontinent) have not appeared damaged or thought of themselves as damaged, but there you are.

How do you define damage in a population? Are all bilingual populations damaged? And who gets to decide the norm for "undamaged" linguistic behaviour?

What about language learning from a young age? Are you suggesting that a child would be damaged by being taught a foreign language from a young age? That some sort of damage actually accrued to us from singing German nursery rhymes from a tender age? And how would you define this damage? And how old do you have to be before it is safe?

I'm genuinely interested because I grew up in a family where it was assumed that we would learn as much as we could of any languages that presented themselves (just as we would learn to play as many instruments as possible, and read as many books- my parents took a decided the-more-the-merrier approach to life). So possibly quite similar to that in the OP. We haven't done badly in life. My mother was still taking up new languages in her seventies. Haven't noticed any damage done to her general linguistic capacity or her ability to think. Obviously, she knows some languages better than others- I wouldn't bet on her conversational powers in Old Church Slavonic, but they don't seem to detract from each other.

I cannot myself to believe that someone like MIFLAW is bonkers or irresponsible or about to do damage, just because he does something different to the rest of us.

correction: 'bring myself to believe'

I use the word "hindered" rather than "damaged" - there is a pretty big difference between the two!

ok, say hindered- but could you answer my other questions please? what sort of linguistic exposure are we allowed then, without the risk of damaging our offspring? was my mother wrong to teach me a couple of other languages from age 5 or so? to encourage me to sing and recite poetry in German? what about the Latin- what kind of harm is that likely to have done? (I think we can assume that she didn't have native speaker competence)

what I am getting is that linguistic training is like any other aspects of parenting: just because it can sometimes go wrong, and just because one way has been shown to work in many cases, this does not mean that there only is one way

There are plenty of excellent books on the subject of bilingualism which I cannot possibly précis here. My take away from everything I have read and experienced is that you need to exercise caution when exposing your children to multiple languages, particularly when the exposure is to poor quality language.

If you mean the concept of semi-lingualism, that has been largely discredited. By linguists, that is. (You will find any number of books on bilingualism by parents, who usually are keen to tell you that you have to follow their particular method, but that's not exactly very scientific).

I do research on multi-lingualism and have read a fair bit of the most recent literature. I have to, as my own research is in code-switching.

The general gist as far as I can make out is that it is relatively rare for children to be unable to cope with multiple languages per se. Where children do end up with inadequate languages, there are usually other factors involved, such as a generally impoverished linguistic environment, inadequate parental input, low social status, or a life full of upheaval.

There was e.g. that place in Arnhem's study where she was pondering why the child in one case study did not grow up bilingual: the answer seemed to be that the child spent most of its time in the company of a mother who admitted that she didn't really talk to her much as she didn't enjoy talking to children. You wouldn't have expected a child in that situation to become a very competent monolingual either under those circumstances.

Iirc the study on Swedish/Finnish speakers in the Torneå area seemed to define competence from a majority language perspective, without taking into account that these children lived a very different life to the more southern Swedish population, so presumably talked about totally different things, nor that they were negatively influenced by the low status of their language (punished at school if they spoke it, bullied by their monolingual classmates). This is unlikely to be the case with a middle class child being taught a bit of French to enhance her status.

Well, I would definitely be in the "glass half full" camp. I completely agree with you Cory on all that you've written. I think that being bilingual is a fantastic advantage, and that exposure to a second language from a parent is definitely a positive thing. I was only trying to describe the difference between a native speaker and a near-native, my intention was definitely not to depict this as a negative thing. On the contrary, I think it is a wonderful thing to be native in one language and near-native in another. And then there are the lucky few who are native in two languages, which by the sounds of it your children are Cory!

I personally do not think that it is harmful for a child to learn "imperfect" French/German/English or whatever from a parent, and from what I've read on the subject (only a book or two and bilingual family websites admittedly) current thinking seems to be that it is not harmful, rather that it is beneficial. After all, my mum only taught me a few phrases in her imperfect French, but it inspired me to become a translator.

Have any of you read that book by an English woman living in Sweden on bringing your children up bilingual? She has 5 children I think and describes how their levels of Swedish/English are different even though they've all pretty much the same exposure to both languages. Very interesting.

The only thing I think is imperative here is for a child to have at least one native language, because if a child is not able to write to native standard in at least one language, he/she will be at a disadvantage at school and university when it comes to writing essays or dissertations. It would also be an impediment to a child who would like to be a writer, journalist or translator.

Anna, are the children you have in mind French children who go to bilingual schools? The people I've met here in Spain who studied at bilingual schools certainly do not have perfect English, but they have very good English, and I do not know if their schooling in Spanish has suffered as a result of being in a bilingual school. What are bilingual schools like in France?

No, the bilingual schools here are generally very good and the children all reach native-speaker level in French (not necessarily in English).

I grew up in a country where there were multiple languages and some parents made big mistakes thinking their children would be better off learning several languages badly than one or two to native-speaker level.

Wow, you've both posted a lot since I started my post this morning! Will get reading...

My French friends generally seem to try to get their children into the bilingual school at St Germain (en Laye?). Must say my (English) schoolfriend who is married to a French guy and whose children go there complains that some of the children there speak dreadful English. But then I suppose it's very easy to criticise if you are a native speaker. As I've said before, my (Flemish) DH will sometimes speak to DCs in English (as they live in England and attend English schools their Flemish is not as good) and, if one were to believe some of the comments on here, that must be terribly 'damaging' etc. Personally I don't think so. We did find that when DD1 attended a French speaking creche that the combination of three languages was too much for her and we didn't like the delay in speaking any of them fluently. So she was moved aged two and a half to an English nursery. Having said that her (English primary standard ie not very high!) French is now regarded as good by her teachers.

The Lycée International de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is great at lycée level (15-18) but not necessarily as good as the Paris bilingual schools earlier on.

Bellissima, this is why I will definitely send my dd to a monolingual, normal Spanish state school. I'm not keen on her being taught bad English by her teachers... And I'm a bit suspicious of the teaching standards generally in "English schools" here. I would prefer her to have an autentic Spanish educational experience, just like everyone else.

er, she's talking about some of the teenagers! But as I say, easy to criticise. Maybe some people would say her French is not so good! (It is, of course, 100 times better than mine.)

I'm a Speech and Language Therapist and I would be strongly against parents speaking to their children in a language in which they were not fluent. If the parent is truly fluent in a second language, regardless of whether it is their first language or not, there are huge benefits in encouraging your child to develop a second language. If you are not fluent, you risk providing poor/deficient models when your child is just beginning to master language and communication. Sure, sing Frere Jacque if you feel like it.. and use French words if you're the type that peppered your pre-baby conversation with them.. but you are doing your child no favours by reducing their exposure to the language they will need in their everyday life in favour of a model that may be phonetically and linguistically inconsistent.

Cory has made me realise on other threads that I'll be doing a lot of homework in Spanish with her in future. No way her school-hating Argentinean dad is going to do it! Plus, I guess I'll be the one teaching her to read and write in English too... Anyway, we must go to the park!

Sorry, I've just re-read this and need to qualify this by saying I would be against the parents speaking a language that they were not fluent in if it was not a language they themselves used on a functional basis in everyday life e.g. in the case of people who would never speak French with their own peers or in the context of their life and work but are just using their school French because they think it will make their child bilingual.

I'm back! Spent the weekend speaking the international language of Ikea ... (though a Frenchwoman did ask me where I was from in france on saturday morning, which is always nice ...)

"I have seen children grow up with dreadful English, because their mother spoke dreadful broken English to them, and they have never learnt to correct it as adults - it got "set in" badly."

I love this sort of comment. The implicit assumption is that, if only the parents hadn't interfered, the child would have gone on to become a rounded, fluent speaker at the hands of her dedicated, passionate school teachers who drop everything to teach her one-to-one, a bit like in the Karate Kid ... creating, in fact, exactly the sort of speaker whose existence this thread essentially denies.

Where is the flicker of reality in this? Most of the people I went to school with, many of them exceptionally intelligent, can just about manage to buy themselves a whit coffee and two stamps in French. Face it - the majority of kids are going to end up with "dreadful broken English (or French, or German, or Spanish)" anyway because language learning in school is hard and, especially in this country, it is undervalued and sidelined. Any parent with, say, A level or higher are effectively making a no-lose gamble if they go down the same route as the OP's friend.

I have to say, too, that a lot of people who have suffered my posts elsewhere know I am purist to the point of boorishness about this whole field. As a result, I find some other parents pretentious or misgiuded. Nasty old me.

But the point is, I can only judge them on an individual basis. I think it's a bit rich, actually, that the posters who have moaned about "appalling franglais" or "pretentiousness" or "A level standard French" don't seem to be universally that hot on the language themselves. Are they really, therefore, in a position to judge these other cruel and misguided parents on a linguistic basis?

It was kind of someone to call me the "exception" earlier - but the question shouldn't arise. I may be a genius in French or I may be moving my lips as I read Petit Ours Brun. Everyone seems to be bandying around the "evidence" of "detriment" and "harm" and no one except Cory and Madame LaFarge has been able to bring any such evidence to the party. Of the two, Cory has produced detailed, referenced, relevant facts; and Madame has produced dated, largely irrelevant theory.

Call me pretentious by all means, but when you start accusing me of "harming" my child, ante up with the facts behind it.

In answer to the question, have I been challenged on this before? Yes, plenty. I always ask for the factual basis of the opinion and, surprise surprise, they always go quiet.

"My take away from everything I have read and experienced is that you need to exercise caution when exposing your children to multiple languages, particularly when the exposure is to poor quality language."

Bonsoir, I think this needs the caveat that the risk is when the "poor quality language" is instead of any native speaker language, not when it is alongside. As everyone here seems to be discussing the latter, I think it is only fair to flag this up.

Message withdrawn

MIFLAW - I am referring to the situation described in the OP.

I see. What sort of "caution" must one exercise then? As in, what are the risks and how great is their potential effect?

I know you can't precis everything, but perhaps you could point me in the direction of a recent book, written by a specialist in bilingualism, which says that additive (rather than reductive) bilingualism is harmful to the child's development?