Non-native bilingualism

[ManIFeelLikeAWoman]

I am a native English speaker and so is my partner, but we are bringing our daughter (11 mth) up bilingual - I speak to her exclusively in French, her mum speaks to her exclusively in English, my partner and I speak English to each other. I know this is not a common set up but it is not without precedent and I know I am not alone on Mumsnet. So I wanted to see how many of us there are and how it's going, and to swap notes.

I'm NOT asking for anyone's opinion whether this is the "right" thing to do, especially from people who don't do this themselves; and I'm NOT talking about people who speak their own language with their children but take them to foreign-language classes. That's very interesting too, but it's another thread.

So - who's out there and how are you finding it?

IME one in, one out children tend to assume that only family speak the home language so do blend less - although they're not immune to doing what almost all bilingual children do which is guessing at a word and ending up with the wrong language - but there are other disadvantages to balance out. Plus it depends on that being available...

We use OPOL and in my experience children do not 'mix' languages, they clearly know which one they're speaking and thinking in at any point. That is also my own experience - when I speak German (my mother tongue) by brain thinks and speaks in that language, whereas when I speak in English it 'switches' to English.

However, in bilingual children one language is typically stronger than the other. For our kids it used to be German (we used to spend several monthts in the summer in Germany and they went to Kindergarten there), but now that they are in school in the UK English has become their dominant language (even though I still speak to them in German and we go to German Saturday School etc.).

I would have loved to speak French to my son but didn't feel confident enough in my French grammar and didn't want to teach him that non-correct constructions were normal. So we have tried to expose him to Spanish. At the moment we have a Spanish speaking nanny for 2.5 days a week and he reads books and listens to music in Spanish. I am wondering how much exposure will be enough though, whether 2.5 days will do it or not. Currently he replies to her in English (he's 2) and says that she's 'a bit funny'!

Interesting thread!

Well, I guess I am the evidence that it does not need to be OPOL - one person, one language - bit hard to do in a bilingual single parent family! :o

My son who is now 19 is completely bilingual, Dutch/English, like me. We live in Holland. Having BBC here, visits to UK, and 3 years IB at school have all helped.

Lots of my single friends and their kids are the same,(Dutch and the mother's native language), it all falls into place at a certain point.

Nesomja

Interesting what you say - I see why you didn't want to speak French to him yourself, but what was the driving force behind then choosing to expose him to Spanish rather than French (as in getting a French nanny rather than a Spanish one)?

Aminata

"bilingual single parent family" - that sounds impossibly hard! Hats off to you! Why did you decide to go for bilingualism in those circs - is your son's dad a native of the "other" language?

I've just read this whole thread and loved it. Myself and dh are english with poor french. We live in France (MUST improve my french!) and our ds, nearly 4, has done a year in a french school. He's pretty much fluent in french now but refuses to speak it at home. If he speaks to an english person he will only speak english but with our french bilingual friends he will only speak french despite them speaking english to him. Our dd, 2, speaks english but completely understands french. I visited England recently and she said "hello" to people walking by but as soon as we got off the boat in France she said "shonshour" (her bonjour)to anyone she saw. We are continuing to speak english to both of them to avoid 'ruining' their accents and grammer but also because I want them to be competent in both languages.

All of my friend's in the UK are jealous that my kids are getting this 'gift' and wish they could do the same for their kids so I have the utmost respect for you (MIFLIAW), a/ for being able to speak a 2nd language so well and b/ for having the dedication to give this ability to your child. Good for you. It now seems to be a year since your original post so how is it going?

MIFLAW, the Spanish was a bit of an accident! we found a lovely childminder who happened to be Spanish and thought she might as well speak Spanish to him, then she couldn't look after him anymore so we thought we'd continue the language and since he did already understand some Spanish we continued. I also thought (perhaps wrongly) that it would be easier to find Spanish speaking childcare going forward as most of South America speaks Spanish too. I do speak some Spanish but if I try to speak Spanish to my son (now aged 2) he shakes his head at me and say no!

Meemah

Thanks for your interest - it's going well, I think! I do write a blog about it all too (although I have let it slide for a couple of months ...)

papaetpiaf.wordpress.com/

but, at present, Piaf understands everything I say in French, replies automatically in French for a lot of simple stuff, and can be prompted to do so for nearly everything else. If it's obvious she can't, then I just feed her the necessary expression, and on we go.

It really helps doing other things "through" french - simple stuff like getting dressed, but also looking at nature, dancing, playing with Duplo, making a coffee ...

Obviously, Piaf is not her real name, but a nickname because of her middle name and also because she was like a little bird when she was born ("Piaf" was Parisian slang for "sparrow" which is how edith acquired her stage name, dontchaknow.)

MIFLAW, can you advise me? I know that non-native French/Spanish speakers are generally not welcome at the language playgroups although you are obviously fluent enough to have circumvented that. If I manage to continue to speak French to my son (and so far it's going pretty well actually, I am surprised) , how can I ever access groups like that given that he is going to lag behind his French peers linguistically? I want to do it for me as much as for him as that would enable me to keep my French up to date and varied, but the message I get is that they are not welcoming to those who want to learn from the experience! Is this the case and what might I do about it? I don't know any other non-natives trying to speak French to their children to meet up with!

My honest experience is that non-natives are not unwelcome per se. The people who ARE unwelcome are the ones who want to use these groups as a cheaper and more "authentic" substitute for jolie ronde etc - i.e. they expect the group to teach their child and make allowances for the child's complete lack of (as opposed to weakness in) the target language.

MIFLAW

Thanks for the compliment, but I have to put you right in that I was the one who grew up in different countries, and therefore became bilingual myself, and just continued with it with my son.

(His dad came from a different country again, but hasn't been in the picture since he was small).

Still no walk in the park - hat remains off!

Thanks MIFLAW - that is helpful. We shall see what happens, and I do understand that people don't like the groups to be used as substitutes for teaching when that is what the child requires - after all it does frustrate me that in a few years time my son will be used as English immersion for lots of the children in his class, at the moment I can't see what he will necessarily get out of it. I obviously should have started 2 years ago but I can honestly say it never occured to me that I had the option to speak French to my son before I saw your post - I had completely swallowed the 'always speak your native language or risk damaging the child' line, Hence why I have tried so hard to employ native speakers to talk to my son in Spanish!

'always speak your native language or risk damaging the child'

I know what you mean - but it's funny how, as a culture, we are prepared to waive that rule when the "native language" is Bengali and the mother has the temerity to send her child to an English primary school!

nesomja- I know what you mean about native speaker not accepting non native speakers.
Though I managed to be in a english playgroup.At the begin there were only 3 mums, n
ow were about 15.
It started with a slip of paper on a supermarket message board. Maybe you write a message on a supermarket or other message board and and do your own group?? The playgroup rule is you must speak engl.at home too not just in playgroup.
I speak only english if his dad is not there.
Though in playgroup my son speaks only engl. if I´m not there.So I leave the room while there is a activety and help other mums in the groups with smaller kids.
Good luck

2 generations of non-native language transmission here. I'm bilingual English/French. My mother fell in love with France after living there as an exchange student for a year and is a French teacher. Her French is fluent, a slight accent and very 'correct'.

She brought my siblings and me up speaking French. We all speak French natively with a Parisian accent, I did some of my tertiary studies in Paris and nobody knew I wasn't French unless I told them. My sister lived in France for nearly 10 years and married a Frenchman. They currently live in Germany, she speaks in English, her husband in French and of course the kids' main language is German. Her children speak perfectly fine French and English to my ears and they are doing very well at school.

My partner and I are bringing up our daughter both speaking a non-native language. I speak to them in Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic), my partner in French (not a native speaker but, having lived in Switzerland, fluent). Luckily our daughter has an intense fascination with language and is a huge reader. We subscribe to French cable TV, and I've gone to great expense getting as much Gàidhlig reading material as possible. And our little girl shares my love of Kathleen MacInnes (the most divine voice ever, so outrageously talented). To hear her singing songs to herself in archaic Gàidhlig is amazing (and with a perfect South Uist accent, not her usual Harris one).

The big decision came a couple of years ago when she started pre-school. The options were a bilingual French/English school about 40 minutes away or a nearby Japanese school where several of my work colleagues send their children (I also speak Japanese and work for a Japanese company). We were very unsure what to do as, with 3 languages already on the go, we weren't sure what a fourth would do given it would be newly acquired at school. The deciding factors were the proximity of the school, one of her friends was in the year ahead of her at that school and the fact that a chunk of our social circle is Japanese.

Well, I shouldn't have been surprised but she is now a proficient Japanese speaker. Luckily I can help her with her homework and participate in some school activities.

However, we were lucky to have a girl with no learning difficulties, an intense curiosity and interest in languages, insatiable appetite for reading and friends in the various languages who provide social interaction with the languages. She also is also very proud (read boastful) about the fact that she's special in speaking languages that other people can't, particularly Gàidhlig as so few people speak it, it's such a secret language for her but managing her ego and her tendency to use it as a weapon is something we need to keep a very close eye on.

Despite having 2 of her languages primarily spoken to her by non-natives she doesn't have an English accent when speaking French and my one native-Gàidhlig speaking friend assures me that she has native accent although she says it sounds a bit like a Harris/Skye hybrid at times.

The main thing I can say is that you need to adapt your situation and expectations to your child's abilities. 15% of children will have language acquisition difficulties, regardless of whether they're monolingual or bilingual. I know of people who've abandoned a bilingual upbringing due to misconceived fears of confusion or language impairment, where the real problem was dyslexia, low self-esteem, peer pressure or some other factor.

I say, go for it. Even if you're language use isn't perfect, your child will be a native speaker and will have the self-correcting abilities of a native speaker. And from my experience kids tend to mimic native speakers over non-natives.

MIFLAW- I haven't been aware at all of that rule being waived as a culture for Bengali families - in fact I thought it was exactly for them and people like them that it was invented and is said to be so important? My understanding is that a previous generation of immigrants felt that they had to speak English with their children and so the children grew up not fluent in their parents native language, and now parents are advised to always speak their native language with the children to avoid that situation. What experience have you had that's different? If you were referring to my comment about my son being used as English immersion, that was not intended at all as criticism of the other children's families, more of the local French playgroups who will not allow themselves to be used as immersion. I think we do have a slight problem in London though with primary schools full of children who arrive not speaking English and who are not given extra support but are expected to progress at the same speed as the native speakers - but that's an educational problem, doesn't mean that Bengali mothers should be speaking English to them at home.

God, I knew I'd worded that badly!

What I meant was that I think, when one happens to have a high-status second language, society is, by and large, very happy for you to have a bilingual household, or even to be monolingual at home (for example, the families whose children attend the Lycee Charles de Gaulle in London.) But the Express/Mail headlines have yet to fall silent on "immigrants failing to integrate" if a family with a low-status language make exactly the same choice.

So no criticism of you or even of schools - but actually of wider society, which likes to pick and choose in quite a worrying way who is "allowed" to maintain a native language; and which does so from a position of minimal to non-existent understanding of language acquisition.

To underline - I do NOT at all think that immigrants should be obliged to use English with their children, however high- or low-status their own language. I think that children primarily acquire the languages they need from exposure to those languages, whether that exposure starts, stops or continues at the school gate.

"second language" is wrong too, I meant "home language" and wasn't thinking because, for me, they are one and the same.

Argh!

MIFLAW - yes I understand better what you meant now! I know what you mean, there definitely is a hierarchy of languages - for example, it surely would make sense for me to exposing my son to Bengali as we live surrounded by Bengali people, but instead I choose French and Spanish. Bizarrely that also seems easier than doing Bengali, such is the level of integration around here :(.

I am English but living in Germany (with German dh) and here it is really very very common. Obviously my dd has been to English or bilingual nurseries so I will be bound to meet these families but even so, I think the numbers I meet at any and every playground I go to are phenomenal!
Mainly it's that the parents think that their children will be at a disadvantage if they don't grow up speaking English as "world language".
On the other hand, I think these parents seem to think that our children have something "better" than other children. I don't agree with that personally. I think it's just different. My daughter has two languages but for that her German is nowhere near as good as that of the kids growing up in purely German households (i.e. most of our neighbours) - and that has made her feel quite self-conscious and unsure in the past... which makes me feel awful.

Hi Simic, do you mean that lots of German parents are speaking English to their children even though it is their second language? That's really interesting! How old is your daughter? How is her German now, is it catching up?