childhood as a longitudinal research study
The most important learning takes place outside the classroom. I don’t generally teach children, but my two most important students are still very small.
When I first came to Japan ten years ago, I didn’t think this would happen. To your right, you will see my wife and two boys, all Japanese passport holders. If all of us were bilingual, what a marvellous thing that would be! I’ve already recounted my linguistic shame on this blog; far better to start from scratch with these fresh malleable brains….
There is an immense body of literature on bilingualism but, due to the unique nature of every family context, it is very hard to find clear direction on the best way forward. I’ll explain our particular context, the choices we have made and why, and how it’s going so far….
Some families operate a “one parent, one language” policy, but we have decided to use only the minority language (English) at home. Our rationale is that, once the children start kindergarten, they will receive ample exposure to Japanese so we ought to give them a head start in English. Of course, this relies on both parents being confident and comfortable speaking in the minority language. Even if one is extremely proficient in a second language, it may still feel strange to use it exclusively in communication with one’s own children.
We haven’t been especially strict about it. I know of some families who will not allow the children to watch Japanese television in the house, but what would we do without anpanman?! If we have Non-English speaking guests it seems polite to use Japanese, although I usually gloss in English for the kids. Outside the home, too, we both use Japanese if it feels appropriate (if there are non-English speaking children around, for example).
So far, it seems to be working well. The little one is just a ball of noise at the moment, but his older brother is very talkative. English, currently, seems to be dominant. My wife phoned me at work in a state of excitement last week to tell me that he was using reported speech structures (English teachers as parents…). It’s fascinating to see him fix things as he goes along. Switching vocabulary is easier than sentence structure, it seems. Pronunciation seems to be settling into place. But he’s only two and a half, so who knows!
There are ‘international’ schools around but we probably won’t be sending the children to one. From a purely practical perspective, they are expensive. Beyond that, literacy in Japanese requires plenty of work and, if we are planning to stay in Japan for the long term that has to take priority. But further still, school is socialisation and (for better or worse) we would prefer not to separate the children from the majority culture.
Parents expectations for their own children are very complex. In the case of ‘mixed’ children even more so. I imagine everyone would like their children to be bilingual, but complete mastery of both languages is extremely unlikely. What sacrifices are you willing to make? What level of attainment in the less dominant language would you be satisfied with? Linguistic competency does not automatically equate with cultural competency, either. Can one feel culturally estranged from one’s own children?
Parenting, I suppose, is always a research study… and one which often goes on a lifetime. From a language teacher’s perspective many issues start to become less abstract and intellectual, I suspect….
So what would you do, are you doing, or did you do with your children?
(These three books are worth reading, as a starting point)
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This has been on my mind since I got married. We are planning to use the one parent one language approach until the child is about 3 or so. We still need to read the research on this more. After that the minority language will be spoken exclusively at home and the majority language outside. It’s an interesting subject.
I wonder, Nick, if the children will resist the parents switching languages after a system has been established. Especially at three, a time when little brothers or sisters might be arriving, and kids start the upheaval of kindergarten? I don’t honestly know, but in our house the two and a half year old recognises that mummy and daddy speak English but can also use Japanese. He addresses us in English almost all the time now, although I suspect this will change later when Japanese becomes a bigger part of life. I think the fact that we have set this idea of English at home early on will bear fruit in the long-term. That’s not to say that one parent one language can’t be effective, but that it may be difficult for both parent AND child to switch to a different system later on. The paramount concern should be forming and maintaining strong, positive family relationships in whatever language or combination of languages necessary : D
Call to the experts who have been through this… I’d love to hear from parents of older children or young adults!
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Hi Darren – interesting post, and one close to my heart…
I am married to a Korean, and we have two kids (4 and 1 respectively). Both were born in Korea, but we returned to Australia earlier this year when Jamie was 3 and Hannah only 3 months old.
Jamie’s bilingualism has been very interesting to watch, given he spent his first three years in Korea, but also given that both of his parents speak both English and Korean (in uneven levels of proficiency, obviously). I, too, wondered what we should be doing in terms of strategies and what-not, but in the end we decided to just communicate as naturally as possible in whatever language was going in the house at the time. English emerged as dominant early on, especially in terms of vocabulary acquisition, because his English-speaking father made a habit of reading English storybooks with him pretty much daily. His mother read to him very seldom in Korean, and this really showed.
Later, when he started to socialize more with other kids in Korea, his Korean really started revving up. There were times when the two languages seemed pretty evenly poised, but most of the time it fluctuated – sometimes daily, sometimes in week-long chunks. When we moved to Australia, his Korean just completely vanished for about 4 months – but then started to resurface again.
One of the most fascinating stages was around the age of 24-36 months, when he started to blend the two a little – sometimes whole chunks, but usually a key word or phrase embedded into a larger chunk of the other language.
As I said, we’ve had a bit of a hands-off approach. We embrace both languages in our household, irrespective of which country we happen to be in, and we respond to him in whichever language he chooses to use with us at any given time. Each parent (naturally) tends to focus more on the mother language when interacting with him, or reading to him, or teaching letters, etc., but if anything we’ve concentrated on the idea that everyone can use both languages in the house in whatever way they like!
A book I can highly recommend to you is:
Harding-Esch, E. and Riley, P. “The Bilingual Family – A Handbook for Parents” (2nd Edition, 2003, CUP)
It’s not so much a “how to” book as a collection of real case studies of different kinds of bilingual and multilingual families in different countries and contexts.
Realistically, our kids will probably not develop a lot of fluency in Korean, and not just because we happen to be in an English-speaking country now. Korean is a language so deeply embedded in culture – without that culture surrounding you, it’s very hard to develop native-speaker levels of proficiency. I met a lot of Gyopos (Korean Americans) in Korea, who could totally speak the language, but often sounded (and felt) clumsy and unwieldy with it in Korea, because they hadn’t grown up immersed in the culture.
Interesting topic, Darren – will be great to see more contributions from other angles/experiences!
All the best,
~ Jason
In general we’ve gone for the one parent one language approach. Our situation is slightly more complex in that we live in a mostly Hungarian speaking community in Romania (and my wife’s first language is Hungarian, though she is completely fluent in Romanian too). So, our daughter gets English from me, Hungarian from her mother and sister and the baby-sitter, and Eng, Hun, AND Rom from the TV. However conversations in the house (between me and my wife and step daughter) are in English, so there is a small bias there. At present (she is nearly 4) her Hungarian is stronger than her English, and she certainly has a better vocab in Hungarian (she frequently sticks Hungarian words in her English sentences – something that I read in some of the bilingual literature that children don’t do). She’ll learn Romanian properly when she starts school. Occasionally I have found myself breaking the one parent one language rule and talking to her in Hungarian – I think it’s because I see her as being close to my level in that language, so we sort of bond in it.
Just to really complicate matters she has recently started kindergarten, and she is in a German group – which means that she gets 3 hours of German input a week. This is slightly interfering with her English. The other day she forgot the English word “green” and was insisting that it was “grune”.
It was fascinating and amazing watching her click when she realised that there were two languages when she was starting to talk though. It will always be one of my favourite memories.
[My step daughter who was 5 when I appeared on the scene, speaks very good, but not perfect, English (and now she is studying it at school is struggling with writing it in particular), and similar Romanian]
Just to finish off this longer-than-I-intended comment, I had some friends in Portugal (father US American, mother Portuguese) who did the one parent one language thing with their son. When he was nearly 3, his father took him on a plane for the first time to go and meet his American family. At one point he (the son) turned to his dad and pointed to the (American) women in the row ahead of them and asked “Daddy, why are those women speaking man’s language?”
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I was going to avoid commenting on this because it’s such a tricky subject. But what the hell…
I think it’s pretty much impossible to find something that works perfectly. The best option, perhaps only option, is a compromise.
I teach a 10-year old girl whose father is British, and mother Japanese. They use the one parent, one language approach but the result has been that she won’t speak English to her father. Instead she comes to me for English lessons and we have kept the fact that I can speak Japanese a secret. I think this is pretty typical in this situation. I also have another British friend who can’t speak Japanese very well but pretty much sticks to using it with his two kids. He has no real desire improve his Japanese skills (because he thinks he can’t) and no matter how much advise people give him it seems quite clear that in a few years he isn’t going to be able to communicate with his kids. Their Japanese will be so good that he won’t understand them. And they won’t understand his English (but he’s from Sunderland so I have a hard time too
)
But I’m a little worried about the approach that you have decided on for your kids too. Won’t your kids be at a major disadvantage when they start school and have to start making new friends? I have a feeling they’ll just confuse themselves, and their friends, by switching between languages.
I’m leaning towards having my kids become completely fluent in one language – probably Japanese – and then start teaching them English at an age when they realize that it’s a second language. That way they may not confuse the two when playing with friends etc. I can’t think of anything worse than being semi-profficient in two languages, but completely fluent in none.
But it is an extremely difficult subject and there are problems with all the methods available. Basically parents are at the mercy of whatever their children decide and the parents will just have to live with the results. Bilingual children would be nice but I’ll settle for monolingual kids during their early years.
By the way, I don’t have any kids yet, so I probably have no idea what I’m talking about.
OK, here’s an opinion from someone who actually grew up in a bilingual environment and is bilingual (Greek/German).
The only thing that really makes sense to me is one parent/one language. I have seen more or less every model at work, and the only one that resulted in people speaking both languages perfectly was that one. Why? Quite simple, because it allows the child to differentiate between the two languages. That’s the most important part: division. Because I know so many people who speak a mish-mash of two languages, or simply cannot prevent themselves from using certain parts of another language. And once you have these problems, they are usually very hard to fix. Linguistic habits die hard. And not being good at any single language really sucks.
There are also other advantages, such as both languages being your native language that you feel comfortable with, not a “home” language and an “outside” language. Not being good at the language of the country you live in is very unpleasant. Even if you only have a few problems, they will immediately identify you as a stranger to others, especially children.
I spoke German with my mother and Greek with my father, and I speak both languages with perfect fluency. The same goes for other people I know who were raised this way. The people who weren’t have a lot more problems.
First of all – thanks to everyone for such personal and detailed accounts. Every family really is unique…
Jason – I’ve seen some of your delightful videos online. I think your point about culture and language being interlinked is particularly pertinent. I imagine that Korean and Japanese are quite similar in that respect. The only Japanese we both use at home is the kind of polite ‘set-piece’ (of which there are many). For example, after dinner we have to say ごちそうさまでした, followed by my childhood ‘Can I get down please?’. Without that kind of routine the children will have difficulty adjusting early on at kindergarten.
Andy – You really do have a lot to handle! Although I have heard that if you are doing two languages, another one doesn’t make much difference. I have a version of your story too…. a friend of mine took his daughter back to the UK for the first time. “Daddy” she whispered, wide-eyed “They are all speaking ENGLISH!”. Do you get back much?
Sean – You have put your finger on the one problem. Kids get older, realise that their parents are idiots, and don’t want to play the game any more. I imagine it’s like playing piano – as an adult you wish you’d stuck with it but as a kid you just think it’s sucky. I dread the teenage years, which seem to start at about nine these days, when young people get embarrassed by their parents for just about anything and ashamed of their own differences. I think periods of resistance are inevitable and we just have to hope that the relationships and the language base are strong enough to come out the other side in reasonably good condition.
As for kindergarten, it’s not a concern. Although Ibuki’s English is dominant now, his Japanese is pretty decent through daily contact with grandparents, cousins and neighbourhood friends. He is a sociable child and very motivated to talk. Three weeks in school and I reckon his Japanese will skyrocket.
Jonas – The real-deal, a successful trilingual! Obviously, your comments carry a lot of weight and I’m intrigued. Did you spend time in both countries? Where did you learn English?
One thing which does concern me about one parent / one language is that the amount of exposure can be very unbalanced. I’d be worried that, with my wife as primary care-giver and schooling / peer activity in Japanese, my two hours of English from dinner to bath to bed would be a drop in the ocean….
One other point. With a few exceptions, almost everyone acquires at least one spoken language to proficiency. However, there are million worldwide who cannot read and write at all. My children will need to learn one alphabet, two syllabaries and a set of n-thousand ideographs. Ouch! Better get out the phonics cards…. any tips on that?
Hi
I just want to say ‘why?’ I mean why one language until 3 or kindergarten? I’m a bilingual, my husband is a bilingual and my kids are bilinguals. We started using the two languages at the same time when they were born. I was curious to see the result (as a lang. teacher) as I hadn’t studied my own process.They started to speak when they were 20 months old. One language first and to my amazement the other 1 week later. They perfectly learned the both languages and even they were able to make simultaneous translations (by the age of 3)to the ones when they realised that person didn’t know the other language.So it works, don’t worry…
When I saw how perfectly they managed to speak, I decided to speak english with them .Why not? there were all those studies about acquiring a foreign language at an early age but then they stopped me. I mean my twins… when I started speaking English my daughter just didn’t listened to me and even said ‘no’. Then I decided to wait for the right time and now they are learning English.
Eva, I like your style ; D
My feeling is that your approach is likely to work best for my family. But ask me again in twenty years….
Hi Darren,
Just to chime in again here (and fabulous responses from other people, too, really caught my attention!), I have a very good friend who is a fully bilingual French Canadian (one parent from English-speaking Canada, the other French-speaking), and he has two brothers. He stressed to me that bilingualism is NEVER a matter of equal proficiency in both languages – one will ALWAYS be preferred or somewhat stronger, and it varies from child to child even within the one bilingual family (he and his brothers have different preferred 1st languages, for example, and developed their bilingualism in completely different ways).
This reinforces to me the fact that every child is unique and will develop bilingualism in their own way, irrespective of particular strategies employed by the parents. It’s also the reason it is so hard to “pin down” what it means to be bilingual in a general sense, and how to foster bilingualism effectively.
I will also support two observations made above:
- 1 language (or one main language) from each parent appears to be very successful
- Children may refuse to use the other language with a parent, even if it’s clear they understand it
Great post and thread – hope it gets more contributions!
Cheers,
~ Jason
OK, ıf we still continue blogging or twitting. I’ll try to keep this in mind
)
Eva
Hi Darren,
I like the one parent, one language model, too. It just seems most natural.
Japanese at school and with their mother and the odd vacation to an English speaking country, English with you at home shouldn’t be a problem until about high school, when higher order vocabulary comes in, don’t you think? That’s how it was for my family (German, in the US). We all went to college then in Germany to fill in the missing bits.
I’d be curious: How many children are grwoing up in English-Japanese households?
Anne
Good question Anne, and one I can’t answer. Again, as someone who has lived it and turned out bilingual you give plenty of food for thought.
I’ve been thinking, too, about Jonas’ comment about being a stranger in your own country. My children have that before they even open their mouths, as a couple of curly-haired Japanese boys. I wonder how far cultural, ethnic and linguistic identity are related?
Just spent the afternoon making Christmas biscuits with the neighbourhood kids and watching our elder boy switch back and forth between languages without pause. Encouraging ; D
Super interesting, I’m not a parent so I wasn’t going to comment… but then I think about one of my friends who is American, his wife is Spanish and they live here in Stuttgart, Germany.
They decided right from when she was pregnant that they wanted to have tri-lingual children.
So they raised the kids with both parents speaking their own languages and both friends of parents speaking both languages and put the kids early into German kindergarten. They both travel frequently to their own homelands.
At one point they really thought they’d made a mistake with their oldest, some of her early sentences came out a mix of all three: which provided us all with a huge laugh Macht el door auf! and things like that -but now, age 6 and 4 both kids are completely tri-lingual!
Karenne
Thanks Karenne, glad to see you here!
“Frequent travel to the homelands” comes up a lot in the best advice for raising bilingual children. It puts them in a position where they HAVE to use their minority language.
The mixed up stuff they come out with can be funny, bizarre and embarrassing. But that’s kids in general, right?
I live in Peru with my bilingual (Spanish and Quechua) husband and our two bilingual children (Spanish and English)who also have a good level in Quechua. We never worried about what language we were going to use which usually meant that I spoke in English with my children when we were alone but in Spanish when my husband was around. Obviously we had to speak Spanish in the city and Quechua with our neighbours and they used Spanish in their kindergarten. They now, aged 5 and 4, move happily between English and Spanish and normally use English with me but Spanish with others. We recently had English house guests and after trying Spanish on them and not meeting with success, my children switched to English and spoke naturally to them in English for the rest of their stay. While they do use a bit more Spanish than English I would say that the quality of their English is better. Spanish is used for functional things but I tell them stories and read to them in English so their English has a broader vocabulary and when they retell stories or talk about their dreams, they prefer to use English. I can often get information from them in English better than my husband can in Spanish despite their greater exposure to Spanish.
Only time will tell what happens when they start full-time schooling but I suspect that my daughter will prefer Spanish as she is very close to her father and wants to identify with him. My son, however, is more attached to me and is a lot more communicative in English at the moment.
Thanks Catherine. The two languages my family is trying to deal with seems like nothing – a lot of tri-linguals out there already!
Children form different bonds with different parents at different times, and I expect that this has an impact on language. That word ‘identify’ is an interesting one – again, I think ethnic, linguistic and cultural identities play off one another.
The Japanese word for children like this is ハーフ (haafu – ‘half’), which, although I’m not especially offended does indicate a certain lack. It also ties in with the ‘pure-blooded Japanese’ idea, which can be uncomfortable. There are those pushing for ‘double’ to be used in this situation, which personally I find a bit ‘try-hard’, but the sentiment is in the right place.
Japan is not as racially homogenous as people think (especially not the Japanese themselves!), but the image of homogeneity is reflected in the language. I’d be interested to know how that works in your contexts….
I recall once, during a visit to my wife’s parent’s house, our 3 year-old bilingual boy having fun running back and forth between me and his Korean grandfather. He was talking to each of us in our native languages (to me in English, to his grandfather in Korean), essentially about the same topic, then running over to translate for the other person and continue the conversation. He was doing it effortlessly, but he was also aware and rather proud of his ability to do so. This was the first time I really noticed that, not only could he handle both languages on the go, he could translate them in simple terms (and not word for word – meaning by meaning, in fluent chunks for each language), and he was aware of the fact there were two languages in the household, aware his grandfather only knew one of them, and aware he could play a role in the active communication between two people speaking different languages. Fascinating stuff!
I also recall a lot of Korean people looking at our boy and asking in super slow and dumbed down Korean if he could understand Korean. I can recall him looking at them with a look that said “What, are you nuts? Of course I can, and evidently a lot better than you do…”
“The image of homogeneity is reflected in the language”… this is definitely the case in Korea as well. Our kids were never looked at or treated as just normal kids outside their immediate Korean family. Sometimes the over-compensation was harder to handle than the ‘you’re a half-way there (or here) kid’. Having returned to Australia, where there are a lot of kids just like ours, and much more multi-racial couples, I’m sort of relieved to say that this is no longer an issue at all. Dare I admit it, it’s also one of the reasons we moved back here once our eldest started approaching school age.