From the Life of a Bilingual Writer...(III)

Fun Facts

I have started to try lip reading whenever I watch a synchronised (German) version of an English speaking film or series. It is amazing how many words I can already recognise if I pay attention and the face is shown well!

After I had translated my Miro the Dragon stories into English, single sentences or ideas for the next stories come to me in either German or English (which can be quite annoying since the stories started as a German children's book series and are supposed to stay that way, even if they are translated and published in America--does that make sense?)

Every now and then, one of my other languages takes over my mind, and I imagine certain situations in that language. Those "episodes" are often triggered by some random thing, like a name (and it either frustrates or amazes me, depending on how much I actually remember spontaneously).

Even when speaking German, I tend to use American measurements now.

I felt weird talking German to anyone while I was in America. When I did, I often had situations where I instinctively switched back to English.

During my first weeks back in Germany, I ended up using English words and/or sentence structure without noticing until after it was said.

To be continued...

Common Criticism and Fears

Parents who decide to raise their children with more than one language are often confronted with criticism by their family, neighbours, even paediatricians. I am trying to give an overview of the most common criticisms and fears and the truth behind them in order to help parents to make their choice, and to defend it if necessary.

1) More than one language is too much for a child's brain!

Nope. Sorry, but whoever tries to convince you of this "fact" doesn't know how our human brain works. Children are easily able to learn more than one language at the same time since their brains already possess all the necessary connections for every language in the world. In fact, most of these connections degenerate after the initial window of learning one's native language because they haven't been needed. Newborn children are able to distinguish all about 70 phonemes used by any of the world's languages while grown-ups have lost this extraordinary ability. Most people can only distinguish the phonemes used in their native language(s). Although we can re-learn to distinguish between other phonemes, it takes time and a considerable effort once the initial ability is lost.

2) The brain only has limited resources; thus, when children grow up with more than one native language, some other ability will suffer since the resources are used for the additional language.

This is nonesense as well. The human brain is an extraordinary organ, designed to learn. Our ability to learn new things is only limited by our motivation and time. Some things might come to us easier while others take more effort, but when it comes to the bottom line, we can learn everything we want to and have the opportunity to.

3) Children will learn none of the languages fluently.

This actually depends on the way multiple languages are learnt. Usually, there should be no problem for children to learn more than one language fluently, and to be able to distinguish between the languages. However, children need to be able to distinguish which language is spoken in which context, or by whom, and those people using a language should be fluent (or at least very good) in it. One of the most common methods to bilingualism is the one parent--.one language approach where each one of the parents speaks only in his or her native language with the child. That way, the child will be able to learn both languages fluently and without any danger of mixing them. On a side note, many younger children initially mix their languages when they first start to talk; that is simply due to the fact that they don't yet know all the same words in both languages, and that the pronunciation of words with the same meaning might be easier in one language. When children just start out talking, they usually use the easiest words; however, they already know that they are using different languages. Usually, they stop mixing languages before they start school since they have acquired a great enough vocabulary in both languages by then.

The Reasons for Bilingualism

The main reason for bilingualism is obvious. The child shall learn more than one language. Most parents who raise their children bilingually do so because the parents have different native languages and the children have relatives in two languages and cultures. Those parents want their children to be able to communicate with all their relatives, and they probably want to pass on both their cultures as well.

Another very evident reason is shown by the example of immigrant families who speak their native language at home and the foreign language of the country they are living in outside of their home. In order to give their children an easy start into life in the foreign country, they have to enable their children to learn the environment’s language.

Apart from these two examples, however, what reasons do parents have to raise their children bilingually?

Language Ability

Children with more than one native language have a neurological advantage for learning more languages, and they already know at least two languages to start with. Bilingual children will always have it easier to learn new languages. Even those who gain bilingualism after the critical age (see primary/secondary bilingualism) will have the advantage as every new language they learn adds to the pool of resources they can draw from when trying to learn a new language or improve one of their languages. They build a huge pool of vocabulary to use for comparison when they try to guess the meaning of an unknown word, and they build a huge grammar pool as well which can help them understand grammar structures of new languages.

Intercultural Ability

When we learn a language, we always learn some part of the speakers’ culture as well. Even if we only learnt the words and grammar and stuff, we would still learn something about the speakers’ culture as the culture of a region always reflects in their language. It is reflected in idioms, common phrases, even the way words are built. However, as it is, we learn a language in context, and context means more cultural insight. Which phrases are used in which context? Why? What does that reveal about the culture behind the language? We don’t think about these things when we learn a language, but unconsciously, we will take it in. When we travel at some point in our life, we will likely have it easier to understand the mentality of the people we meet because we learnt part of their culture with their language.

Cognitive Ability

Bilingual children are able to switch between different tasks more easily than monolingual children. Experts believe this is due to the fact that their brains are trained in high cognitive effort from keeping languages apart and preventing one language to interfere with another one. In short, bilingual or multilingual people's brains are better trained for multitasking.

Coming up next week: Common criticism and fears in regard to raising children with more than one native language.

What Is Bilingualism?

When people talk about bilingualism, they often only mean the fact that someone has two native languages and speaks both of them fluently. Bilingualism in its specific meaning, however, includes more than that. They distinguish between primary and secondary bilingualism, for example, and include people with more than one native language who only speak one of them fluently.

Primary Bilingualism

Primary bilingualism is the term for bilingualism which started before the time frame for acquiring a native language closed (at around three years). People who are primary bilingual have two native languages. It doesn’t matter if they really speak both languages fluently; the only important fact is that they started learning both languages before they turned three. At around that age, the brain starts degenerating and “deletes” all the cells and connections it doesn’t need.

Secondary Bilingualism

Secondary Bilingualism is the term for bilingualism which started after the time frame for acquiring a native language closed. People with this kind of bilingualism only have one native language. They have, however, acquired fluency in a second language afterwards. So, for this kind of bilingualism, it is important to be fluent in both languages. Secondary bilingualism is much rarer than primary bilingualism for two reasons: First, because it requires fluency in both languages whereas primary bilingualism only asks for two native languages, and second, only few people are able to acquire fluency in a second language.

What Is the Difference Between Primary and Secondary Bilingualism?

The main difference lies within our brains. People with more than one native language only have one brain area for languages. Every second language they learn is “written” into the existing area which makes it easier for them to learn more languages. People with only one native language, on the other hand, have at least two brain areas for languages: one for the native language and one for each second language. This means that learning a second language requires much more effort as the brain has to build a whole new net of connections for the second language.

Read more about the various reasons to raise a child with more than one language next week!