Raising a child billingually on a second language

[Simmalti]

I know someone whose parents talk to him only in Albanian, but he talks to them only in English. He is essentially a native 'listener', but, according to him anyway (I can't prove this), he cannot speak the language.

I knew a girl at university whose parents were both native Maltese-speakers but she grew up in New York. Her parents only speak to her in Maltese, and she can understand it quite fine, but she says she´s not able to speak it, and downright refuses to try.

On the other hand, what would happen if a monolingual English couple raises their child in say... Italy. Will the child grow up speaking English to her parents and Italian everywhere else?

[Xephyr]

I know someone whose parents talk to him only in Albanian, but he talks to them only in English. He is essentially a native 'listener', but, according to him anyway (I can't prove this), he cannot speak the language.

I knew a girl at university whose parents were both native Maltese-speakers but she grew up in New York. Her parents only speak to her in Maltese, and she can understand it quite fine, but she says she´s not able to speak it, and downright refuses to try.

I've often wondered what that's like-- understanding a language but not being able to speak it. Is it, like, that feeling you get when you can't seem to remember that great synonym for "unapproachable" you want to say in this sentence... but applied to a whole language? Or what?

[Aurora Rossa]

I've often wondered what that's like-- understanding a language but not being able to speak it. Is it, like, that feeling you get when you can't seem to remember that great synonym for "unapproachable" you want to say in this sentence... but applied to a whole language? Or what?

Perhaps, or not knowing a song from the get-go but recognizing it once you hear it.

[tiramisu]

If I've had the same feeling as native listeners in my own foreign language studies, it's not quite the feeling you have when you're looking for a synonym for "unapproachable," but similar. That is, it's more similar to the feeling you have when you have an idea in your mind and can't think of the proper word to express it. They're not trying to translate from English -- they're thinking apart from English. Though they might be able to pin down the English word, they're not using the English word to get at it.

[finlay]

I know someone whose parents talk to him only in Albanian, but he talks to them only in English. He is essentially a native 'listener', but, according to him anyway (I can't prove this), he cannot speak the language.

I knew a girl at university whose parents were both native Maltese-speakers but she grew up in New York. Her parents only speak to her in Maltese, and she can understand it quite fine, but she says she´s not able to speak it, and downright refuses to try.

On the other hand, what would happen if a monolingual English couple raises their child in say... Italy. Will the child grow up speaking English to her parents and Italian everywhere else?

Yes, if the parents don't speak Italian. Again, it's all about how important it is to the child to pick up the language – if there's a necessity to speak and understand English at home, they'll pick it up. If the parents speak/understand Italian, it could probably go either way, because as you see with your friend in Maltese, she didn't learn the language when it wasn't necessary.

I know plenty of examples of this... I know someone who's trilingual in Chinese, French and English because she grew up in Hong Kong to a Chinese father and bilingual French/English mother. I think French is her weakest, and I suppose in China she wouldn't have got much French input, maybe only from her mother, but you can probably speak both Chinese and English in Hong Kong anyway.

I know someone who fits your bill pretty well: Italian with a British mother I think. I do think she's stayed in the UK before though. I dunno. Basically she's a native English speaker as well as Italian, but can't write for shit because she was never educated in English.

I met an I think Kiwi expat when I was in Holland whose kids could speak Dutch – naturally, he didn't understand a word of it and had no reason to learn it because he was in a posh, diplomat-infested suburb of the Hague with two international schools where everyone spoke English (as if they don't in the rest of the country, of course...), so his children were presumably bilingual.

[Ser]

All I can conclude from my insight is that a community of some sort is almost essential.

Here in Vancouver the Cantonese-speaking community is so strong that I know quite a bunch of people who were born here and have been living here all their lives but still speak English with a Cantonese accent. Which I think is insane.

On the other hand, I still haven't met anybody born here to Spanish speaking parents who I can have a decent conversation with, as there isn't much of a community to speak of.

[Terra]

Bringing up a child in a language that is not your native language generally leads to a less well-developed bond between child and parent, and this is not beneficial in any way to the child.

Have any links to studies?

none in English

Dang. Any in French? I could probably manage then. They're probably in Swedish and Finnish I bet though...

[Miekko]

Bringing up a child in a language that is not your native language generally leads to a less well-developed bond between child and parent, and this is not beneficial in any way to the child.

Have any links to studies?

none in English

Dang. Any in French? I could probably manage then. They're probably in Swedish and Finnish I bet though...

Some sources in Swedish, alas. Research done in the area of Sweden that had had a recent relatively large-scale switch from Finnish to Swedish, it's social and psychological impact, and so on.

[Mecislau]

I've often wondered what that's like-- understanding a language but not being able to speak it. Is it, like, that feeling you get when you can't seem to remember that great synonym for "unapproachable" you want to say in this sentence... but applied to a whole language? Or what?

Depends.

If you're not trying to speak the other language at all, then you just fluently listen in one language and produce English in response. It's not really any different than listening to English and producing English in response. As an English/Russian speaker, I can also add that I often don't even notice which language someone speaks to me in if I'm not consciously thinking about it. I sometimes wonder what would happen if one of my friends who don't Russian said a few words to me when I was distracted; if they said it without struggling too much, I probably wouldn't notice.

If you're trying to speak the other language, that's a lot messier, and the analogy's pretty apt. You know you know the word, but you're completely unable to come up with it. However, if someone says it, you'll instantly recognize it.

[EDIT: Except depending on the state of your ability to speak, you may not have a lot of luck reproducing the word once you've heard it. If you really have almost no speaking ability, then your ability to reproduce the word upon hearing it may be no better than a monoglot who can't speak the language at all, since you lack the experience of consciously breaking down a word into phonetic elements. If you do have some speaking ability, then reproducing it shouldn't be much of a problem at all, much more like forgetting a word in English]

[Declan]

A child of an native Irish speaker married to a Japanese lady I know says that he understands everything his mother says to him in Japanese, but he needs to be immersed in Japanese for a few days to actually be able to speak Japanese properly, because he normally he replies in English.

[Jetboy]

If you're trying to speak the other language, that's a lot messier, and the analogy's pretty apt. You know you know the word, but you're completely unable to come up with it. However, if someone says it, you'll instantly recognize it.

[EDIT: Except depending on the state of your ability to speak, you may not have a lot of luck reproducing the word once you've heard it. If you really have almost no speaking ability, then your ability to reproduce the word upon hearing it may be no better than a monoglot who can't speak the language at all, since you lack the experience of consciously breaking down a word into phonetic elements. If you do have some speaking ability, then reproducing it shouldn't be much of a problem at all, much more like forgetting a word in English]

I run into something like this with listening exercises in Spanish and Arabic, especially the former; whatever I hear often just automatically translates to English mentally, and if the teacher asks what was said, I have to translate back from English.

[Yng]

Viktor, are you really thinking about raising a child in Spanish?

Although I can't contribute from personal experience, my grandma was raised in Colombia bilingually by her parents, who were both second language Spanish speakers and missionaries. As soon as they came back, despite my great-grandparents attempting to keep up her Spanish, she rapidly forgot her originally native-level competence (obviously whilst in Colombia she had spoken practically nothing but Spanish outside the home). Likewise with my dad, who learnt Tigre of all things - although I'm not sure if they carried on speaking it with him when they got back to Britain (whilst my grandma has specifically told me that her parents attempted to maintain her bilingualism).

[Ser]

Likewise with my dad, who learnt Tigre of all things

How did he... what?

[Yng]

Likewise with my dad, who learnt Tigre of all things

How did he... what?

My grandparents were missionaries in Eritrea. This isn't EXACTLY a parallel because he learnt it both from his parents and from his peers, but again once he no longer needed the language for communicating with people who didn't speak English, he lost it.