When he goes to her in the morning, I listen for the words I know: buenos dias, ojo, pelo, bébé. The morning words will be simple ones. Nouns.
I remember nouns.
I can remember most numbers, too, when we sit on the floor and count blocks. I often forget siete, so I start over, hoping it will come back the next time around.
“The way you go about helping your child become bilingual isn’t that much different from the way you’d go about helping him become, say, a highly skilled swimmer or piano player: You provide him with lots of instruction and opportunity to practice…” —Seven Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child, Naomi Steiner
We, but I really mean he, decided to raise our daughter bilingually when she was the size of a pea, Spanish being a decade-old hobby for him. CDs on long work drives, language school in Guatemala and a weekly Skype class with a teacher he’d met there. He taught ESL on Sunday afternoons to a mostly Spanish-speaking class. He had a natural gift. Everyone said so.
I’m at a turning point he mulled a couple weeks into the pregnancy. Either I commit to this and make it part of our lives or it becomes an old hobby.
Do it, I said between Saltine crackers. If you can give her a head start with a language, let’s do it.
I was flippant, distracted. He was focused, driven—research on brain development and cognitive function, how-to books and lengthy discussions with friends. I slept and slept and slept.
At night, he watched Spanish versions of Survivor and a soap opera called Devious Maids—sometimes without headphones so she could hear, in utero, native speakers. Every now and then I rolled over and attempted to catch the story lines, especially the soap opera. He would explain about the murder and the affair and the secret father. But mostly, all those Spanish words were a lullaby rolling me along, bobbing and big-bellied.
The first hardest part, he’d say when I was awake, will be speaking Spanish when everyone else is speaking English. The second hardest part will be talking to her about deeper things—sadness or love or sex. I think you have a while before that, I told him. She’ll need to learn her body parts, first.
“I can confidently say that any person on earth can learn a second language, no matter what their age, intelligence, working or living situation is…. When our mentality, motivation, passion, and attitude are kept strong, we have the momentum required to charge on toward language fluency.” —Fluent in the Three Months, Benny Lewis
When are you going to learn, he asks me in the ninth month of my pregnancy. You’ll have to learn. A year, I say. But I’m not sure about the year. I’m not sure about ever. I tried a class once, but all my college French words welled up first and I had to walk through them like tall grass and it made me tired. I am already so tired. But I download the language app along with the one that will track my contractions when the time comes.
“The extent of a bilingual child’s disparity in fluency depends on that child’s unique bilingual environment, which is comprised of the languages spoken by his parents, the languages of his extended family and culture, the language of his community…” —Seven Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child, Naomi Steiner
She finally comes, this baby. Though it takes two sunsets and a sunrise before it really happens, before she’s swaddled and weighed and bathed. I fall asleep and wake up and fall asleep and wake up. That second time, Spanish words like a July rain—soft, familiar—are in the air. My nurse is Columbian and they are talking over me, my husband and she chatting about school and visas. Life, it seems, goes on and on while I’m here in this bed, stitched up and hungry. The baby’s nursery bassinet sign is markerered with Felicitaciones! and Me llama Nola! Already he is whispering to her in Spanish.
“There is absolutely no reason to believe in a ‘language gene,’ as if the ability to learn a foreign language is encoded in your genome at conception.” —Fluent in the Three Months, Benny Lewis
When I first heard “esperanza,” the Spanish word for my name, “hope,” it sounded like razors—all esse and pppa and zzz. It felt heartier, stronger, than the English equivalent with only a soft pppa at the end to see it through.
I wanted to name our daughter Nola Grace, give her a noun name. Like mine. But in Spanish, it would sound like no la gracias, “no grace.”
We argued. When she travels in a Spanish-speaking country, it’ll be weird, he claimed. My arguments embarrassed me even as I made them. She’s American. She’ll live here. Her native language is English.
I gave in on the condition that I get to pick the replacement middle name. I named her after my North Carolinian grandmother.
“One-parent-one-language, or, OPOL…. One parent speaks one language to the child and the other parent speaks another—always.” —Seven Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child, Naomi Steiner
They take Spanish walking tours through the house. He tells her about the kitchen and the living room and our dog. Sometimes I think I should follow him, learn from the ground up, just like she is.
I realize I don’t walk her through the house and say these things in English. I start to, though it feels forced and silly. I soon switch to Jack Gilbert poems and board books.
When she wakes up inconsolable in the night, he takes her to the window and describes the whole world in Spanish. She calms, finds her thumb. I listen and wonder if these words are sinking in me somewhere, too.
“Exposure to human beings who speak your target language is what’s it’s all about. It’s time with real people and real exposure to the language through TV, radio and movies that pushes you forward.” —Fluent in the Three Months, Benny Lewis
We begin interviewing Spanish-speaking nannies. The first, a young woman with two sons. She and her husband come to dinner, friends of friends. Turns out they are 21 and live with his mother. The second is a woman whose own two young children live in Mexico with her mother. The third, a shy woman who doesn’t say much, trips up the stairs when I take her to Nola’s room and speaks very little English. I follow my gut, a strange language-less thing. This is the woman we ending up hiring. It will be one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.
“The farther you can extend the language boundary at home, the more your kids will benefit.” —Seven Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child, Naomi Steiner
He subscribes to Netflix and HuluPlus in hopes of accessing Spanish kids programs. Scratchy Spanish versions of Dora can be found on YouTube (as well as other weird versions of Dora). We buy overpriced DVDs and Blues Clues dubbed in Spanish. I get a crush on Steve who is not bilingual either.
Twice a month at the library I pick up three English storybooks and two Spanish ones. By now, I can at least read the Spanish ones out loud even if I don’t know exactly what the words means. I’ve always been good with mimicry.
He’s consistent, my husband. At home, at friend’s houses, in restaurants, he’s only Spanish. I’ve almost stopped registering it as a language different from the one I speak to her. But others do. Sometimes I catch them staring and then I remember.
At the airport once someone official asked if anyone spoke Spanish. A woman stood beside the official, wild-eyed and bewildered. We stepped up. I imagined this is what doctor’s wives felt like in times of crisis. A little proud. A little annoyed because of the delay since you’re the one holding the thrashing toddler. I watched the woman’s eyes as my husband talked with her, the way they softened with relief and lost the fear. And I wondered why I’m dragging my feet. It’s such a simple act, really, to learn another language.
“Speaking the language out loud with a real human being… every single day is the best way to zoom forward toward a conversational language level and on toward fluency.” —Fluent in the Three Months, Benny Lewis
I Spanglish mostly: English with a few Spanish nouns thrown in. That’s what Nola does, too. At two years old, she speaks in mostly nouns anyway—sometimes English, sometimes Spanish. But whatever is Spanish is always Spanish. Like agua or cama or allá.
I can roll my “r’s” almost well. And I can repeat the phrases I hear him say perfectly: “Dónde está el mono? And there is a charming habit of adding “ita” to “little things” in Spanish. Our daughter becomes “Nolita” and I think, for the first time, that maybe this language is more beautiful than French. Maybe. And maybe, I really do want to learn it.
“Develop your family’s bilingual goals and Bilingual Action Plan with your partner regardless of whether he speaks your language.” —Seven Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child, Naomi Steiner
I hate that Siri is in Spanish on his phone. When I use it, I can’t look up directions or navigate the web well. And texting takes forever. Because auto correct in Spanish. I also hate the Spanish nursery rhymes CD—the singer’s voice pitch, the too-loud accordion.
I get tired of asking whatareyousaying or whatdidshesay?
At the end of the day, I just want to read my book, in English, and not feel guilty for not studying Spanish. I want—when the babysitter tells me in the Spanglishy way we communicate how long our daughter slept, what she ate and if she pooped—to be able to ask questions about said sleep, food and poop and understand the answers.
“You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you only live once.” [Czech proverb] –Fluent in the Three Months, Benny Lewis
I buy a book of poems by a Nicaraguan poet. The left page is in Spanish with English on the right. I’m hoping the experience of reading it in both languages will help me fall in love with Spanish, to find my footing in this arranged marriage I am in.
It takes me two months to finish the book because I make myself read the right page and then the left, to hear the poems in two languages.
Sometimes, I come to understand, love is hindsight. And sometimes, you are already too far in to ever leave unchanged.
Tags: family, hope mills, kids, languages, parenting
This is lovely.
And also, what is it about Steve? So many of us moms and nannies crush on Steve, and even though I’m one of them I couldn’t possibly explain it.
Thanks for your kind words. And re Steve: RELIEF to know I’m not alone.
I googled Steve to see who you were talking about, and saw he was on the Moth. https://youtu.be/CwmtkFPYXsg
I had that past-language-haunting experience too, only in reverse – I went to France for a year, and all that phantom high-school spanish kept getting in the way! But after a year, when I came back to the US after having not really learned to speak French, for a long time I’d catch myself using French in common situations – blessing a sneezing person, or excusing myself if I bumped someone. So I think it can seep in slowly over time without concerted effort. Best of luck—
Yes, I had a similar experience when I moved back from Korea. I had never mastered Hangul so I didn’t expect it to be that much of an issue but 5 years on and I still can’t say “rock paper scissors” because it just pops out of my mouth as “kawi-bawi-bo!”
This was so soothing yet thought-provoking. It’s something I think about a lot, having been raised not-bilingual but now watching my half-brother grow up speaking Spanish at home: would my life be quite different? What are the logistics of raising a bilingual child once we hit the limits of my abilities?
Also, Charlottesville! Are there enough Toasties here for a meet-up?
I’m in!
Nicely written! Also I’m glad you guys found the Spanish-speaking nanny! I think it is really hard for a child to learn a language from a non-native speaker divorced from the language’s cultural environment, because so much of speaking another language is getting fluent in the other culture, too. If you aren’t already, maybe you two can also find some Hispanic play groups for her, or take her to neighborhoods (do they exist in Charlottesville?) where many people are Spanish speakers for meals and interactions and maybe some kind of lessons, so she gets cultural immersion too.
(Language is very emotional, so it is good to get her connected culturally to some community in the language — spoken as someone for whom speaking multiple languages has functioned as a wonderful portal but also a source of confusion growing up).
Well written and interesting, but also…. hard. Hard because I’m the halfie kid of an immigrant who did not want his hija to learn Spanish, because it was the States, and what did you speak? (My abuela spoke four languages, so I don’t know where he got that idea). My gringa mother is fluent. I spoke Spanish when I was a baby with my Salvadoran nanny and then it dissipated, replaced by junior high/high school French and my parents telling what they didn’t want us to hear in Spanish. My brother doesn’t speak a word.
By the time I got to college, I took classes, and I can’t explain the fury and sadness and jealousy I felt at la gueras who had perfect AP Spanish skills. I know more than I think, now, but what a thing, tongues. And esperanza is an incredible word–how else could we understand hope is also waiting and breathing? Well done. Tu hija is very lucky.
Ugh. Feelings. So many. I was a bilingual child once. After being dumped into the local kindergarten instead of the one on post, I spoke German like a native and had to translate for my parents, thick Bavarian accent and all. Now I can barely string a sentence together. We moved back to America and I just refused to speak it anymore. I was angry and I was afraid.
When I watch German movies or overhear German speakers I can still feel it there like a phantom limb, but when I try to connect my brain to my mouth nothing comes out. I’ll dream in fluent German, but when I wake up…
No amount of trying from my parents could make the language stay once I’d decided to stop speaking it. I hope your daughter keeps whatever she learns. I wish I did.
When my Grandfather had dementia in his 90’s he lapsed back into Arabic from time to time. It was the language he learned as a missionary in Egypt, 50 years prior. It was there the whole time but I wonder if he recalled it during those decades in between. Or if- like you describe- it was a phantom limb.
I like to think my German is still locked away inside and it just requires the right sort of shove to just all come rushing back. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. But I swear that the last time I was in Germany for a month or so as a young teenager it was sooo close to returning. I was dreaming in it again every night by the time I left.
Yes, it’s in there! Languages we speak or hear as young children are always easier to (re-) learn later. I remember from developmental psychology that even kids who were adopted as non-speaking infants more easily learn their childhood language later – even if they were adopted at two weeks old! German wasn’t your first language, but since you were younger than five when you started you were well on your way to becoming truly bilingual (having two “first” languages). So I really think it’s in there, your German synapses wired together in your brain. If you start using German again I bet it’ll come back! At least, you’ll become fluent quicker than people who didn’t speak German at such an early age, and I think your pronunciation might be better too. Nothing disappears, the ties between memories just get weaker, but you laid the groundwork and the ties strengthen with use 🙂
This is completely amazing. I’m not even a parent, but I am bilingual, and I decided long ago to raise my child bilingual if I ever have one. This was so cool to read!
But my favorite part was that you had a crush on Steve from Blue’s Clues.
This is really great! I can sort of relate because my husband is obsessed with moving to Japan in a few years and he’s spent the last 4 years teaching himself Japanese. I already speak the language but have lost a lot since I’m not actively speaking or studying. I know if we move I have to apply the same devotion he is to learning and keeping up but I just feel tired.
Oh man I feel this. We’re raising our son bilingual and it’s tough. Tough to know if it’s working (he’s only 15 months and his vocabulary is extremely limited) and tough to keep it up. My wife speaks fluent English and slips into it more readily than her native Japanese, and I know enough Japanese that I can read his favorite books to him in it when he wants me to. I suppose we’ll muddle through and hope that we make enough of an impact that he’ll pursue it more in depth when he’s older.
You’re a lovely writer, and clearly very intelligent and thoughtful. But this article made me massively uncomfortable. I was Spanish monolingual and learned English in school; until my 20s I picked up languages like colds, so I understand being an outsider learning a new language for the sheer love and discovery of it.
But how on earth do you impose that on a child? This child has no emotional or cultural connection to anything Spanish, at least not that you explained. It reminds me of those wealthy parents who immerse their toddlers in Mandarin so that they can run hedge funds more efficiently. And hiring a Spanish-speaking nanny? Why is there no discussion of the intense and painful class issues behind these decisions? It just makes me cringe.
(I had some feelings/thoughts about this.)
Yes, as did I. I can’t quite put my finger on why this bothered me so much. I certainly am pro-language and I would be very happy if my son grew up speaking many languages, this level of intensity feels like it is I don’t know… trying to appropriate a culture that is not hers.
That’s not what bothers me about this piece, but something definitely does. I’m getting the impression that this is actually making you unhappy because “he” is – consciously or not – putting you in a position where you feel inferior. Raising a bilingual child was his idea and largely his decision – a decision that you went along with because it’s hard to say no to something that has such a positive goal. You don’t speak Spanish, he does. You aren’t committed to language learning; he is. He studies books while you sleep. Never mind that you gave birth to the child. Never mind that you are doing a huge amount of non-language-related work. Never mind that you cannot be expected to be as committed as he is to teaching a language that you do not know. You and he both see this as an enormous, all-important project central to your child’s upbringing, and its a project in which you cannot be an equal participant, and that makes you feel bad.
What I’m getting from this essay is that you resent him for making you feel like you aren’t as good as him at this valuable skill, or as committed to a project that is Objectively A Good Thing. And then you reproach yourself, because you want to be better at languages, and more committed to this project, than you are.
There’s also – although you don’t bring it up – the reality that if this project succeeds, your daughter and husband/partner are going to share a language that you do not have nearly their level of fluency in. You are committing to a project that is going to isolate you from the rest of your family, and it’s understandable that you would have a certain level of resistance to that. What bothers me is that I don’t think you’re allowing yourself to think of this as something you have any right to resent or resist.
Also, it is my firm opinion that on the subject of your daughter’s name you are right and he is wrong. She is an American. She does live in America. When she travels in Spanish-speaking countries, she can use just her first name, or just her middle name, or a nickname that works in Spanish. My last name means something weird in French that wouldn’t normally be a name, and I get odd looks when I say it, but guess what? I’ve lived in France, and I’ve spoken French the whole time, and my last name never had any impact at all on the experience.
I really didn’t mean to write so much about this, but one last thing. Sometimes kids don’t like being raised bilingual, and they just quit. All of a sudden, they will not speak the second language, and nothing will make them do it. I hope that if that happens, your husband/partner will accept that and not blame himself, or you, or her, for not trying hard enough.
“because “he” is – consciously or not – putting you in a position where you feel inferior.”
“you resent him for making you feel like you aren’t as good as him at this valuable skill, or as committed to a project that is Objectively A Good Thing. And then you reproach yourself, because you want to be better at languages, and more committed to this project, than you are.”
“You are committing to a project that is going to isolate you from the rest of your family, and it’s understandable that you would have a certain level of resistance to that. What bothers me is that I don’t think you’re allowing yourself to think of this as something you have any right to resent or resist.”
I felt uncomfortable about this (beautifully written) essay, for the same reasons. There’s just this massive undercurrent of unspoken reluctance, like the author feels sidelined in her own family. Especially here:
“My nurse is Colombian and they are talking over me, my husband and she chatting about school and visas. Life, it seems, goes on and on while I’m here in this bed, stitched up and hungry.”
It just reads like a massive, IDK, stuffing down of unhappiness. Author, I hope you are ok.
More than an undercurrent – I thought the unhappiness and reluctance and resentment were the most prominent part of the piece, and were the things that jumped out at me as I read this. It was a painful article to read. I really hope things get better for you, Author.
Sorry I have a lot of thoughts. I agree with Maggy to an extent. I’ve seen this and while I’m sure it’s meant well, it often kind of feels like a party trick or just a list of things to tick off to make sure your kid gets into Harvard. Not saying this family has that intention, but I’m familiar with the phenomenon.
By all means, expose your kids to languages. (I too, crush on Steve). But speaking a second language all the time (no matter how well you speak it) seems like an artificial and short sighted way to do it.
You’re putting a lot of your personal hopes and dreams (or your husband’s) in a child that can’t make a choice. If you’re a professional drummer and you want your kid to drum, do you play drums day and night? No you play lots of music, maybe
buy some bongo drums to bash on when they feel like it. Let them see you play drums. If the love is there, the desire to engage with it will follow.
I spent the first years of my life speaking “Itanglish” (because I lived in Italy) and I’m currently trying to learn more languages and improve the ones I know. I don’t sound like a native in any of them and that’s okay.
It’s a hobby and a love of mine. My kids aren’t really interested, but that’s okay too. They have their own worlds to explore. The languages will still be there if they change their minds. I’m happy to practice with anytime.
“But speaking a second language all the time (no matter how well you speak it) seems like an artificial and short sighted way to do it.”
This I agree with.
I’m not entirely comfortable with calling out the author’s husband for trying to make their child bilingual this way. Mostly because I think of second parents who have adopted from abroad and don’t want to condemn attempts to introduce some degree of their child’s culture of origin. Depending on where you live, a non-native speaker and/or caretaker might be as deep as that experience can be.
That example isn’t entirely problem-free, either, seeing as one case has to do with a shared cultural heritage and the other is an artificial adoption of another language. Still, I see no downside to giving a child another means by which to express him/herself.
I have similar feelings.
I’m from a bi-lingual country where language is political, and I have all kinds of feelings about being forced to learn my native language.
There are very posh exclusively Irish speaking schools that many parents put their children into back home, but its a middle class luxury, which is ironic since its the language of the peasants. The rest of us have to tolerate having the language beaten into us at state schools, and most children pray for the day they can get an exemption since is a mandatory subject (Dyslexia can get you out of it, as can being born abroad), but if you do succeed in getting the exemption you’re then at a loss when it comes to college applications.
I’m all for exposing your child to different cultures and languages, but this all sounds very intense; Personally I think I’d be celebrating in my new baby, not making sure the crib has Spanish words on it.
I think you nailed what was really bothering me about this. Like, there’s no way to separate the linguistic from the political and the cultural. It’s a Gordian knot, and it’s very closely linked to class and privilege. But there was something else too.
I have an Anglo monolingual wife; when we first started dating, she pointed out a habit I didn’t know I had. Whenever presented with babies and animals, I immediately started baby-talking them in Spanish. She wanted to know why, and the answer, to me, was: “This is what love sounds like.”
Someone upthread pointed out the undercurrent of resentment and sadness the author has towards the language, and to me that feels utterly wrong. There’s no love in it.
——————–
On an unrelated, much lighter note, when we finally moved in together and got a dog, the dog only spoke Spanish. Didn’t understand a word of English. The shelter told us that she hadn’t been obedience trained, but it turned out she had — as long as you told her “venga,” “sientate,” “para” and “deja!” Had to teach my poor wife all the Spanish dog words before we had time to take her to what I referred to as “puppy ESL.”
I think considering this an imposition on the child without knowing a little more of what is going on illustrates some wrong ideas about how very young (pre-school age) children learn language. A child wants and needs parental interaction above everything else. The ease with which a baby picks up one or more languages from loving, low-key parental interactions is startling, beautiful, and suggests that in our history as a species, this may have been some sort of norm. I have seen how they can pick up languages even very passively, from television, and that’s startling too.
If this family is in the US, they’re in a country that is functionally bilingual and should be officially bilingual, with Spanish education at least as available to Anglophones as French language education is in Canada, or as available as other-language-education is in the umpteen rich-and-less-rich officially bilingual countries in the world. The fact that it isn’t is a problem, but it isn’t this family’s problem.
(BTW, do you actually know of any non-Mandarin speaking parents who immerse their children in Mandarin so they can run hedge funds better someday? And not so that they would be able to communicate with, oh, say, the billion people in the world who speak Mandarin and don’t speak English?)
And in terms of the socio-economic and class points that need to be addressed around the Spanish language and Spanish workers in a US context – do you think that maybe that could be something more appropriate to explore in an essay that’s less personal to this author’s experience? A lot of Spanish-speaking nannies get hired. I think if they are appreciated and PAID as language educators as well as carers, that’s probably a positive thing. The writer doesn’t say or not whether that’s the case, of course.
All that having been said – the sense I’m getting off the author is that this project, the way her baby daddy is carrying out, is a serious imposition on her. That’s a shame.
I’m not sure I’d quite agree with the word “imposition”, but I think there is a difference between children picking up more than one language because more than one language is spoken around them and it’s part of the fabric of their environment, and a concerted and conscious effort to to bring a child up bilingually by one parent speaking their second language, with some degree of tension in the family around that choice. As far as I understand it, the latest research suggests that children don’t “effortlessly” pick up language: they are primed to *communicate*, and they will learn to communicate in the most efficient way possible. If they are surrounded by people who speak more than one language and regularly use those languages to communicate with each other and the child, then efficient communication means learning more than one language. But very young children are often very good at picking up, “well, Daddy does speak English to Mummy, so why is he speaking something else to me?” and going on language strike.
It seems quite likely hat the child will realise relatively early on that both her parents speak English, and most of the wider world is in English, and concentrate all her energies on communicating effectively and appropriately in English. If her parents shrug, and say, “Oh well, worth a try!” and switch to speaking English with her, keeping Spanish for games, songs, books and other “fun” things, and she has a headstart with learning Spanish formally in a couple of years, there’s no problem at all. But from the way the writer has described her husband’s investment in the language and her own ambivalences about it, the danger is that this will cause frustration and perhaps even blame between her parents, and she’ll pick up on those tensions. That would be an imposition on the child, I think: an imposition of unrealistic imposition of an expectation of achievement and then feelings of failure.
(And that’s without getting into any of the political meanings of Spanish as a language in North America, which as a European I am exceedingly unqualified to comment on!)
Yeah, I agree that whether or not this ends up being an imposition on the kid depends on how sensible the father is and from this essay it doesn’t look terrifically promising. What sort of dweeb asks someone in her last trimester when she’s going to learn a new language?
But as a European I’m sure you’ve noticed the huge difference in English proficiency between Portuguese and Spanish people, or Dutch and German people? Almost all of the variables are similar in those pairs besides children’s programmes typically being subtitled instead of dubbed in Portugal and the Netherlands. Children’s brains are that awesome. Thier second language acquisition is just not an effort in the sense that language acquisition is for older people.
I don’t agree, actually! It’s not purely about exposure. Exposure as a child helps with the formation of sounds, but ability to speak fluently comes because of incentives that exist to progress in English as you grow up. As a young person that might be because of the commercial dominance of various forms of English media and the social cachet of speaking English; once you get a little older it might be because of the economic and career advantages of speaking English. Dutch schools and universities teach in English and use English textbooks. There’s a whole economy of support for English learning (to the extent that there are Dutch people worrying about the status of Dutch) which is about way more than childhood exposure.
Young children’s language learning less effort in the sense that it’s not conscious effort in the same way that it is for older children or adults, but that’s not the same as it being *effortless*. Cognitively, it’s enormously taxing, and bilingual children frequently demonstrate some retardation in language acquisition compared to monolingual children. That’s not necessarily a reason to avoid or discourage bilingualism, because they catch up, but its evidence that language acquisition is a tremendous amount of effort. Children’s brains are awesome because they are very plastic and very efficient at learning to communicate, but that’s not the same as the old “they just soak up languages” model.
No, it isn’t purely about passive exposure, and I didn’t say it was, but my point is that even passive exposure is huge. If you want to take the small subset of people in the Netherlands and Germany who go into the academic stream and head to university – well, German graduate courses and increasingly undergraduate courses are also taught in English, particularly in the same business fields they’re often in English in the Netherlands, so there’s that. But leaving the academic stream behind, if you are airdropped into Germany or the Netherlands onto an average street speaking to an average German or Dutch person below 40, the odds are very much with you being able to talk about the weather in English in Netherlands, and against you in Germany, and a huge reason for that is passive exposure.
(Of course there are other variables besides passive exposure. The fact that the ESL business in Germany gets so much of its income from working with academically-streamed Germans who, on paper, already know English suggests that the late start of school-age language education (around 8) in Germany is one of them.)
I am aware that this is a political issue, particularly when it comes to English and even more particularly when it comes to the Netherlands, the Dutch language, and new immigrants whose English is usable and whose Dutch is non-existent, but that a different kettle of fish, if an important and interesting one.
And I also didn’t say that early language education is effortless – indeed there is nothing about being a child that isn’t enormously cognitively taxing. But the fact the “retardation” you mention is so brief and is left behind so completely suggests that it is a fairly normal process for a little baby brain and may have been the norm for us for most of our history as a species. I will get really good at doing curls with my right arm really fast if I just do curls with my right arm all the time. I will also be doing my left arm a serious disservice.
I feel quite strongly about this because this is a political issue too – regional languages across the world are dying out in part because of a misconception that young children can’t learn two languages at once without “retardation” and the cultural losses involved are enormous. There is a sort of imperialism of national languages like modern Hebrew, French, Italian, Mandarin and of course English just snuffing out smaller languages, and while this snuffing-out is often a very conscious and explicit government policy and that is bad enough, it is heartbreaking to see children’s families voluntarily participating in it because of the misconception that their children will somehow be “retarded” if they learn two languages as infants or while very young.
This post is so well-written, but the more I thought about it, the more (negative and complicated) feels I had, so I wrote a post about it. Is it weird to post that link here? I hope not. http://no-award.net/2015/09/30/on-being-a-bilingu…
My feels to all bilingual children who have difficult feelings about it.
I’m late to this but I hope it’s okay.
I love this comment and I agree.
I was raised bilingual (German/English) and I’m a language nerd. I’ve considered raising my kids bilingual but I’ve decided to do it only if they’re languages the other parent and I have ties to. I love French, but it’s not part of my culture and you can tell. My accent doesn’t belong to any specific region of any French-speaking countries. My kids, if I taught them, wouldn’t sound like native speakers because I don’t, either. It seems like it would be just as effective as hoping they’ll like the language and signing them up for classes with native teachers.
I agree with the class issues part too. A lot of the parents who hire nannies who speak certain languages don’t pay them as much as they’d pay a language teacher but those nannies, on top of teaching the language, also have to care for the babies in a way teachers don’t.
This is really beautiful and hits home for me. My daughter’s grandmother is Israeli and speaks almost only Hebrew to her and her other granddaughter: her cousin’s first word was in Hebrew, not English. My Hebrew vocabulary is almost all religious, and I want it to be more natural for her, because I have such a hard time with reading and speaking about secular things in Hebrew. It’s hard because it’s not natural for me. I love that you can express both the effort and the impact.
Yeah, non-native bilingualism is a tough row to hoe.
We came this close >< to being relocated to Japan (via my husband’s company) a year and a half ago. The move would have put us into one of the smaller cities, where there isn’t a large ex-pat English-speaking community, and none of us speak the language. While there would have been language support for us, we were really concerned about putting our daughter in the local schools. She was five at the time, and of course, would have picked it up rapidly, but it would have been a tough couple of months in the beginning when I wouldn’t be able to communicate with her teachers and she would have to figure school stuff out on her own. (The Japanese learn English in school like US kids learn Spanish which is to say: everyone can count to 10 and maybe ask for the bathroom.)
Serendipitously, we happen to live near a Japanese immersion school. We moved her there, and kept her in the school even after the possible move fell through.
So now we have a delightful 6.5 year old who can read hiragana, katakana, learning kanji, and is functional in Japanese. And still, neither my husband nor I speak it. I have sometimes thought about trying to learn some Japanese to support her, though really, I have zero interest. When it was a practical need, I’d have done it, but without that motivation, I can’t get worked up to do it.
For years and years, my now-suegra would tell me “you have to learn spanish!” every time I saw her. Like it’s so easy to pick up a language, from scratch, while trying to launch a career (and supporting her son, to boot.) Finally I asked my husband to tell his mom to knock it off; I hated feeling like I was flunking the entrance exam into his family.
It was only by good luck that I stumbled into a job that gave me weekly language lessons. I can understand most things, but I’m too self-conscious to speak the language around the family. I got irritable when my husband kept correcting me and haven’t really jumped back into it since. Between us, it’s so much easier to speak in English. Now that I’ve moved on from that job, the language is slipping, like my college German did. Maybe it’ll be different if we have a kid and he speaks to her in Spanish.
Oh sweetie. Relax a little. Your daughter is going to learn what she’s going to learn, and what we learn from our parents is as much unconscious as conscious. Maybe she will learn perseverance from her dad. Maybe she will learn a love of English and English books and playing with words from you. Maybe she will learn careful and caring negotiation of frictions from both of you. Please remember that you do not fail your daughter if you don’t learn Spanish. You do not fail your daughter if *she* doesn’t learn Spanish If your partner wants to make his relationship with her about Spanish, that is totally up to him, but you should make your relationship with her something special and warm and whole, not about shoulds and failings and laziness and second-bestness.
As far as I’m aware, the latest research on bilinguialism tends to suggest that children are ruthlessly efficient when it comes to language learning. It’s quite likely that within a year or two she’s going to realise that her father speaks English and that English is the predominant language outside your home, and that she can communicate most effectively with everyone she needs to communicate with if she focusses on English. The familiarity and immersion she’s had with Spanish at a young age will be enormously helpful to her when she’s older whatever happens, but be gentle on yourselves and let go of the fantasy that you can control her language learning. Parenting doesn’t really work like that.
I don’t know if you know how sad this post is. It’s beautifully written, but I hope you aren’t really as sad as you feel in this piece.
God, sorry, this probably sounds super patronising because you were writing an article, not writing to an agony aunt. I am sorry! I don’t know how much of this is your heartfelt voice and how much of it is the persona you’ve chosen to write with, but I guess you are having complicated feelings and I hope that the way you are raising your daughter is ultimately making all three of you happy.
I was raised (to a certain extent) in a bilingual household — one parent a native English speaker, one a native Italian speaker. My mom isn’t great at languages, and she never retained much beyond food words (fragole: strawberries, etc), since they were so frequently offered to her, and basic phrases (we miss you! happy birthday!). My father’s immediate family was really close geographically, so we were surrounded by extended family who were native speakers on a regular basis as well.
To be honest, it wasn’t great. It was really hard for her to be surrounded by people who chose to communicate in a language that she couldn’t understand (it’s also pretty fucking rude). If his family members ONLY spoke Italian, of course she’d have been fine with them speaking the only language they knew, but they also spoke English, so at family events, she was excluded from conversations, memories, jokes.
I remember her crying when I was little. She said to my father that she felt like she couldn’t talk to her own children in her own home, didn’t know them as well as she wanted to. She was right — she couldn’t. Italian immersion stopped right then. My sister and I were young enough to slide into speaking only English at home with mom and dad. We’d speak bits and pieces of Italian sometimes, and we’d be exposed to it for a few hours each week at our grandmother’s house, but by middle elementary school it faded away.
In college, both my sister and I took Italian as our foreign language. We were meh at it until we both decided to do semesters abroad — we wanted to do this, and it was great. I can pass as an Italian-born speaker in Italy. My sister can’t pass, but she can get around, and you know what? It’s not the end of the world if your child isn’t bilingual, or if you’re not bilingual.
All of this too-long of a comment to say that your child will always have time to learn a language. Obviously it’s a passion of your husband’s. This will be seen by your daughter. Her ear will hear the sounds, and her mouth will know how to make them. But please don’t be cut off from your own daughter, from your own husband, in your own home. There is no reason for that. Do you think, when your daughter grows up, that she won’t notice your exclusion? Please don’t be a secondary person in your child’s life for a language that will always be there later on. She will have constant opportunities to be surrounded by Spanish. She will not have constant opportunities to be surrounded by you.
I would rather be close with my mother than with a thousand people through something that excludes her. Let her meet them later on. Let her know you now.
I have observed two ‘standard’ methods, if you like, of producing a bilingual (I originally typed ‘bisexual’) child:
1. Immigrate from Indian subcontinent to UK. Speak Urdu/Bengali/etc. to your child at home, that being your native tongue, and teach them basic English which will then be reinforced and expanded as your child enters the school system. At school I was friends with several girls in this position, who spoke English and their parents’ tongue natively and with minimal accent crossover. One described her experience of it as ‘thinking in Urdu but with English subtitles’.
2. Have one parent who is a native English speaker and one who is not. One parent speaks to the child in English, the other in not-English; they may speak to each other in either language. The parents of such children whom I know who have done this are English/French, and the result is that (English) mother tells child, ‘Go ask your Dad if he wants a cup of tea’, and child wanders upstairs and asks (French) father, ‘Papa, tu veux une tasse de tée?’ Conversation at the dinner table freely switches between the two languages. Child chats with English school friends and French extended family with equal comfort.
The extracts you’ve given us of books helping two native English speakers raise a bilingual child are unsurprisingly adapting the second method, since the first can only be achieved by moving to another country. I get the impression from your article that you’re struggling with learning Spanish: it’s not your passion in the same way that it is your husband’s, and the passion is what helps move you past the Purgatory of the intermediate stage of language learning when (in my experience) you’ve whizzed past the basics and found yourself confronted with the grindy bits of the language – oh, German article cases, my nemesis.
The good news is, as my case-study above shows, you don’t both have to talk to Nola in Spanish! You have a native speaker in your Colombian nanny and an advanced, possibly fluent speaker in your husband, and that’s enough. You don’t have to force yourself to speak to your daughter in Spanish: chat to her in English, and use Spanish if it feels natural.
You have time to work on your understanding of Spanish: you’re a few years off multilingual dinner table conversation yet, and that’s plenty of time in which to improve your Spanish listening skills just by being around Spanish speakers. You don’t need to worry about your own Spanish speaking skills one bit.
And of course, if this all ends up being too much commitment, one does not need to be brought up bilingual to become fluent and comfortable in a language. I started French lessons at 7, loved it and am now planning a career entirely based around my language-learning skills. It’s nice if you can do it, but starting to learn a language post-birth but before double digits will suffice.
This post is so well-written, but the more I thought about it, the more (negative and complicated) feels I had, so I wrote a post about it. Is it weird to post that link here? I hope not. http://no-award.net/2015/09/30/on-being-a-bilingu…
My feels to all bilingual children who have difficult feelings about it.
What an interesting and well-written article! I’m a translator raised in a bilingual household, and I have feelings about bilingualism and culture. I would never have flourished in my parents’ language without those two years I spent finishing high school in France. What I discovered when I moved there at 16 was that I spoke French, but not French culture. Being bilingual is not effective unless you’re bicultural too, and really, immersion is the only way to go with that. I would also never have been able to translate complicated French texts into English without being educated there for a time. My younger brother had never lived in France, and he speaks the language, but would find it more difficult to grasp the ins and outs of formal French were he to move there. It’s such a tricky thing, and it’s lifelong.
If your daughter loves Spanish, she will find a way to live in a Spanish-speaking country. Then she’ll maybe be dealing with the weird divorced feeling that sometimes comes with speaking multiple languages. It feels like I have several ‘me’s overlapping inside, different in each language. It’s a very strange feeling, but also a powerful one, because you’re gleaning meaning in different ways each time.
Anyway, feelings. Hope this didn’t come off as too multicultural special snowflake; I’m not suggesting that life is richer for multilingual people. Just wanted to share my experience.