Are your kids bilingual?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Or trilingual? Or more multilingual than that?

What languages do they speak?

How old are they?

Where do you live and does that affect which language they speak?

How balanced are they?

How about reading and writing?

Which is your kid’s “Heart language”.

How do you keep up their weaker language(s)?

Lots of questions - please feel free to jump in with more, or to answer questions that were not asked!

I’ll start with my kids, boys who are nearly 5 and nearly 9. They are bilingual in Japanese and English.

We live in Japan. They grew up before Kindergarten mostly speaking English with me (Mum) and their Japanese Dad who uses English at home. All Japanese rellies can only use Japanese, and outside contact with other kids was Japanese, with a few exceptions. Once at Kindy then their Japanese exposure exploded.

Both my kids are very balanced but if we go long times between trips to England they get sloppy about keeping in one language only, as pretty much everyone around them speaks Japanese. (Japanese is not affected so much as English.) The other day at an Easter party my older son came rushing in to the room where the adults were chatting, yelling, “We mitsuketta lots of eggs but it’s daijobu because we chanto wakketa them!” (We found lots of eggs but it’s OK because we divided them fairly!) There was a ten second pause, then one Dad said, “And the frightening thing is, we all understood that.”

English is the weak language for us. We only use English in the house, and I read and read and READ to the kids. Up till this year TV was mostly videos but the big one now needs to watch TV shows that his classmates watch so as to have common ground. Younger one still likes mostly English.

For my older boy, his heart language is probably English. For my younger boy, it is hard to say but probably Japanese.

They can both read, younger one fluently, in both languages. The five year old has a reading age of 7-8 years old in English and about 6 years old (not many characters learned yet) in Japanese. Writing is more age- appropriate in both languages. Older boy is slightly behind in both reading and writing in Japanese but not too bad. (A low-average student.) In English he reads at about 7-8 years grade level but with less fluency and comprehension than his younger brother. Writing is abysmal though he tries. (He just drew a picture and entitled it “The Kwetashus Peeweeud.”)

Watching kids grow up in the middle of two cultures and languages is fascinating, and despite the trouble it does occasionally cause, I do think they are lucky to have such a rich life.

2

I have no kids. If I am ever unlucky enough to have one (I don’t want one!) it will most likely not be bilingual as my So doesn’t speak any other language but English.

I, however, am completely bilingual, and I wanted to say: the kids will thank you for the two languages when they grow up. Trust me. All of my friends who scorned learning Hindi when young are now taking college courses & stuff to try and learn it, and I’m forever grateful to my parents for making sure I didn’t forget.

3

That is good to know! My kids really don’t have a choice, because fluent though I am in Japanese (I wasn’t when the first one was born) I am just not able to converse with them in Japanese. It feels weird. I do speak to them in Japanese outside if we have friends around so the friends don’t feel left out, but every day - yuk. Oddly enough my husband has always used English from day one. He and the boys out shopping get lots of odd looks as they amble around chatting in English, particularly if I am not immediately noticeable.

We did go through a phase with the older one of him saying “Don’t speak English Mummy!” But it faded away and has completely gone now that he is attending a small village school (60 kids total!) and his English is seen as ultra cool!

4

My 17 year old daughter is bilingual in English and Italian. Like your boys, she spoke English until she started school at 3. Although she was born here and always surrounded by people speaking Italian, she would reply in English, probably because that was the language she spoke with me and her grandparents, and most of my friends.

I think both languages are equally dominant: she thinks and dreams in both of them, and speaks both like a native. She and I always address each other in English unless we’re with non-English speakers. She doesn’t read in any language, and her written English isn’t that great, but she’s working on it. She sees her bilingualism as an asset, and is proud of it.

5

It’s still possible to raise them as bilingual. I’m not (unfortunately, I would love to learn another language or 3) so my son won’t be either, but my cousins are. My uncle speaks fluent English and Lithuanian, but my aunt speaks only English (afaik), my cousins can speak both.

They don’t mix them together that I’ve seen but uncle will generally scold them in Lithuanian if they’re being rude when we’re around and I know they had some books in it when they were younger. They would try to teach me using the Richard Scarry books when I babysat them.

6

I don’t have kids. If I did, my parents would have kicked me out of the house. But, I am a kid (in a sense), so I’ll answer on behalf of myself and my brother.

Both of us are “trilingual”.

English, Korean and French.

I’m fifteen. Brother’s twelve.

We live in Toronto, Canada, so obviously, we learn French at school. We also live in this mini-Koreatown-like community, so practically everyone in my neighbourhood is Korean.

We can both learn English and French at school, of course. My parents speak only Korean with us because they want us to practise it. We’re pretty balanced because our lives are pretty much at school and home.

My brother and I can read and write English and French. I can read and write Korean, but my brother can’t, even though he speaks it very well.

Korean. Both of our first words were “Mommy” in Korean.

Well, now, Korean is our weaker language, so we are forced to speak it with our parents and relatives at home.

7

Bilingual

English and Spanish

Four and a half.

We live in the Dominican Republic. My husband is Dominican (I am British).

Pretty much 50-50.

He is only just starting to learn. The school he goes to teaches in English, but my husband is backing this up at home with Spanish.

Depends who he is speaking to. English with English speakers, Spanish with Spanish speakers (with several exceptions). He finds it strange when someone who he does not expect to speak the other language addresses him in that language - meaning an obvious foreigner speaking to him in heavily-accented Spanish, or a local person attempting to converse in weak English. He does recognise some bi-lingual speakers and is happy to converse in either. He finds it disconcerting when I address him in Spanish, even though my Spanish is almost fluent.

We spend part of the year in an English-speaking environment. When he was younger, this would result in the gradual disappearance of his Spanish, but now he is older I think his Spanish is firmy rooted enough for him to retain it. In any case, we go to Gibraltar which is itself bilingual, and spend a lot of time in Spain. My family tends to stick to English at home though. If he wasn’t in an bilingual school here in the DR, his English would be much weaker than it is.

8

I’ll answer for my cousins:

Bilingual

French and English

9, 6, and 5, I think, but I could be a year off.

They live in France, so for the most part when they are out of the house they speak French.

Very balanced. All three are perfectly bilingual. The middle child does have a bit of a French accent when she speaks English.

Same.

Basically, it works this way: they speak French with their father and with the French relatives and friends of the family, etc. And of course most of the TV they watch is also in French (though they have a large collection of videos in English). They speak English with their mother (my aunt), and go to a school where learning takes place mostly in English. Their parents speak French to each other. So basically they’ve been immersed pretty equally in both French and English since they were born. They have no trouble at all switching back and forth or determining which language to use in different situations.

They think it’s really strange if anyone addresses them in the “wrong” language (e.g. I’d get an odd look if I tried to speak French with them). They also tease their parents about mistakes they (the parents) make in their non-native language. They say my aunt has a funny accent when she speaks French, and that my uncle sounds funny in general when he speaks English (his English is not very strong, although it is getting steadily better).

9

Daredevil - Korean, OOOH, cool!

In Japan lots of kids do after school English (how I make my money!) music and swimming. My older kid is fascinated by Korean, as we have a monthly bilingual storytelling at the local library. Foreigners come and read picture books in their language, and the library reads the Japanese edition alongside, page by page. The point is not to teach any of the language as such but to show the kids that there are a whole bunch of other languages out there, but basically kids have similar experiences. A Korean neighbour reads and my kid loved the sound of her voice and the characters on the page. He actually went up to her himself and asked her to teach him. He started a couple of weeks ago and loves it!

If he could become proficient in it, it would be very useful seeing as Japan and Korea are such close neighbours.

Things Korean here are ragingly popular right now thanks to the “Winter Sonata” drama series. For me, I don’t see the point of it - they wear scarves and cry a lot… (As do they all in the other dramas that are now flooding our screens.) On the other hand I might be missing a lot, because between a combination of Korean on the screen and Japanese subtitles, I am lost! My kid walks past his Dad, who is lost in the drama and remarks - “Oh, they’re crying again!”