Born bilingual?
Yes, I know, nobody has ever been born as “bilingual” or “bicultural”. However, if a child is born in a crosscultural marriage, i.e. the parents are from different cultural and lingusitic background - will have have much better chances to become bilingual than others.
Recently I was browsing language related sites through StumbleUpon and came across this interesting webpage: Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network.
The Network is made up of families around the world who are raising their children bilingually and/or biculturally. The group provides support and resouces in different ways. They even have a magazine and a newsletter.
Which leads me to wonder: how much institutional support is offered for “cross-cultural marriages” in Canada? Or, to dig even deeper into the issue - is the official multiculturalism encouraging mixed marriages or is it condemning us to live in the ghetto of our own ethnic group? My experience working with settlement agencies always has been that the official policy toward newcomers is to push the “integration” in one’s own ethnic community, even if the individual is reluctant to do so!
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- The multicultural ghetto
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- WordPress as a real multilingual CMS with Gengo
- Multilingual blogging revisited
- The etiquette of teaching etiquette
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- The Homonym Trap
May 11th, 2007 at 3:53 (CDT)
In Wales, the government funded Welsh language Board have done a lot of studies into langugae use within families where one parent doesn’t speak Welsh (but both speak English).
According to findings, the language of the family was determined by the gender of the non-Welsh speaker (but I can’t remember which way round it was!)
There is now a project called TWF (Growth) which encourages parents to raise their children in Welsh.
June 3rd, 2007 at 21:37 (CDT)
Interesting findings! Usually, the native language spoken by the mother becomes the primary language spoken by the child, assuming that the mother is the primary caregiver. On the rare occasion that the father is the primary caregiver, the child’s primary language will most likely be the primary language of the father. For more insights, fun research stats, fascinating articles, and helpful advice on intercultural marriage, please see Leap of Faith’s website at www.marriageleap.com. Thank you!
June 6th, 2007 at 1:21 (CDT)
I have to disagree with your theory about the primary language of the child: in Romania in every mixed Romanian-Hungarian marriage it was always the Romanian that became the primary language of the children - no matter who the primary caregiver was.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:25 (CDT)
What about people whom parents are both from one “origin” in another land? i mean the chil dis obviously raised following his parents’ beliefs but has to adapt at school and stuff…
September 9th, 2007 at 4:24 (CDT)
“In Romania in every mixed Romanian-Hungarian marriage it was always the Romanian that became the primary language of the children - no matter who the primary caregiver was.”
nem hiszem el, hogy ezt írod! épp te, aki magad is Erdélyből származol! MEGTETSZETT a rálátásod, ahogy és amit írsz, de ebben a bejegyzésedben, ellentmondasz a valóságnak. Ha emmigrál az ember, az otthon csak sztereotípiák szintjén marad meg neki?
September 9th, 2007 at 7:27 (CDT)
Egy ilyen rövid hozzászólás (comment) csak az, ami: rövid hozzászólás, és épp olyan hamis általánosítás, mint az azt kiváltó előző kommentár. MA fentebb azt állította, hogy általában az anya anyanyelve lesz a gyerek elsődleges nyelve…
Mielőtt az ember emigrál, eltölt 30-40 évet a környéken, és sokszáz vegyesházasságot lát, de a félkezén meg tudja számolni azokat az eseteket, ahol a gyermek elsődleges nyelve nem a román. Ráadásul, ha az ember a saját tágabb famíliájában is ezt tapasztalja, akkor óhatatlanul pesszimista szcenáriókat projektál.
September 22nd, 2007 at 17:25 (CDT)
I am Berber, born to both Berber parents. But I live in Morocco, and the language that’s spoken in the street and at schools more often is Moroccan Arabic. So I basically spoke Berber at home for the first years of my existence and then Moroccan Arabic came in just naturally from the environment. And it’s also the language I speak in the street and at school, way more often than Berber.
I feel like I am a born bilingual, since I don’t ever remember the only-Berber period of my life.
November 2nd, 2007 at 13:22 (CDT)
I was born in Canada, but my first language was Russian. Through my childhood, I attended Russian immersion school every weekend. Even though I read and write the language, it has grown pathetically rusty from disuse. Even most Russian emigrees with thick accents prefer to converse in English here and in the US.
In my experience, most societies require, through unstated peer pressure and expectations, that we adapt to local custom to function and advance.
It is interesting, Moshu, that you observe a forcing of immigrants into their own cultural cliques. Could this be increasing partly as a reactionary response to globalization (among other things)?
November 2nd, 2007 at 13:56 (CDT)
Actually, I think it is a misinterpretation of “multiculturalism” as the basic policy for settlement agencies. Since the melting pot has been declared evil and politically incorrect… everybody jumped on this multicultural bandwagon and (as it often happens) it became a cliché.
And one of the simplifications is to hook up the immigrants with their “community” and then the job of the agency can be reported as done. Nobody ever thinks about how this segmentation will affect in the long term the social fabric that is supposed to keep us all together…
November 2nd, 2007 at 14:54 (CDT)
Both theory and general understanding have certainly been stunted by political correctness.
I haven’t any direct influence in ‘practice’ as done by governement agencies, but practice as it takes place on a personal community level has, I think, changed a lot. For example, when I was growing up (here in Canada), it was normal to visit the homes of friends from other cultures and to be a guest at an Italian, or Indian, or (fill in the blank) family dinner. As my chidren grew up, I noticed that such practices of openly displaying our cultural roots to one another diminished considerably. Host families would make an effort to serve things such as burgers and fries to their children’s guests, or banish the older relatives and take the kids to a restaurant. Kind of sad, really.