Children are not confused by hearing more than one language. We have known for a long time that bilingual children separate their language from the age of 2: current research suggests they separate them from the beginning.
People who grow up in bilingual communities like Singapore take bilingualism for granted. Parents typically speak two or three languages to children, and parents and children often mix languages in the same sentence. Mixing languages in the same sentence doesn't confuse children. And if the child mixes languages it is not a sign of confusion. The children learn the complex rules for when to use which language (and when you can use a mixture). They start to demonstrate that they know these rules before they are 2 years old. By the age of 2 we can clearly see that bilingual children faced with a monolingual adult will do their very best to speak in the language the monolingual knows. But remember that a child will not have learnt the same words in both languages: if a child doesn't know a word in a language they want to speak, they may use a word from another language that means the same (many of us use the same technique as adults!): this is nothing to worry about. Indeed, it shows that the child knows how to translate. Don't worry about the child mixing, even if you never mix. You can expect it.
The 'one-parent-one-language' method is sometimes put forward as the only way to raise bilingual children. It isn't. There are many routes to this end. If both parents can speak a minority language then their best strategy might be to speak only the minority language to their children, and let them learn the majority language of the community outside the home. If the family live in a place where everyone is bilingual in the same two languages, then they should behave naturally, switching languages and mixing them as they normally do.
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Is the speech of bilingual children delayed? My 3-year old child makes a lot of mistakes in pronunciation and grammar: is that because she is bilingual?
It used to be suggested that bilingual children were a little slower learning to speak than monolingual children. This is no longer an accepted view. In any case, any such difference would be very small. A bilingual child whose speech is delayed (for example, if they have not said the first word by 18 months) should be treated exactly like a monolingual child. It is dangerous to think that the child's speech is delayed because the child is bilingual. Bilingual children vary from one another just as monolingual children do -- some will be early and some will be late speakers. But all children whose speech is delayed should be assessed by a doctor and (if necessary) a speech-language practitioner, because if the child is deaf, or if there is some reason for the speech delay, it should be dealt with. If your child has hearing or speech-language problems, make sure that any professionals you deal with are supportive of bilingual families. Advice to switch to monolingualism is nearly always wrong advice.
When children are learning to speak they make mistakes in all areas of language. A 'mistake', by the way, is something that adults in the community don't do (examples that work in all dialects of English include: calling a cat a 'dog'; beginning 'cake' with a /t/ sound; saying 'I wented'). 3 year olds have certainly not got it all sorted out. However many languages your child is learning, you can expect pronunciation mistakes, for example, until the age of 6 or 7 years. Don't expect 'perfection' from small children and don't fall into the teacher role of 'correcting' them.
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I am worried that my child will learn my faulty pronunciation. I was educated in French and I am nor confident in my Mother Tongue: can I speak French to my child even though it is not my Mother Tongue?
Professor Ruuskanen regards it as important that parents speak only their mother tongues to their children, in order to foster a native accent. I do not agree: parents should feel free to speak to their children in a language other than their mother tongue. I do think it is important to look after your children in a language in which you are confident, and in which you know a few songs and rhymes. In the communities in which I have studied bilingualism (including my own family), it is common for parents to speak languages they have learned at school to their children. As adults, many people's best language is not their native language, but a language in which they have been educated, and/or which is the dominant language of the community.
Many people in bilingual communities or in mixed marriages need to speak to their child (at least some of the time) in a language which is not their native language. There is nothing at all wrong with doing this. Language shift (moving to a language which is not the language of your ancestry) is a normal part of human behaviour. Some parents worry that they will pass on an 'incorrect' accent to their children. Don't worry about this. Accents change over our childhood and adolescence, and in many people do not stabilise until the early 20s.
Once children start mixing with other children (from the age of 2 or 3) they start to learn their accent from their friends. Parents soon discover that they are not the model for their children's language behaviour, any more than they are the model for their dress sense. Children acquire the language of the children's community they are in. Be prepared for this (you might not like it!).
The hearing children of deaf parents often grow up bilingual too, learning a sign language at home. They begin to model their speech on their parents' faulty pronunciation, but as long as they spend about 10 hours with speakers of oral languages, they seem to have no problem learning an oral language as well, and become indistinguishable from their friends (except for remaining bilingual, of course).
My child refuses to speak our native language. My son just turns his back on me when I speak my language to him -- what should I do?
As Professor Ruuskanen says, it is common for a child brought up in a place with a strong community language to reject a minority one. My own daughter, starting in a trilingual household, rejected everything but English when she was 2. When this happens it is because we have failed to provide the need for the language. In deciding on your reaction, you need think about your relationship with the child as well as about your desire for them to learn a language. My husband felt that he valued his relationship with her more than his language, and switched to English. Other people stick it out and sometimes the child ends up with a good knowledge. All of us have to accept that we cannot control our children's life experiences. They will be their own people and make their own life which will be different from our lives, and which will not be as we envisaged their lives would be. Accepting language shift is part of accepting generational differences. Don't try to control the environment too much, and if things go wrong, be accepting. Other things matter much more.
My husband and I both want our child to speak our (different) mother tongues, but we speak to each other in English and we live in a place where a fourth language is used -- what should we do?
Most people who learn more than one language do so because they need to. Languages are worth learning if they are some use. That use can be practical, or emotional, or (for adults) aesthetic. If people need to learn a particular language, they generally will. Children are no different to adults in this respect. (Professor Ruuskanen also discusses this fact.) You can expect your child to learn a language if the child thinks it's some use.
It's crucial to examine your situation and decide what language is most 'at risk' in your family. If you live in a place where there is a clear dominant language in the society, which is the language of the children your child will be playing with, or which is the language of education, you can be sure your child will learn that language. YOU don't need to worry about it at all. If you speak a language that is not used much in the community you live in, and especially if you use the dominant community language with your partner, you are going to have to work hard to develop your child's skills in that language, especially if you and your partner speak in the community's dominant language.
And if you live in a place where there are lots of people who speak the same two languages, and where the child is exposed to Language X, Language Y, and all sorts of mixtures of X+Y, then you can relax. The chances are that the child will learn both of them. This is the usual experience for (for example) people growing up in educated families in Delhi -- they'll hear lots of Hindi and lots of English (and in some families lots of some other language(s) as well) and grow up with both, like most of their friends.
Will bilingualism affect my child's intelligence? Is it true that only highly intelligent people can learn more than one language?
Bilingualism certainly does not decrease intelligence and probably doesn't increase it either. There are bilinguals of all degrees of intelligence, just as there are monolinguals of all degrees of intelligence. And anyone able to acquire one language, even if they are far below average intelligence, is able to acquire more than one language.
Read this FAQ if you have questions like the following:
Similar questions:
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My spouse speaks language X and I speak language Y, can we teach our children both languages?
My infant is a year old and has not learned to talk. Why not?
Will I confuse my child if I mix languages?
Don't worry; be natural; be a parent
We get many questions from worried parents and prospective parents, often people who are in mixed marriages and are involved in migration. Children grow up in all kinds of bilingual or multilingual settings. My answer is always the same: do what comes naturally. Children suffer if they are unloved or treated cruelly. They do not suffer if their parents talk to them and play with them in only one language, or in two, or in three or four. Whatever languages you choose to speak with your children, and whatever languages they are exposed to in the wider community, they will deal with the situation as they grow up. You can do no damage to children through your linguistic choices.
Although I agree with much of what Professor Ruuskanen says about this question, I would like to take a slightly different stance on one or two points. There are many kinds of multilingual settings: across the world it is probably more common for children to be raised in a bilingual family than in a monolingual one. Bringing up a bilingual child is ordinary, not unusual. My own experience of child bilinguals has been mainly in Singapore and India. In these countries (and many others, especially in Asia and Africa) speaking more than one language is taken for granted. Most children grow up in families where two or more languages are spoken, in communities where they hear many languages every day. Most parents were also brought up with two languages.
However complicated your family linguistic situation is, relax with your children and do whatever comes naturally. It doesn't matter if they hear the same parent speaking several languages (that's normal life); it doesn't matter if people begin a sentence in one language and end in another. It DOES matter if you don't spend time with your children or are uneasy around them. Children are resilient, but they are sensitive to tensions of all sorts. Keep multilingualism low key and take things easy.
You are not a teacher to your children. Your job as a parent is to raise a happy child interested in life and with the skills for living. You have to expose your child to the things that matter to you, and language is only a part of that. All children acquire language (except some with very severe disabilities) -- and children growing up in households where more than one language is spoken to them regularly will learn more than one language. You don't have to worry about it. You have to spend time with your children, playing with them, dressing and feeding them, doing art, singing, splashing around in water..... As you are doing this, talk however you like. Relax and have fun. Parents do not teach their children languages: you speak languages with them as part of daily life.
Occasionally people have deliberately introduced a second language into the home even though they are not in a situation that would naturally lead to bilingualism. This is usually because they think it is a good thing to know more than one language from an early age. Some teach a language they learnt as a foreign language. Some even teach Latin. Some parents have taught their children 'Babysign' (see The National Literacy Trust for a very good discission of the pros and cons: http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talk_to_your_baby/key_topics/1285_baby_signing), which is signed words based on natural sign languages. A child might enjoy learning a few phrases or words in another language without you having to sacrifice your normal linguistic practice. If you want to introduce a language deliberately, even on a larger scale, you probably won't do any harm. You do need to build a natural relationship with your child, however, in a language you are comfortable in: a child can sense artificiality. Also, unless you create a need for the language it's not likely to be very successful. Lots of things are good for children to learn (e.g. swimming, painting, clay modelling, horse riding, music) -- you can't do EVERYTHING, and there is no special magic in bilingualism. One situation where you probably ought to do something deliberate and use a language you are not good at -- if you have a profoundly deaf child and you do not know your local Sign Language, learn as much of it as you can and do your best to use it with your Deaf child.
First of all, two definitions. The terms 'mother tongue' and 'native language' can mean many things. I will use them both to refer to a language that a person spoke before they started formal education (i.e. before the age of 3-7 years). Like most linguists I use 'bilingual' to refer to 'more than one language', regardless of whether it is 2 languages or 6.
In Singapore nearly all children come to nursery school at age 3 already able to speak 2 languages. Many can speak 3. A child growing up with only one language is quite rare. The reason for this is that most adults routinely use two or three languages in their daily life, both at home and at work, and switching between languages is the norm for everyone. There are also many ethnic groups in Singapore, associated with many different languages, and people need to know languages which they can speak to people from other communities. Lots of people come from families where language shift has taken place, so that their best language might not be a language their parents spoke at all. Parents are fairly relaxed about their children hearing a rather rich language stew, and expect their children to pick up languages. They do worry (like parents everywhere) about their children being able to develop good skills in reading and writing the languages they have to do at school.
In India, being able to speak only one language is a more common than it is in Singapore, but it is associated with some groups of poor people -- richer people are almost never monolingual (and many poor people are also multilingual).
In both these places, bilingualism is not necessarily linked with biculturalism. English, for example, which is one of the languages usually spoken by bilinguals, is not associated with particular ethnic groups. English is a language of India and of Singapore -- it's not part of a foreign culture -- speaking with a UK or US accent would be seen as having a foreign accent. The pattern of bilingualism and the attitudes associated with it are quite different from attitudes in parts of the US and parts of Europe.
