Raising Bilingual/Bicultural Children

[AllanF]

Hey All

A little background first: I am from Scotland and my wife is from Chinese. We have a 3 1/2 year old daughter who was born in Shenyang and has only ever lived in Shenyang. Her first language is most definitely Chinese. She understands English but her speaking isn't too hot right now. (This i am not worried about in the slightest as we will be returning to the UK in 2 years to start her education).

However i go into a discussion with one of the other ex-pats here, a very opinionated man, and was promptly told that my daughter will loose her Chinese when we go back. As he said the need to conform to social norms will overdrive everything else and he stated some example of when Chinese families have moved to the USA etc. Though i did point out that those were monocultural families and the kids may well be aware that they look different and so the drive to fit in is exaggerated. However as my Godfather told me his brother married a Norwegian girl and they lived in Norway for the first 7 years of their son's life. To begin with the son was in a similar position to my daughter only really spoke the language of the native country but around the age of 4 everything clicked and he was able to speak English to the father and Norwegian to the Mother. I was promptly told that was only because the parents "looked the same as others" and in my case when different "race" is involved is doesn't work like that. (ironically the chap that was telling me this goes himself from a bicultural family (father from USA mother from Spain) and is fluent in Spanish and English. Anyway the whole conversation pissed me off a tad. Personally i think environment does play a key part but if the child associates one language with one set of people or parent and another with the other and if these parent continue to speak in those languages to the child then, fingers crossed she will grow up speaking both. Of course this put s a lot of pressure on my wife as it will be her responsibility to ensure the Chinese is kept up, we will be make trips back here to see the Grandparents and i hope to set up a video link via the computer so they can talk to my daughter often.

So i know there are many of you here who are in bicultural relationships and speak more than one language so i was wondering if you could offer any advice.

[nianfong]

I'm ABC, but chinese was my first language. I didn't speak a word of english until I went to day care. and at home I still spoke and speak chinese with my folks. it feels weird to speak to them in english.
You shouldn't worry about them learning to speak english. speak chinese in the home, and only chinese, unless necessary otherwise. if they don't have an immersive chinese environment at home, they will slowly forget out how to speak.

I am bilingual, both in speech and reading/writing.

-Fong

[nianfong]

the main thing is the years of behavioral conditioning that when your kid(s) see you or your wife, the kid is used to speaking chinese to you. and can practice chinese with you at home all the time.

[shawnsegler]

I'm ABC

A Bitch Clearly?

[Interloper]

Hi Allen,
My older brother (American, ethnic-Jewish) married a German woman, and they raised their two children in the U.S. in a household comfortably -- not forcedly -- speaking English, German and Hebrew (my brother is multilingual and speaks German fluently). The kids, now 16 and 19, are bilingual in German and English, speak Hebrew passably well, and they are comfortable in their own skins whether in the U.S., Germany or Israel .

My younger brother married a Puerto-Rican/Latina woman, and they are raising their 13-year-old son in a U.S. household. The lad's mother speaks to him in Spanish as much as she can and wants desperately for him to embrace his Latino-Spanish roots. His father (who doesn't speak Spanish) speaks to him in English and a bit of Hebrew (and sends him to Hebrew school for his Judaic upbringing). The kid refuses to speak Spanish unless forced though he understands it just fine, happily natters away in English, and just had his Bar Mitzvah which he carried out in perfect Hebrew. It appears that the more his mother tries to -make- him "be" Latino, the more he wants to be "American" and takes pride in being Jewish. When she talks to him in Spanish, he answers in English.

I think the key is not to force children to do or be anything, but to make the richness of his or her cultural and ethnic heritage available in a "self-service" way on a daily basis.

[nianfong]

to be clear, my parents never forced my brother or me to speak chinese at home. we just always spoke chinese with them since we were born, so speaking english with them felt weird.

[Steve James]

I think the only problem is with the adults. Kids will adapt well to any linguistic situation. However, my personal opinion is that it is better for a child to learn more than one language immersively than to try to "teach" them a language. If I had a child living in Spain, I'd expect her to speak Spanish. If I couldn't, then she'd learn to speak English from me from necessity. I've never been to, let alone lived in China; but, I think that culture/identity is also a communally shared thing. A person can only lose it if he or she is in isolation. I.e., if a guy from nation X grows up in nation Y, he'll probably do what the people in nation Y do. I guess I'm a bit biased on this issue because of the claims that people "lost" their cultural identities. I prefer to think that they created new ones.

[AllanF]

Interesting point about not forcing them to speak and i think that will also be a key point here, as was the case with my godfather's brother then didn't force the son to speak it just happened. Similarly with a family we met while in Pingyao Shanxi province the father was from England and the mother from France. The kids would speak English to the dad and French to the mother. when we asked them about it they just shrugged and said it just happened. conversely an aussie friend of mine told me last night in the same discussion hat his brother had married a lady from Shanghai and the kid was born and lived in Shanghai until the age of 7. And when they returned to Oz the mother forced the kid to speak Chinese and he would always answer in English.

[shawnsegler]

I'd really like to have been raised speaking two languages. I have a fair amount of kitchen spanish from working in restaurants my whole life, but I've been thinking of taking a spanish class since I'm back in school and then getting my son into a class and practicing with him. It would be a win/win situation I'm thinking, and super-duper useful for him.

If I could somehow fit mandarin in there I would. I think both those languages will be valuable to someone who is an english speaker and fluid in them.


S

[Interloper]

I agree with Steve. It's the adults' issue -- children are capable of learning multiple languages from the get-go, and in an immersive household (such as my older brother's, where three languages were spoken interchangeably), the kids will absorb it all like a sponge. However, they'll tend to favor the language and customs of the surrounding community (as Steve said). I don't consider that to be a problem, as it's crucial for kids to fit into their social milieu. It's quite possible to live in two worlds, and kids from bicultural/bilingual families do.

[Michael]

The Nobel Prize winning author Elias Canetti grew up in Hungary speaking four or five languages in a very multi-ethnic environment and later worked as a translator for various publishers. As a writer, he published his books in German because that was the intimate language of his mother and father when they expressed the most emotion. The most important communication is emotional and words are just an information carrier, an analog, for the power of emotions. If you want the kid to retain Chinese language skills out of that environment, he's got to have chances to express emotion in that language without disadvantages compared to using other languages.

I have been teaching the Lee Ang movie Pushing Hands (1992) to my Chinese students as an example of culture clash when a Chinese man moves to the US and marries an American woman, they have a boy, and everything is cool until mainland China grandpa comes to live with them. It doesn't specifically address the language problem, but still a good, honest, well-written film. PM me if you want a b1t t0rr3nt link and/or the study material I made for my students.

[AllanF]

That is what we are hoping with Yilian (my daughter). I think it is also important for me to keep up my Chinese and improve that so the home environment has two languages being spoken interchangeably.

[splashinghands]

Hey Allan

While I don't have any first hand experience per se. I recently found a bunch of stuff on this topic:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Linguistics-a ... /index.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... ncourse-20

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Bilingual ... pd_sim_b_6

[Ian]

It's a lot easier to learn English than Chinese, obviously. Even if she can only speak Chinese fluently now, 5 1/2 is not the age at which the language will be solidified in her mind. There are literally thousands of words she does not know at this point and she'll only have a marginal advantage over a non-native speaker in learning and retaining these words.

It's also a lot easier to forget Chinese. Ideally, a strong Chinese environment at home plus a bilingual environment at school will prevent this, but there's a high chance she won't be as good as someone who studies over here in E Asia.

My mum pretended she couldn't speak English for the longest time, so we communicated in Chinese exclusively, and still do. I went to a bilingual school where, depending on your level, they really push you. At the peak of my studies, I was reading classical texts, hand-writing lit. commentaries etc.

HOWEVER, during university and subsequently work, I rarely spoke Chinese and only ever needed to type (not hand-write), so my fluency has taken a hit. I still pass for a native speaker, but I'm just saying that even native speakers can start losing their language, unlike with English.

[AllanF]

Actually i think it is more difficult to learn to speak English than Chinese, writing of course is a seperate issue. The reason why i say this is because, firstly there are no iregular verbs in Chinese, secondly I/me is Wo 我 and sentence structure is simpilar if someone wants to say "我去吃饭" we have to say "i am going to eat" not "I go to eat" further evidence is prepositions here at/in/on and thirdly if it was the other way around then we would not see the high percentage of Chinglish in government signs which conversely we don't see in the west ie when something is translated from English into Chinese it is always correct.

Most people regard Chinese as more difficult because a) They are adults and Chinese character adds a fear element that you would not get with say Spanish. b) the tones which are a problem for adults int he beginning but are actually not a problem for children at all. Once you understand the tones then the veil of mystery is uncovered.

However that is an aside the idea that your mum pretended to not be able to speak English is an interesting though and one i will suggest to my wife. Trying to create the bilingual environment at home i think is critical, combined with the idea that it is not being forced on them. However we still have another year at least in China before this really hits home.