Note from the editor: If you haven’t already, be sure to read Raising Children — Bilingually? Part 1 before jumping into Part 2. — MS

Bilingual Native-Language Acquisition

Children who are brought up bilingually will acquire two native languages according to the same processes as children who acquire language in a monolingual environment. 

All children, whether they are brought up in monolingual or bilingual situations acquire language passing through the one-word and two-word stages as they build up language proficiency. However, bilinguals must learn to distinguish between two different streams of language and then develop their language accordingly. 

Whether due to early non-discrimination or to the difficulty of acquiring first words, children in the early one-word sentence stage in a bilingual situation will use either language without differentiation according to whom they are speaking. This is comparable to monolingual language acquisition, where children do not acquire synonyms immediately, sometimes hypothesized as a measure of efficiency in the language acquisition process.  At about the same time as when monolinguals start using synonyms, the bilingually-raised child then begins to use equivalents separately. This means that there should be no fear of a child’s ultimately “mixing” languages as long as caretakers specifically take heed not to mix languages themselves. What children hear, they imitate. 

Brain Studies and Cognition

Studies of brain functioning in bilinguals have been and are still being carried out extensively. After much research into language competence, it is generally accepted that bilinguals have a single, integrated language system. 

Also, “language and cognition may not be processed separately in the brain; instead they interact with and facilitate each other… Bilingualism appears to be associated with more effective cognitive control, particularly with executive control and executive function (EF) abilities.” (Higby et al.)

Experience with two languages tends to lead to greater cognitive efficiency. Bain has carried out a longitudinal study comparing two bilingual children and two monolingual children using cognitive testing as set up by Piaget and Vygotsky, He concludes that the bilingual brain is a better tool for learning. 

Children learning two languages from infancy are not impaired cognitively or academically. It may even be possible to conclude that bilinguals have superior language skills as well as other cognitive abilities as compared to those of monolinguals. For example, it seems the tendency for bilinguals to be better in mathematics than monolinguals might be due to their having learned to handle abstraction from an early age. For a monolingual, the object “bed” and the word /bed/ are bound together such that the word is the thing. Piaget once asked five-year-olds to give him a long word, and many of them answered “train.” On the other hand, a bilingual has learned that the object can be called either /bed/ or /li/; words, which are abstractions, are thus separate from the objects they designate. 

Code-Switching and Interference

That a bilingual’s two languages co-mingle in a single language system where both languages remain continually activated implies possible alternation between the two languages. One language needs to be inhibited when speaking in a context where the other language is being used. This imperfect separation leads to code-switching when bilinguals speak among themselves or to interference when speaking in a monolingual situation. The former refers to using elements of a different language within the speech stream of the language in which an exchange is taking place. In this case, these elements are not affected by the host language. “Interference” is the transference of elements of one language to another at various levels, namely phonological, grammatical, lexical, and orthographical. In this case, the foreign elements are modified to fit the host language (Amenorvi). Alternation in the case of code-switching is considered to be positive as it often refers to language choice; however, interference is viewed as negative as it is often involuntary.

The abundant code-switching observed in conversation between and among bilinguals has led to the recently developed concept of “translanguaging” whereby bilinguals express themselves across languages to best communicate nuances that may not exist in both languages. 

Bilingual communication may lead to what is referred to as “negotiation of language” whereby each participant tends to pull exchanges toward their preferred language. This can often be observed between children preferring to speak in the majority language as they converse with a parent or grandparent whose preference is the minority language. Often when my son came home from French public school, totally immersed in French, he immediately began telling me about his day in French. Pulled in this direction I found myself responding in French until at some point I had difficulty making my ideas clear in this language and wondered why I was even trying to do so. I then switched to English, pulling him in that linguistic direction.

Life-long Bilingualism

As bilinguals grow older their language experiences modify their language use. Language dominance may change over time, as they use one language more than another. They may learn other languages, or they may lose some ability in one of their languages, known as language attrition. Language dominance and attrition are dependent on language exposure and can evolve: more exposure at a given time will improve language ability, reduced exposure can lead to more or less attrition. Losing some vocabulary, for example, in a native language that is not being used, is not unusual and not to be worried about. Increased exposure would bring renewed competence. 

More and more research is being carried out on the relationship between bilingualism and dementia. It would seem that “actively using two languages seems to have a protective effect against age-related dementia.” The lifelong usage of two languages contributes to neuroplasticity and has been shown to delay cognitive decline “with a delayed age at onset of dementia” (Kamenetz). Furthermore, older bilingual adults are better able to cope with the pathology of neurodegeneration. One study shows that should bilinguals with dementia present greater neurodegeneration, their cognitive performance remains comparable to monolinguals with dementia. The hypothesis is that “Bilingualism recruits alternative brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging and dementia (Marian and Shook, 2012). There would then exist a greater cognitive reserve to enhance brain functioning during aging. 

Some Anecdotes

I was very strict in my use of English until my son became much older and we fell into code-switching modes. When visiting friends, I even read French-language children’s books to him in English, at least until the simultaneous translation became too difficult. Once, friends remarked, “We didn’t know we had English books in the house.”

When bicycling in Finland with my two-year-old, and not keeping very regular meal hours, one day my son called out, “Mommy. Eat, mange.” Clearly, he was using every linguistic tool in his possession to cry out his hunger. It was definitely time for lunch. 

Once, when chatting with my neighbors, my three-year-old turned to me and asked, “Can I go to Maryse’s?” I said, “Ask Maryse.” He then turned to her and asked, “Je peux venir chez toi?” After her responding, “Oui,” he turned back to me saying, “She said ‘yes’.” 

When coming home from kindergarten with my son one day, we stopped at a Chinese take-out to get lunch. As the server prepared our dishes, she complimented my son on his bilingualism. I immediately asked her what language she spoke with her own little boy I had seen behind the counter. Looking down and hiding her face she responded, “Mandarin,” as if she were ashamed. I immediately launched into compliments on how wonderful she was to speak to him in Mandarin and the fantastic effects on the brain of being brought up in two such different languages. By the time our food was ready, she was standing much straighter and smiling broadly.   

If any of a child’s caretakers speak a native language other than French in this country, I implore you to speak with them and play with them in your own native language. It can only serve them well.

Photo of our bilingual bookshelf.

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Language choices in a mixed native-language family or one whose native language(s) is not that of the majority culture surrounding them

New country, new language, and maybe new family? Language, then, becomes an important issue. When two people get together they fall into what is a comfortable language of communication. However, when children come along, linguistic decisions, what is referred to now as Family Language Policy, need to be made as to their all-important language acquisition.

Some of the important questions to help plan for children’s linguistic upbringing include:

• What language(s) do the parents speak together where French is the majority language of this relatively monolingual country?
• What are their native languages?
• Does one of them speak their native language when they are together?
• Or do they speak a language of communication that is the native language of neither of them?
• How well do they speak the majority language?
• How important is it that the children learn each of the parents’ own native language?
• And thus, what language(s) will the children be brought up with, and how? 

If at least one of the parents, or grandparents does not speak the majority language as a native speaker, the question of raising children bilingually is brought to the fore. 

Having carried out my thesis on child bilingualism and raising my son to be bilingual such that he has two native languages, this article is a continuation of my decades-long crusade to raise children bilingually in France because bilingualism matters.

Bilingualism as a Native Language

Long before Ronjat’s (the grandfather of child bilingualism) 1913 publication of Le Developpement du Langage Observé chez un Enfant Bilingue he had asked his own professor how to raise a child bilingually. The answer, which was “one person, one language,” has been the recommendation for parents ever since.

“Never switch roles. In this manner they will begin to speak two languages without noticing it and without having to put forth any special effort in learning them” (In: Bain Bruce 1996, p. 177). 

Although there has been some controversy on the subject, it remains that children need to anchor, in some way, a separation of the languages they are learning. Obviously, this differentiation will be inherent in their linguistic environment. For example, one caretaker might speak the majority language (the language of the community outside the home) and the other the minority language (a language different from that of the outside community). There should be no mixing in the caretakers’ language(s) so that the child will learn to keep the languages separate, even though language itself is learned as a whole. 

Raising Children Bilingually in a Monolingual Environment

Until recently, and somewhat even still, the typical attitude in France toward bilingualism (in spite of Ronjat) has been “Against.”

As of 30 years ago and much further in the past at least in the 70’s, when I was writing my thesis, how often was it said that children being brought up bilingually never learn their two languages well, that a second language would negatively affect the child’s French?

Of course, this was all hearsay in a language-political context where the French were defending their language against English as the language of communication. I remember when a very respected researcher in language acquisition, a friend of mine and a direct student of Piaget’s, said when my son was born, “Bilingualism doesn’t really exist.” I did not rise to the argument, but then what will we call it when people speak more than one language fluently? Obviously, she was thinking in terms of perfection; but then, how many monolinguals speak their (only!) language ‘perfectly’? The most widely used definition for bilingualism is Grosjean’s: “bilingualism is the use of two or more languages… in everyday life.” 

In fact, globally, there are more bilingual situations than monolingual ones, typically where in a country more than one language is spoken. This means that France is an exception rather than a rule. And then, when we think of France’s colonization in Africa, it was never asked whether it was good for children to learn French in addition to their heritage language. It was taken for granted that learning French could only be good for them. As Bain suggests, the results of research concerning whether bilingualism is positive or negative can be politically and ideologically motivated.

Language Ability

The question of children’s ability in their two languages is more complex than what has been suggested above.  Bilinguals are not just two monolinguals put together. Their ability in the two languages is rarely equal. Only exceptionally are children what I have heard called “perfectly bilingual,” sometimes called “balanced bilinguals” and which is what Valdes calls “mythical bilinguals.” Typically we will speak of a dominant language, the language the child is most proficient in, and the non-dominant, or weaker language. And even in this case, a bilingual can be more proficient in one context in one language and another context in the other language. 

Bilingualism is not just a question of Linguistics; Sociology and Psychology are also important factors in its development. From a sociological point of view, it is easier to raise a child bilingually French-English in France than, let’s say French-Arabic or French-Swahili. English is considered an “important” language and is encouraged in discrete ways. For example, I have had people stop me in the street with my three-year-old and say how wonderful it was that he would be bilingual.

On the other hand, I have never seen (nor have my students when I asked) people stopping in the street to compliment a mother speaking Arabic, Bambara, or Hindu. On the one hand, the child is receptive to compliments on their language ability, and on the other, parents are discouraged by school teachers to speak a language other than French to their children, especially when it is non-occidental European. And even for English, I was sometimes told to speak French to my child. No way would I listen; furthermore, I would give the person a half-hour lecture on child bilingualism. No one ever made the same suggestion twice. 

Sometimes children, however, refuse the minority language. Typically they are influenced by those around them and do not want to feel “different” from others, or rejected for the home language they might speak. In this case, the recommended course is to stubbornly continue to speak the minority language with the child even when they refuse to answer in that language. This creates what is called “passive bilingualism,” where the child understands but cannot/does not speak the language. The best way to improve competence in the minority language,  and to help the child to become an active speaker, is to take the child to a country where the minority language is spoken as the majority language. What typically happens then, is that the child will pick up the language very quickly, in fact in as little as a few weeks. 

Otherwise, it is important to try to bring the child in contact with people other than the parent who speaks the minority language. Reading to the child in the minority language is very important for language learning. Videos, too, help the child to advance their minority-language learning.

Stay tuned for Part 2, in which doli will cover how age, the brain, and cognition play a role in raising children bilingually.

Photo taken of arguably one of the most important words in French and English.

Did you enjoy this article? TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping. If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated. These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment. Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.