Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

>But if a child grows up speaking that second language — Korean, say — with cousins and grandparents, attending a “Saturday School” that emphasizes the language and the culture, listening to music and even reading books in that language, and visits Korea along the way, that child will end up with a much stronger sense of the language.

Did this from Kindergarten through 10th grade. "Saturday School" was a full program that followed the Japanese Ministry of Education's requirements for accreditation (since in my era, most students went back to Japan after their parents' 4-6 year stint in the US office). I do notice that my Japanese is stronger than that of my peers who stopped going to these schools at a much earlier age.

>“A child who is learning two languages will have a smaller vocabulary in each than a child who is only learning one; there are only so many hours in the day, and you’re either hearing English or Spanish,” Dr. Hoff said.

For me, this was a big problem since my English vocabulary remained quite weak compared to my peers all the way through high school (mainly because I had a strong preference for reading Japanese material at home). The general lack of confidence in a broad range of English skills is a long lasting effect that is orthogonal to my actual knowledge or skills.

I'm a "true bilingual" but I don't know if I'd want my imaginary children to be the same. If you're committed to living in the States, maximizing your English skill is imo a better investment of finite cognitive resources. My personal feeling is that being highly proficient at English and being "okay" at a second language works out well, but at the same time I know many friends of Asian descent who are self conscious of their "child-like" use of their second language. A conundrum.

>The ones who are sucessful bilinguals as adults are still much better in English than they are in Spanish

Sadly true. Probably the biggest challenge of a bilingual childhood (or I imagine, bilinguality anywhere) is the lack of exposure to a massive amount of second-language vocabulary that you'd normally learn by use. At least it's good to know that not having equal proficiency isn't a failure.

Interestingly, I've had discussions in the past where the other side suggested that immigrant parents have a duty to speak the native language in the household, to encourage their children to learn it better. This article does a nice job of explaining why that's already unnecessary, and maintaining a second language in the face of native schooling, media, and what else, is hard enough.

One thing that helps, in my experience, is reading fairy tales. They have some of the most common use of language, and can take a conversational tone that's missing from regular reading.

It's interesting that the article starts with the line "True bilingualism is a relatively rare thing". That's probably the case in the US or English-speaking world, but definitely not the case in many other areas. I live in Catalonia, it is very normal for locals to be fully fluent in Catalan and Spanish, I've seen the same in the Basque region. Go to India and almost every person you meet at all levels of society speaks several languages.

In many parts of the world bilingualism is the norm.

I don't recall the exact book, but I remember reading a Jared Diamond book about societies in remote Papua New Guinea and meeting indigenous peoples who all spoke several different languages. If I recall correctly he argues that being monolingual is the historic oddity.

Somewhat related is an experiment I've been doing with my child, where the only media I've introduced to them (since birth) is in a language other than English (we live in the US). Usually this is Swedish or German, which are the languages I know best besides English, but sometimes Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean etc. etc.

What I've found is that they have a play/babble language of their own that sounds like a mix of mostly Swedish and German. We talk together in this language at times, too. Sometimes they even have asked me what the English word for an idea/thing they've learned or experienced in German or Swedish. Another time they asked me what "zum Beispiel and till Eksempel" mean! which amazed me because they obviously connected that they both mean the same thing ("for example").

In real life (i.e. not at home watching movies) they can hold conversations with Germans and Swedes, too.

At this point they're not truly bilingual, but it's been really fun and interesting to see how much they have learned, and makes available for them in the future, as with deeper study and practice they could be truly multilingual.

True. People from Switzerland or Luxembourg often speak 3 or more languages fluently. A lot of other people in Europe speak their native language and a bit of English as well.

I don't feel Americans appreciate the luxury of speaking a language that is basically the lingua franca of the Western world.

Also, sometimes I feel that many people don't realize that there is a wealth of information that is in Latin, Greek, Russian, or Mandarin. What's not English doesn't exist for them. In this way, the world is still divided in some sense.