Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

I think that's a really interesting point, somewhat orthogonal to language mastery itself, and probably particularly impactful in Japan.

A kid might grow up with perfect Japanese and be able to say anything, but choosing what to say can be another matter; how to make or respond to a request, how to deal with an affront, how to present yourself in a hiring interview, or a first meeting with a girlfriend's father...

I'm a white Californian guy, and my wife's Japanese. Our kids are dual-nationality and growing up bilingual, but this was a major factor in the decision to raise them primarily in Japan for the first part of their lives — so they get those things intuitively.

I myself went to university in Japan, and what I saw there convinced me this was a big deal. I was put into the "special Japanese" class, due to my wildly asymmetrical Japanese ability — I could speak Japanese an order of magnitude more effectively than I could understand it being spoken to me (reading/writing was still out of the question, as I'd only been learning for a year).

But the interesting thing about that class was that all of my classmates were Japanese, who had grown up abroad for some/many years during childhood. So I got to witness their struggles with the finer points of the language and writing kanji (which was normal, and what you'd expect) and also with the implicit rules and norms of Japanese culture and interpersonal interaction.

That latter bit was kind of mindblowing to me at the time. Since I was this white kid, nobody ever expected me to speak Japanese, or even be able to use chopsticks. (That's still largely true, incidentally, and it really seems to chafe at some long-term expats here, sometimes causing them to write epic rants about Japan...) In fact, I'd grown to understand, if I were to flawlessly execute the finer points of Japanese etiquette, it would veer into uncanny valley territory and make people uncomfortable — something like a chimpanzee putting on his own bowtie and sitting down to eat a formal meal with a knife and fork.

But through that one class, I got to peek and to see how much different it was if you were Japanese. They had to be very careful when speaking their minds, to avoid sounding insolent, rude, or unqualified.

Where I might get a reaction amounting to "oh, interesting to hear the American opinion", my Japanese buddies expressing the same thing might get "oh, you aren't really Japanese," or even essentially "fuck you, weirdo".

It was interesting for me to see their struggle, and to realize it had nothing much to do with language. Being largely exempted from it, though, it wasn't that interesting to me... until I had kids.

But hopefully they will be "bi-cultural" or whatever we call it, in addition to bilingual. (I am pretty confident that it will take a lot fewer years of practice for them to acquire "full Californian" status than it will to be perceived as "full Japanese".)

My son spent his first six years in San Francisco. Canadian dad, Japanese mom. He went to Japanese preschool and spent close to two years (kindergarten, most of grade one) in a Mandarin immersion public school. We moved to Japan after that.

His younger sister (three years his junior) began French immersion in Japan. Actually, a truly French school, started by French parents living in Japan. Since our son was working on three languages, and there were limited options for being immersed in Mandarin here, we decided on French for her.

Fast-forward eight years, six of which were spent in Japan, and two in the UK and France. Our son is bilingual, but his English is short of native. Japanese took over as the dominant language for him. His Mandarin is as good as gone, in spite of three extended trips to China and the (intermittent) use of native Mandarin tutors while living in Japan. I gave up on Mandarin for him when I realized how much his English was deteriorating.

Our daughter is native-level Japanese and English, and just short of native in French. She speaks without an accent but is short on a lot of vocabulary, for example. (Similar to my son and his English.)

Looking back at the experience of raising these children with multiple languages, my main observation is that, although children are superior at learning languages compared to their adult selves, there are starkly different levels of language acquisition ability from child to child.

My daughter is truly a language monster. She is shockingly impressive in all three of her languages, and is constantly trying out new words and getting them absolutely right (context, etc.).

My son is, not surprisingly, much like his parents. Language is hard for us. He is stronger in other areas (music, visual art, writing ability), and we work hard to let him know that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. He's jealous of his younger sister's French (and her English, too), but we tell him that we're jealous, too!

My second observation is that raising children like this is a substantial amount of work.

Last but not least, I have come to appreciate the joy and magic of being truly, madly, deeply native in a language. Having that final 1% of ability adds untold richness and closeness. There's nothing quite like it. Being truly bilingual is fantastic, but not the same as being dual-native, and it doesn't come close, in my opinion.

And, as an afterthought, there are all the non-spoken aspects of another culture, such as behaviour, body language, and even the volume of your voice, that are, in my opinion, as important as language fluency in terms of feeling "close" within a society.

Yes by your definition I don't think true bilingualism exists.

Right now I live in a situation where I use English and a third language exclusively, and my native language has massively atrophied. If I can't even compare my native ability now with 2 years ago, how could anyone have an exactly matched ability in two languages at the same time in all possible situations and contexts?

Hence I reject your definition since it's useless. I just define true bilingualism as native-level fluency in two languages. There's enough variation in native fluency to give a healthy margin there.

Thanks for sharing.

My kids are going through similar education, Saniku Gakuin twice a week after public school. While it's a bit intense in terms of homework and tough to balance with sports, but they find the work far less "meaningless" than the busy work they have to do in public school.

My oldest is somewhat dyslexic, so he has a strong preference to reading japanese books--but I'm just happy to see him reading.

I often struggle myself in finding appropriate words, even though I speak only English.

I'm raising my 3-year-old bilingually – I speak 6 languages myself, although 2 are somewhat rusty. It's hard, because my native language is the underdog as it's pretty much just me talking with her. She understands what I say, but replies always in mommy's language. It forces you to switch languages if you want to have a fluent back-and-forth conversation instead of something that just peters out. If you want true bilinguality, as the minority language speaker, you have to be willing to push and fight, and sometimes feel on the outside yourself.

When she was younger, it was sometimes heartbreaking to read a picture book where she knew some words in one language, and then the other parent comes in and all the words change.

Kids' minds are amazing though. I sometimes speak some English or French (not our native languages) with her as a game, and the speed with which those words stick is unbelievable – their minds are just sponges. Last week she threw some random French words at guests, confusing them to no end.