Consistency In A Bilingual Family

Browsing around the web and reading books about bilingualism, I've noticed a common thread that appears almost everywhere bilingualism is discussed — the need for consistency. That is, presumably, the idea that the same language always needs to be spoken in the same context.

There are a few different options here. One common bilingual family situation is that a child's mom and dad come from different cultures and speak different languages. They may have learned each others' languages, but usually don't have the same level of fluency the native-speaker parent does. In this case, the “one language, one parent” (also known simply as OPOL in bilingual circles) is the obvious choice. This method does what it says on the tin — one parent speaks one language with the child, while the other parent speaks the second.

School vs Home is another common choice. Your child may speak Spanish at home, and English at school, for instance. If you're really into this consistency thing, you may even come up with other creative patterns (some of which we've tried in our home). You could speak Language 1 in the morning, and Language 2 in the afternoon. You could speak a particular language whenever people who do not understand the other language are present. If you travel between countries, you could always speak the official language of the country you're currently in.

In my family, the need for consistency has proven to be non-existent. We have some. Dad doesn't speak the third language, so my kids don't have the option to speak that with him. Some of their friends only speak one language, so that's the one they're going to use when they are playing with those friends. And the kids' schoolbooks are almost exclusively in English. We homeschool, and the English-language materials are simply the best on offer for most subjects, so that is what we use. Not much choice there.

Do you need to be consistent in order to produce a truly bilingual child? Perhaps. It depends on you, and on your child. Experimentation will lead you to find out.

I'll address a few of the questions that often pop up. In my experience, multilingual children certainly do not have to run into trouble while learning how to read. My older child reads in two languages without any problem. One is a completely phonetic Slavic language, so perhaps that doesn't count? The other is English, which is certainly more complex but also, contrary to popular belief, almost completely phonetic. It's just that the phonetic system is more complex than it is in other phonetic languages. We're going to introduce reading in the third language over the coming year.

Is it possible to raise a fluently bilingual child even if that child doesn't have the opportunity to talk to many other native speakers of that language? In my experience, yes. I am the only person that speaks one of my children's languages with them on a daily basis, and it has always been like that. They often listen to cartoons in that language, and will occasionally get to speak it to relatives over Skype, or when they visit. On a daily basis, it's just me and the other sibling, though. Yet, I'd absolutely consider them to be native speakers of that language.

What should you do if your child suddenly refuses to speak a language? Keep on plugging away. It will happen in the end.

Does bilingualism harm children? I certainly don't think so, and bilingualism is the norm in many countries across the globe. That doesn't mean you can't come across any unique challenges though. Language delays can happen in any child. Bilingual children are not exempt.