Native Language @ ISB

People who think seriously about raising multilingual children often worry about maintaining linguistic balance. Indeed, books, articles, blogs and parents’ pride in their mother tongue compel us to strive for balanced bi- or multilingualism. Balanced development of multiple languages is a worthwhile goal, and all our efforts to reach it should be praised. Yet, how attainable is it, even when the child is exposed to two or more languages from birth?

We often become upset when children ‘get stuck’ searching for a word in their mother tongue and substituting it for a word from another language; or, when children mispronounce words, misuse them or use expressions that are ‘direct translations’ from foreign expressions. Our two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter is probably still far away from this stage; we know she is just a toddler, and her ‘mistakes’ or ‘inventions’ are mostly a source of fun rather than worry. Quite soon, though, the time will come when we begin to place higher expectations on her, wanting to see the results of our efforts to create a balanced multilingual.

Being grandparents and not first-timers in this endeavor, we are probably more understanding and patient. Experience has taught us that ‘balance’ is an idealistic goal, and real life consists of deviations and approximations of various degrees. No matter how thoroughly we create the environment stimulating the development of multiple languages, there are always conditions beyond our control. The place where our child lives at any given moment, the child’s playmates, the language of schooling, the status of the language, the purposes of its use – all of these factors and more will continue to tip the linguistic balance throughout the child’s life. Our granddaughter has started attending a nursery in English – now that she is immersed in daily all-English activities with English-speaking peers and teachers, even before her Russian and French become fully developed, English will ‘compete’ for dominance. As a result, more than ever, we feel how very important it is to be creative in supporting her home languages.

When a baby is growing up, especially the first-born, parents often make a commitment to write a diary in order to record the first teeth, the first steps, the first fever, the first syllables, the first words. It is certainly not only helpful for parents to maintain a diary, at least once a month, but it is also a joy to reread entries, and laugh and cry over your baby’s developmental milestones. Recording emergence of two or more languages is fascinating food for thought. It helps to make personal discoveries, clarify ideas and grow wisdom about raising children. If we listen carefully enough we begin to understand – or at least to tune in – to what our child is trying to communicate. Contrary to the expectation that she will use either one or the other language, or a mix of both, she is creating her own tongue.

Kids are great inventors – and we should enjoy their creativity. Words our granddaughter uses often have a very unusual degree of approximation and do not sound like anything in the languages she is exposed to.  She absorbs and understands what we say but prefers to use her own version of the names of favorite toys,  animals, friends and family members. We are sometimes trying to teach her the ‘correct pronunciation’: Let’s practice saying the name of your baby brother (whose name is Maxim), say ‘m-m-m-Maxim!’ She is eager to learn and responds happily: ‘m-m-m… Tapi!’ How did Maxim turn into Tapi?? We imagine a young man still going by the name ‘Tapi’, trying to explain its origin… We realize that our granddaughter will probably continue to invent words and stick to her own language until the need for clarity and complexity of speech can no longer be ignored, and her attempts to imitate become more successful.

As parents, grandparents and other important members of the child’s social circle, we ‘plant the seeds’ and try to provide all the necessary ‘nutrients’ for the growth of the child’s language. We then expect her to follow a series of well-described stages of language development – and look for their early signs eagerly.  But we need to exercise caution in expecting too much too soon. Parents – and others – will have to rediscover each developmental stage because each child follows her own developmental path and timetable dependent on a multitude of factors.

So we, on both sides, Russian and French, engage in conversations and storytelling, make sure there is a supply of books and a commitment to read them together, plan trips and play dates. When we see our granddaughter in person we try to use our language for different purposes – this happens naturally when we do things together: play games, tell stories, prepare food, do chores and simple tasks around the house, read books, enjoy walks together and more. When we skype, we not only chat with her, we also have conversations with her parents so that she is exposed to more complex fluent speech in both languages.

We still worry – comparing our child to the neighbor’s children, to our nieces and nephews, to multiple other children described in baby blogs and books. But this state of mild anxiety keeps us alert and mindful of the linguistic needs of our granddaughter.