I think that defining a monolingual parent becomes more and more difficult because talking “only” one language, i.e. being monolingual, nowadays is almost impossible – at least for all those who don’t have English as mothertongue*. Everyone studies another language at some point, and will acquire some kind of knowledge in it. Therefore, being exclusively monolingual parents, living in a continuously monolingual context is almost impossible. Especially if we count dialects as languages. – If we agree with François Grosjean‘s definition of a bilingual:

“Bilinguals are those who use two or more languages (or dialects) in their everyday lives”

we can define accordingly a monolingual:

“Monolinguals are those who use only one language (or dialect) in their everyday lives”.

***

Every family raising bilingual children need a language plan. There are several strategies that can work for monolingual families or monolingual parents. In a (almost) monolingual situation, the strategy would look like this:

                       Parent 1            Parent 2                  Community             

 Strategy 1   Language A      Language A              Language A

Parents would speak their native language and the child would associate the second language (not indicated in this figure) with a certain place or certain person, such as special classes or trips to visit relatives or friends. With an environment not providing a regular input to the child, the parents would need to make more effort in providing exposure to the second language (cfr. playgroups in the other language, language lessons, care givers who talk the other language – and DVDs, CDs, audiobooks, books etc.).

Monolingual parents who want to raise their children bilingually but are not able to support this at home, need to reach out for help and provide a regular input from someone else. With the help of technology this is surely possible and I know many families who succeded, but in the long run, either one parent (or both) would learn the other language and the parents would need to offer regular full immersion programms to their children – during holidays etc. – to foster the learning.

If one of the parents has the knowledge of another language, but the family lives in a Language A community, one of the parents would always address the child in his or her non-native, second language.

                           Parent 1           Parent 2            Community             

Strategy 2        Language A      Language A      Language A

                            Language B

These first two strategies require a special effort and commitment from the parents to provide regular input in Language B, with the advantage that in Strategy 2, one parent would be the regular dialogue partner for the child. On the long run, the child (and the parent) may need more people to share this language with. Playgroups, peers, collaborative teachers and family who either share the same language or at least support the bilingual upbringing can be very beneficial.

***

If both parents have the same mothertongue but live abroad, the scenario can look like this:

                       Parent 1           Parent 2              Community             

Strategy 3    Language A     Language A         Language B

Both parents would talk Language A to the child and leave the second language (B) to the environment and school. Usually, parents in this situation would learn language B at some point and would probably also be able to understand and support their child during his learning process.

When one of the parents has some knowledge of the community language, this could be the scenario:

                       Parent 1             Parent 2                   Community             

Strategy 4   Language A        Language A              Language B

                        Language B

One parent would always talk the community language (B) with the child, while the other parent would be consistent talking the other one. Language A being the minority language in this case, parents would need to support the child by offering other opportunities to speak language A (with peers, playgroups etc.).

For all the scenarios listed here above, it would be beneficial for the bilingual child if parents would agree on a language planning, be confident, creative, commited and consistent – and flexible, if the language situation within the family changes due to a move abroad or else.

***

My parents adopted strategy 3 in raising my sister and me bilingually: with German as mothertongue at home and Italian as the local language. They both learned Italian too and talked other languages (English, French and local German dialects). I can say that they succeeded: my sister and I are both bilinguals talking up to 6 languages and raising our children as bilinguals too.

Sign in Switzerland’s four official languages (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

* I’ll discuss the difference with English mothertongue speakers in another post.

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• Monolinguals Raising Bilinguals

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In her book Bilingual Siblings. Language Use in Families, Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert points out that school has a strong effect on language use. From nursery or primary school, children spend more than 40% of their day with their friends.

In fact, multilingual children who were used to speak certain languages within the family, are tempted to change their language use when they start to go to nursery or preschool where often only one of the languages or even another language than those spoken at home, is used. It has to do with peer pressure and the fact that the children have to follow new rules. In some schools – even some international ones! – children are not allowed to talk another language than the one used in school. If the choosen school is monolingual, a multilingual child will feel that using a language that only few people understand, is inappropriate. This pressure increases with the time the children spend in this context, away from home. – The risk is, that the home or minority language is used less frequently at home.

Children are very pragmatic in their language choice. It’s more logic for them, while attending an English school, to discuss school topics in English. They might still follow OPOL while talking to their parents or caregivers, but they probably will opt for another language while talking to their siblings.

Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert asked 105 families to complete an online survey about the language their siblings used together and found out that there is a clear link of school-home language for the siblings. If parents choose a school with one parental language, this is probably not perceived as a “problem” in the family. But if the school language is another one than the ones spoken at home, it can have the negative effect to “suffocate the minority language” (p.65). If now siblings have a particular bound through the minority language (because they share experiences or memories) or “because they appreciate the value of speaking the minority language to communicate with extended family or when visiting the country” (p.66), they will make the effort to avoid a passive use of it at home, i.e. try to use it more often.

If you speak two or more languages within your family, which language will your children choose to communicate among them? And why would they choose one language instead of the other(s)? Two children could easily agree on one of the family languages, but it can also happen that they prefer the daycare or school language. Or that they don’t agree on one language and choose a third or fourth one.

Fact is, that for a multilingual child it is very natural to switch from one language to another. Depending on the context or subject, they will easily switch even without realizing it. Multilingual siblings don’t have only one language in common and they will always alternate among those they know. Some parents feel the pressure to stop their children doing code-switching, but as code-switching is not a sign of linguistic weakness, they shouldn’t worry.

When my twin daugthers were born, I was wondering which language my son would talk to them (he was 3.5 years old at the time). Would he talk Italian or Swissgerman, or maybe Dutch? And what about OPOL then? Shouldn’t siblings apply the OPOL method as well? But he would have to choose either Swissgerman or Italian…

I observed that he sung Italian nursery rhymes and talked Swissgerman to them while telling stories, and did also tell them about his day at the Dutch daycare in Dutch (and sung Dutch songs etc.). He did switch from one language to the other. First I thought that his choice was somehow related to the topics, but  it wasn’t. His choice was really random. – I didn’t stop him doing this as it would have been very unnatural for him to choose only one language because his world was made of three languages.

Now, more than 7 years later, my children still share the same languages – English is their fourth language that they use at school – and they switch from one to the other, depending on their mood. – If they still do code-switching? Yes, but I observe that the words they’re switching are more complex. And they often switch from one language to the other during dialogues. Sometimes I ask them to please say the whole sentence in one language, but only if we have time for it, because the most important thing is to keep the conversation going and I have to admit that we have high-speed conversations at our house and all three children love to talk – a lot! And for me this is the best sign that “our” method is working.

What about you? Are you in a similar situation? How did and do your children cope with their multilingualism?

Related articles

• Challenges and tips for raising bilingual children (nbclatino.com)
• SpanglishBaby: Can bilingualism cause alienation? (nbclatino.com)
• My multilingual journey (expatsincebirth.com)
• Once an OPOL, always an OPOL? (onraisingbilingualchildren.com)
• Bilingual Siblings: Different Language Histories (multilingualliving.com)

In articles about bilingualism and OPOL we usually find two different labels: “one parent – one language” or “one person – one language” which, in my opinion, is a bit misleading.

The term of OPOL was first introduced by the french linguist Maurice Grammont in 1902. In Observations sur le langage des enfants (Observations on Children’s Language), he introduced the idea of une personne, une langue. Literally translated from the French as one person, one language.

He theorized that by separating the languages from the beginning, parents could prevent confusion and code-mixing in their bilingual children. Therefore if each parent speaks only one of the two languages to the child, the chances that the child will mix the languages are reduced. By using his or her own language each parent gives an example of adult language use.

Many studies followed like the one of Jules Ronjat, Le Développement du langage: observé chez un enfant bilingue (The Development of Language: Observations of a Bilingual Child). Observing his son, Louis, Ronjat came to the conclusion that the consistent use of two languages at home from birth on, is a major factor in achieving bilingualism. He noted that Louis had acquired and mastered two languages in a similar phonological order to that of the average monolingual child.

In linguistic circles the term of OPOL is very common and is frequently used in books and articles since the 1980s as a way to describe a child being brought up as a simultaneous bilingual. In these studies we find the word parent alternate with person (cfr. B. Bain and A. Yu, Cognitive consequences of raising children bilingually: One parent, one language, Canadian Journal of Psychology, vol.34(4), Dec. 1980, 304-313). This leads to confusion as the use of parent instead of person implies that the parents are the only linguistic role models for a child.

In my opinion, Grammont’s label one person one language is much more appropriate in our society. It includes also bilingual mum-mum or dad-dad families and families where one parent is absent and another person takes the caregiver-role. Moreover, it does include also other persons in our children’s life like sibilings, extended family, daycarers, nannys, babysitters  etc..