Non-native speakers raising bilingual children
Or, how I overcame self-doubt
I was raised in the Southwestern USA, an area full of mountains, sunsets, and a beautiful desert landscape.
I spoke only English growing up, save for 2 years of Spanish classes in high school. But the public schools across the US often don’t have the best reputation for teaching foreign languages, and this was a prime example. After taking 2 years of Spanish for 5 hours a week of contact time, I couldn’t hold a basic conversation, and I had only learned the present tense. Outside of that class, I was eager to learn a new language. I was reading English translations of Heidegger and Hegel in my literature class, singing Germanic hymns in a choir, and reading German for Dummies in my free time.
I went on to college and took 3 years of German, including 2 intensive language programs, and even lived in Germany for nearly a year. Putting aside all of the other languages I dabbled in, a question quickly arose when considering my daughter’s future: Would I teach her to be bilingual?
As a non-native speaker, I doubted my abilities. I had lived in Germany and considered myself fluent, but I was out of practice, not to mention the fact that I didn’t know the vocabulary that children needed to know. I studied Kant, but I didn’t know the words for a slide or a swing set in German. Would I be able to provide her with a rich enough linguistic/cultural environment? Or what if I made mistakes, or forgot words? These fears were compounded by the fact that we live in an English-speaking community, where it would be hard to find other German speakers.
I quickly realized that perfection was not the goal – effort and exposure were. I started purchasing German children’s books for her (far too many, but how can you say a child has too many books?) and helping her watch TV and movies in German.
She’s 3 now. She’s fluent in English (the language of our community) but I speak 80% German with her. She understands it very well, considering her age and our circumstances, and can answer German questions and read German stories with me. She speaks some German, combined with English, which is typical for this age, I’m told.
By creating a language-rich environment and encouraging curiosity, I’m helping my daughter build a strong foundation in both languages – one that she will carry with her for the rest of her life.
If you’re a non-native speaker raising a child in more than one language, I would love to hear from you in the comments.
I don't have children, but I may fit into this question the other way around. I was born in the United States to a Japanese mother and (white) American father. He was in the Navy and married her in Tokyo, then brought her to Hawaii where I was born in 1966. In 1969, he was sent off to Vietnam. He moved us to Yokohama, Japan so that he could more easily visit us on his time off.
My mom hated going back to her mother country because she grew up there during the post-war era of famine, poverty, gangs, abuse.
For the next 18 months, Japanese became my primary language, even though I had already three years under my belt learning English. At age 4, I attended a Catholic School that taught in English, though we were not Catholics; it was something the diocese offered to American military families. Despite the English instruction, Japanese was still my primary language.
My mother always spoke to me in Japanese, and I always spoke to her in the same. I spoke Japanese to the other kids in our neighborhood. I ate exclusively Japanese cuisine, watched only Japanese television shows, and did all the same things that other Japanese kids did.
Yet I remember none of it. My mother tells me all about how Japanese I was back then. It wasn't until my Dad returned from Vietnam, that we relocated to San Diego and I dropped all my Japanese behaviors.
Yet, I continued to "feel" Japanese more than my father's side of the family. He continued to serve in the Navy, and was often away. She still cooked Japanese food, though the more time she spent in the United States, the more she made American food. She made friends with other Japanese wives who married American servicemen, and I became friends with their kids, who were exactly like me, half-Japanese, half-white, and raised as military brats.
Today, I consider myself a "nisei". But the San Diego-based nisei's are a different breed because we're all a product of American military men bringing back Japanese brides. Many of us don't know if we're Asian or Caucasian when asked to check a box on an application form. Many of us don't know if we should hold on to our Japanese heritage, or leave it behind and jump into the melting pot.
I hear of so many blacks and hispanics using their minority status as a crutch to field themselves attention and privileges. The Japanese and Japanese-Americans who were forced into concentration camps during World War II never wanted to reparations, never wanted apologies, never wanted to remember it, because they found more comfort in being humble.
I like to think that I have that in me. It burns me to hear others claim that Asians, particularly Japanese, don't deserve minority status because of the value we place on education and our determination to be self-sufficient. But whenever I feel angry about it, I recognize that's the American in me that wants to complain. The Japanese in me wants me to remain humble.