Let's say one parent is Italian and the other one is Polish. They communicate with each other in English, however, their English proficiency is far from being native-like. Both live in Japan. They moved there a year or two ago and since have been studying Japanese with moderate success. Their work requires mostly their respective native language, intermediate English and basic Japanese. On their free time they socialize in English and Japanese. They have a few days old child and planning to raise it in Japan.

Which language(s) should the parents speak to their child?

- Italian and Polish would always exclude one parent but the child could end up being trilingual (Italian, Polish, Japanese; long term maintenance and the risk of losing Italian and Polish should also be considered)

- English would be possible but for achieving a high level the child needs to be exposed to native speakers, for example by attending an English kindergarten/school

- Japanese is only possible if the parents study it intensively from now on to keep up with their child that will be naturally exposed to Japanese, more so if it will attend a Japanese kindergarten/school

The language the parents choose to speak with their child and its second or dominant language is likely to influence the language of communication between the parents. One parent could also decide to learn their partner's language which might lead to Italian or Polish as the household language. The child would be exposed to at least one native speaker and is likely to end up being bilingual (Italian/Polish+Japanese).

I have known many children who were brought up multilingual, having grown up in Kazakhstan. That country was the only Soviet republic where the indigenous ethnic group ended up becoming a minority. Because of this Kazakh language education was abolished in the majority of schools and a whole generation grew up speaking more fluent Russian than Kazakh. Even though the situation has changed and by now about half of the population claims proficiency in Kazakh, the major cities are still predominately Russian-speaking, even if ethnic Russians are no longer the majority.

One couple that my parents knew both had only an intermediate level of Kazakh, but they were determined to raise their son Kazakh-speaking, thinking that "he will pick up Russian at school anyway". However, even though they spoke only Kazakh to him, they continued to talk to each other in Russian. Add to that a Russian-speaking nanny, Russian-speaking kids in the playground and more than half of the channels on TV being in Russian - the kid started answering his parents' Kazakh questions in Russian long before he started school.

Another Russian-speaking Kazakh kid I knew at my school had a (non-native) English-speaking aunt whom his parents asked to talk to him only in English. Even though his first exposure to native speakers was at the age of twelve, his level was already very high by then. The only problem is that he spoke with one the most horrible Russian accents I have ever heard (and I am Russian, so I have heard a LOT of those), even after years of interaction with native speakers. By analogy to "katakana English" and "romaji Japanese", it sounds as if his mind transliterates everything into Cyrillic for him to read out loud - he did not even attempt to pronounce a non-trilled r or any of the a/e sounds. But then, he may have been doing it on purpose (knowing his sense of humour, it is not that unlikely).

A bizarre case is the family of my aunt's classmate who moved to China and married an Arab. They primarily use Mandarin to talk to each other, and it seems like that the father talks to the son in Mandarin only. The mother talked to him in Russian during his early childhood, but now they code-switch between Mandarin and Russian all the time. The boy's Russian sounds native and he had no problem understanding others when they visited Russia. The funny thing is that his name is Arabic and he is being raised Muslim, but he apparently has no command of Arabic whatsoever. This family's situation seems closest to your scenario, but unfortunately I do not know them personally, so I have no idea how they came to that arrangement.

My best friend at school in Kazakhstan was from a South Korean expat family who had lived in the US during his early years, before moving to Kazakhstan. He was natively or near-natively fluent in Korean, English and Russian, but his younger brother had problems with Korean, even though that was their primary home language. He understood it perfectly, but felt much more comfortable replying in English or Russian. Hearing the two brothers' conversations was quite amusing, like looking at a Han and Chewie act, only with real human languages.

Personally, I think that English should definitely be one of the languages spoken at home in your scenario, since it is a very important language to know and leaving all the work in that department to the Japanese educational system does not seem like a good idea. Of course there are special schools and kindergartens, but getting into them is probably not easy, and having at least some foundation in English should make it easier to get in and adjust. As for the other three languages I am not sure. Theoretically it is possible to raise a child speaking three languages, but four is probably too much, especially if there is no real and immediate need to know each of them. And making no attempts to teach the child Japanese is probably only a good idea if the parents are sure that the child will get enough exposure and interaction in the language before starting school, because starting first grade without any command of Japanese will be quite tough. Although temporarily replacing the home language with Japanese if the child is struggling could help with that - I read an article about a Burmese refugee family in Japan who did this for six months, which helped their kids both improve their Japanese and catch up on their Burmese later.

Thanks for the input.

vonPeterhof Wrote:Another Russian-speaking Kazakh kid I knew at my school had a (non-native) English-speaking aunt whom his parents asked to talk to him only in English. Even though his first exposure to native speakers was at the age of twelve, his level was already very high by then. The only problem is that he spoke with one the most horrible Russian accents I have ever heard (and I am Russian, so I have heard a LOT of those), even after years of interaction with native speakers.
[...]
Personally, I think that English should definitely be one of the languages spoken at home in your scenario, since it is a very important language to know and leaving all the work in that department to the Japanese educational system does not seem like a good idea.
[...]
And making no attempts to teach the child Japanese is probably only a good idea if the parents are sure that the child will get enough exposure and interaction in the language before starting school, because starting first grade without any command of Japanese will be quite tough.
[...]
As for the other three languages I am not sure. Theoretically it is possible to raise a child speaking three languages, but four is probably too much, especially if there is no real and immediate need to know each of them.

That's the problem I see there, too. The child could be probably well into learning three or four languages but as soon as it starts school the parents native languages and also English would become irrelevant from the child's perspective. Taking this into account there is a higher chance of permanently establishing a non-Japanese home language if the parents only focus on one. The problem with English is maybe that it doesn't come as natural as the parents native language and its use might create an emotional distance to the child. Then again, the parents have been using English with each other successfully.

IceCream Wrote:if it were me, i would focus on english as the main language, followed by japanese. Whoever does the majority of the child raising should speak english to the kid, and whoever the other parent is should teach the basics of nouns, verbs, etc in japanese. I would also expose the child to lots of native speakers of both languages during the early stages, so that they can pick up the accent easier.

Come to think of it when you are speaking to a small child you use fairly simple speech anyway. Since the parents know the basics of Japanese raising the child bilingual in English and Japanese until it starts school should be achievable. When the child enters school the parents could drop Japanese and only use English as the household language if they choose to.

IceCream Wrote:p.s. Congratulations!!!

Ah, no, no...a video on youtube gave me the idea for this thread:

cchanji Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:p.s. Congratulations!!!

Ah, no, no...a video on youtube gave me the idea for this thread:

LOL!! I thought the way you introduced it was more along the lines of:

"I need some advice. It's not for me actually. It's for a friend. You see he got this girl pregnant and....He's not really a friend, just someone I know. I don't really know him actually; We've only met a couple of times...."

I'm normally an occasional lurker on this forum, but I was keen to respond to this thread as I've some experiences of similar situations to this. A friend of mine in German, his wife is Japanese and they live in Newcastle, England with their daughter (5). Each parent speaks to the daughter is his or her own language but as a family they speak English. Up to about 3 years old, she seemed to learn all 3 languages roughly equally but then she started nursery. Since then, she has shown an increasing prefernce for English although she still seems comfortable in Japanese. She is now completely rejecting German - I guess because she sees her Dad less than her Mum and knows his English is better.

My own wife is also Japanese and we have a 15 month old daughter. We would like our daughter to be fluent in both languages and have made Japanese the main language of our home even though my wife's English is better than my Japanese as we feel we need to give it great weight to counterbalance the increased exposure she will have to English generally. We have also tried to form friendships with other Japanese speaking families in the area so she'll have a wider group of people who she can use Japanese with. This has had the added bonus of improving my Japanese tremendously!

As a humerous aside for people from the UK, I asked that girl what it was like being able to speak 3 languages, and she replied she could actually speak 4 languages. I asked her if she was sure as I though she could only speak English, German and Japanese. She replied that she spoke Japanese with Mummy, German with Daddy, English with both, and Geordie with the kids at school!

What I've always heard from everybody around me and confirmed by situations I've encountered is: never EVER speak to your child in a non-native language.

Everybody I've ever talked to (including more people who raised their kids multilingual) agreed that you should be really strict and really consistent and ALWAYS speak in your mother tongue to your children, no matter how much it complicates stuff.
Even if you have reached a level of proficiency in your second language that even native speakers mistake you for one, a child can still hear hesitations and problems in expressions that adults never notice.
Can you sing a lullaby in Japanese with exactly the same warmness and emotion that you can in your native language? I'm pretty fluent in English, but I don't even know a single lullaby. I could learn some, but they wouldn't evoke the same memories of my youth, and wouldn't transfer the same emotional message to my child.


An example where it turned out great:
A family member of mine speaks dutch native and is married to a Dane. They speak English to each other, and respectively dutch and danish to their children, and they go to French/English bilingual schools and they live in a French speaking town. They don't really speak each other's native language, but they can understand most of it. So when they are in a conversation together, they speak three languages at the same time, but they can understand all of it.
The two kids are "fluent" in all four languages by the way, as so far children can be considered fluent. They are just 6 and 8 by the way, and that Dane is a diplomat, so they have lived in Denmark, Italy and Belgium with their family.
So it would seem dutch is in a neglected position here, considering only one of their parents is their sole source of exposure, but the kids sometimes speak dutch to each other (even when no other dutch speaker is around), and when I play with them I sense no difference in language ability from their monolingual dutch speaking nephews and nieces.
One of them also invented his own language when he was younger, even wrote an entire picture book in it, so it even spawned some really odd but cool creativity.


Example where it turned out really bad: (so as to confirm my theory)
A friend of mine. She spent the first 7 years or so of her life in Durban, and both her mother and her father spoke English to her, but her mother immigrated from Belgium (native language dutch, so she did NOT speak to her child in her native language). She went to an English school, but all the kids there spoke Zulu (no Afrikaans in Durban).

When she was 7 or 8 her mother moved back to Belgium, and she went to a dutch language school, and her mother switched to dutch in the household.
Result? She speaks *no* language well. She makes a lot of mistakes in all languages, be it dutch, English or french (in which she is miserable, even after 8 years of continuous exposure and education).
Most striking observation: she has a lot of trouble with expressing her feelings, even in english. Perhaps that is the most important factor of all to consider, that speaking in a non-native language to your child has emotional and developmental implications.


I have no science to back this up, but there are people who told me that this is also what a lot of linguists and psychologists agree on. Can't vouch for the validity of these statements though = P

Cheers

Jorre

I totally agree Jorre,
I can barely speak English due to the fact that I was raised in Georgia. I often can't express my feelings on a college level >_< It's probably why I can't write papers too

cchanji Wrote:Let's say one parent is Italian and the other one is Polish. They communicate with each other in English, however, their English proficiency is far from being native-like. Both live in Japan.

Awesome scenario!!!

As for an actual contribution to this thread I'd do something like this:
Use 4 languages at home in varying degrees but prepare that your child's main language is going to be Japanese + English. Both parents native languages are probably not used that often (since they are speaking in English and will probably supplement it with Japanese at some point) and as you said it would exclude one parent out. But I wouldn't go the completely "silent" route when it comes to Italian & Polish since they can be useful when visiting family etc. (usually grandmas don't exhibit strong Japanese skills) and besides knowing lots of languages is fun and opens lots of possibilities (Italian is good for Spanish/Portugese and French, Polish is great for Slavic languages).

Above applies if they decide to stay in Japan for good but even then I imagine you'd want to send your child to a college or university in an English speaking country and spare him/her the dreadful tests & entrance exams Japanese torture their own children.

Basically speak whatever you like, the kids immersion environment will dwarf your efforts anyway. I'd worry most about English since by the time the kid is 5 both parents would probably switch to Japanese as their common language anyway and English will be forgotten.

Hashiriya Wrote:I totally agree Jorre,
I can barely speak English due to the fact that I was raised in Georgia. I often can't express my feelings on a college level >_< It's probably why I can't write papers too

Oh, come on now! I know that we southerners might have a thick accent and all, but to say that we can barely speak English is... OH, OH OH, you don't mean the American state of Georgia, do you?

Very interesting topic

I know many people who were brought up with at least 2 different languages and most of them are still able to speak / understand both of them.
It's also interesting to see, though, how fast kids will forgot a language if the parent who's using it suddenly is gone.
At work we have 2 boys who had an American father and although I don't know the exact circumstances it seems like they used to live in America until the parents got divorced. The mother is Japanese, of course. Her English is very good for a Japanese, though.
The older son is a 2nd grader now and his pronunciation of English is really good. He often speaks in English to me and while I understand him, his grammar is sometimes a bit strange. It seems that what he remembers of his father is slowly fading and thus his English ability. His Japanese is perfect, though.
His younger brother is even more interesting. Although I hear him saying a few English words every now and then, he usually speaks Japanese only!
The mother told me that her younger son couldn't (!!) speak any Japanese until recently, only English!! And now he barely ever speaks English anymore, only Japanese.
I thought that's very interesting. I think the younger son will soon be a 1st grader.

It seems that children learn much faster, but also will forget something they never use just as adults do (maybe even faster).

I haven't read any of the comments thoroughly but I strongly recommend barely using any Japanese at home, the child will already be able to learn it for free in preschool with friends etc.

Just about every one of my friends is bilingual, Chinese, Korean, Serbian, or Arabic. Their parents speak to them only in their native language, and they learnt English in school, through friends etc. Your situation is different, the only thing I can suggest is to not bother with Japanese at home. My parents used too much English at home around me and I've lost most of my Arabic as a result and I end up speaking Arabish which is only intelligible to other fluent Arabic-English speakers.

I'll agree with jorrebenst, you want to speak to your kids with a language you are very fluent in. Kids are going to mimic their parents, they are going to learn their any language mistakes they do, and it's going to be very hard for them to break that habit.

I took some speech therapy in grade school. I had no idea why at the time, but after a while I figured out that I picked up some odd speech patterns from my father. (He is native at English but he did say a few words differently then "normal".) And it took me a lot of effort to be able to hear my mistakes because of this.

In this situation, if they think English is an important language, they would need to include some native level of English in their kid's life, it doesn't need to come from the parents, if it does their kids will probably just have to relearn things later or just learn it wrong.