Growing Up with Two Languages: A Practical Guide for the Bilingual Family

208 Pages·2011·0.76 MB·English

by  Una Cunningham

Growing Up with Two Languages
‘This book is an excellent resource for families aspiring to bring up their
children bilingually and for students exploring theory and practice in the
field of bilingualism. A fascinating read and a valuable guide.’
Avril Brock, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK
‘Every family with two languages should have this book!’
Stephen Ryan, The Bilingual Family Newsletter
The lives of many families involve contact with more than one language
and culture on a daily basis. Growing Up with Two Languages is aimed at the
many parents and professionals who feel uncertain about the best way to
go about helping children gain maximum benefit from the multilingual
situation.
This best-selling guide is illustrated by glimpses of life from interviews
with 50 families from all around the world. The trials and rewards of life
with two languages and cultures are discussed in detail, and followed by
practical advice on how to support the child’s linguistic development.
Features of this third edition include:
(cid:2) a dedicated website with new and updated Internet resources:
www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415598521
(cid:2) a new chapter giving the perspective of adults who have themselves
grown up with more than one language
(cid:2) a new chapter presenting research into bilingual language acquisition
with information about further reading
(cid:2) new and updated first-hand advice and examples throughout.
Una Cunningham is an Associate Professor in Modern Languages at
Stockholm University, Sweden. She and her husband, Staffan Andersson,
have raised their four children to speak English and Swedish in Sweden.

Growing Up with Two
Languages
A practical guide for the bilingual family
Third Edition
Una Cunningham
Firstpublished1999
byRoutledge
Secondeditionpublished2004
byRoutledge
Thiseditionpublished2011
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,Oxon,OX144RN
SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada
byRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
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collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
©1999,2004,2011UnaCunningham
TherightofUnaCunninghamtobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhas
beenassertedbyherinaccordancewithsections77and78ofthe
Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedor
reproducedorutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,or
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BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Cunningham-Andersson,Una,1960-
Growingupwithtwolanguages:apracticalguideforthebilingual
family/UnaCunningham.–3rded.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Bilingualisminchildren.2.Parenting.I.Title.
P115.2.C862011
404’.2083–dc22
2010049756
ISBN 0-203-81467-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN:978-0-415-59851-4(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-415-59852-1(pbk)
ISBN:978-0-203-81467-3(ebk)
Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xi
1 Families with two languages 1
Background 1
Mixed language families and intercultural marriage 1
Minority language families 8
2 Expecting a child in a bilingual home 12
What do you want for your child? 12
Making plans 20
Be prepared! 25
3 The family language system 31
Developing a system 31
One person–one language 35
One language–one location (minority language at home) 44
‘Artificial’ bilingualism 47
4 Language development 51
Active and passive languages 54
Interference and mixing 57
The critical period hypothesis 62
vi Contents
5 The child with two languages 65
Advantages and disadvantages of two languages for the child 65
Being different 67
Day-care and school 71
6 Practical parenting in a bilingual home 78
Help your child to make the most of the situation 78
Home language education and Saturday schools 79
Practical advice for parents whose child has two languages 82
Things to do at home 85
7 Competence in two cultures 93
Access to two cultures 93
Religion 98
Achieving cultural competence 99
8 Problems you may encounter 110
Quality of input 110
Semilingualism 113
Changed circumstances 115
Children with special needs 121
9 Keeping it up 124
Motivation 124
Teenagers 126
Advice from other parents 130
10 Looking back on a bilingual childhood 135
Grown-up children 135
The next generation 135
Cases 136
Conclusion 164
11 Research and further reading 165
Advantages and possible disadvantages of bilingualism 166
How bilingual acquisition works 168
How bilingual speakers use their languages 172
Contents vii
Appendix A: Organising a workshop on raising children
with two languages 174
Appendix B: Ways to support a child’s development
in two languages 177
Parent and children groups 177
Minority language play-school 178
Saturday school 180
Appendix C: Documenting a child’s linguistic
development 181
Vocabulary 181
Length of utterance 182
Language mixing 182
Pronunciation 183
Glossary 185
Bibliography 187
Index 191
Preface
For those, like me, who grew up using a single language except during
foreign language lessons at school, it is a new experience to live great
chunks of life through the medium of another language and culture.
Even if the second language involved is one that was learned at school,
its daily use involves new challenges and rewards. All sorts of issues
must be addressed depending on the circumstances, such as the choice
of language to be spoken to which people in which situation, and
how those involved will acquire reasonable facility in their second
language, and what relationship they will have to the non-native
culture.
This book is intended for parents who find their everyday life
involves two or more languages. The readers I have in mind are
not generally part of an established bilingual community in a country,
but rather individuals or families who have uprooted and resettled in
another linguistic environment, or their partners or children. This
raises fascinating issues, such as the question of what it is not to be a
native speaker of a language, with full access to the associated culture,
and how best to hold your own as a non-native. I will not try to
tell you how best to learn a second language, but rather what the
effects of dealing with two languages may be for you or your
children. There are so many of us in the same boat. Let us learn from
each other!
This book is the third edition of a book originally published in 1999,
with the second edition in 2004. The first two editions were
co-authored by my husband, Staffan Andersson. This time I am the sole
author, but I can assure readers that our marriage and partnership con-
tinue! The parts of the text that refer to my own children have been
updated, and the sections relating to older children and teenagers have
been extended to reflect our experiences. Two new chapters have been
added,one withinterviews fromadults and older teens looking backon
Preface ix
a bilingual childhood and one with an overview of relevant research
into the field of childhood bilingualism, with tips for further reading for
students and other interested readers. The appendix dealing with
Internet resources has been taken out, as this kind of information is
much more useful on a website, and the book now has its own com-
panion website, with links to useful and interesting resources and
the possibility of interaction with and between readers. There are also
sound files available from the website, with excerpts from some of the
interviews in the new Chapter 10. In the years that have passed since
the first edition was published the main thing that has changed is that
our children have grown older. Leif is now 24, Anders is 22, Patrik is
18 and Lisa is 16. The long-term results of my family’s own venture
with two languages have turned out better than we dared to hope.
Two of our four children, Anders and Lisa, are now native-like in both
their languages and the other two are very competent in English, but
native-like in Swedish only. This is partly a result of differences in their
schooling, as both Lisa and Anders attended English-medium schools
for periods, but it is, in my opinion, at least as much the result of
individual differences in interest in and aptitude for language.
I am an immigrant to Sweden (I was brought up in Northern
Ireland), a foreign language learner (having studied Irish, French and
Spanish at school and Portuguese and Vietnamese later in life), a second
language learner (I lived in Spain for a year while a student in 1979–80
and first came into contact with the Swedish language in 1980, at the
age of 20) and a parent of four children who have grown up with two
languages and cultures.
When my children were small, I often felt the need for some kind of
manual to consult. Just as we have a family medical book and a child
development book, we would like to have been able to look up the
answers to our questions concerning life with two languages and cul-
tures. There are excellent books which help parents and teachers deal
with children with two languages, such as those by George Saunders
(1982), Lenore Arnberg (1987) and Colin Baker (1995), and a number
of books dealing with the way bilingual children learn their languages
have been written since the first edition of this book appeared. The
main difference between this book and others is the number of families
whose experiences are tapped here, particularly in this third edition,
with the addition of material from some 20 new interviews.
For anyone who is curious about my story, Staffan and I met as
backpackers on 16 July 1980 on a train in Nis, in what was then
Yugoslavia, when Staffan was travelling from Uppsala to the Black
Sea and I from Nottingham to Israel. Neither of us reached our