Stella Christie
My son, who is 2 years 6 months, said the other day “Nie chc？ makan 米饭!” He mixed three languages in one sentence—Polish “nie chc？” (I don’t want), Indonesian “makan” (eat), and Chinese “mi fan” (rice). This kind of language mixing happens quite a bit, and some well-meaning friends and even strangers have asked me: Are you not worried? He is confused!
Is mixing languages a sign of confusion? The science clearly says not. Infants and young children exposed to two or more languages can differentiate their languages from very early on: they know that there are n languages in their environment. How infants manage to separate languages from very early on—even when the languages are very similar—is a whole other subject that I will not write about here. (I teach a class on this at Tsinghua.) Suffice it to say that humans possess incredible learning mechanisms that allow babies’ minds to tell apart one language from another.
If they’re not confused, why do they mix languages? Mixing languages in one sentence is a result of children learning languages. I am (still) learning Chinese and yesterday, in the middle of my lecture, I said “这不够，我们需要 empirical evidence.” I mixed, but none of you will think I was confused. I said this because I didn’t know how to say “empirical evidence” in Chinese. (Now I do!) Similarly, multilingual children sometimes use words from their Language 2 while speaking Language 1 because they do not know that word in Language 1. Or, sometimes they may even know the word but that word does not come easily to mind. For example, it’s very likely that next week I may again mix “empirical evidence” in a Chinese sentence because I may forget the word. Language mixing is not a sign of confusion, it’s actually a sign of ingenuity—the child can communicate despite having a limited vocabulary.
What does this mean for parents? If you speak a language that’s different from the language used in the community, speak that language to your child! That is, if you speak Shanghainese and live in Beijing, or you speak Mandarin and live in London, speak your native language to your child. This way, your child will earn the benefit of learning the language early. There is some evidence that bilingualism gives cognitive advantages—I will write more about this in another article—so you are only doing your child a favor by letting him or her hear your native language.
I only speak a “dialect,” should I really teach this to my child? Absolutely! From a cognitive science point of view, there is little distinction between a language and a “dialect.” Every way of speaking we know—a national language like French or a regional dialect like Shanghainese—brings with it cognitive advantages. If you are lucky enough to speak another language or dialect, don’t waste it, teach it to your child! In addition to a cognitive bonus, the child will be enriched culturally and socially and may learn better how to understand others’ perspectives, thoughts, and intentions (Bialystok & Senman, 2004).
My husband is from Vietnam, I am from Fuzhou, we now live in Beijing. Which languages should we speak to the child? You should speak Vietnamese and Fuzhouhua at home; the child will learn Mandarin at school. Remember: for your native language, the child can only rely on you (and maybe the grandparents). If you don’t speak your language to your child, he or she will never learn it.
This is what my husband and I do with our son: My husband speaks Polish to him, his grandmother speaks Indonesian, he goes to a Chinese-language daycare and I speak to him in both Polish and Indonesian, so he gets equal exposure to both our languages. Our child understands and speaks all these languages and we encourage that in every way we can. It is important to us that he speak our native languages (or dialects), which we spoke when we were children.
References:
[1] Bialystok, E, Senman, L. (2004). Executive processes in appearance-reality tasks: The role of inhibition of attention and symbolic representation. Child Development, 75(2), 562–579.
[2] Byers-Heinlein, K., & Lew-Williams, C. (2013). Bilingualism in the early years: What the science says. LEARNing landscapes, 7(1), 95.
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