Why Should We Teach Our Children Minority Languages?: 3

Parents need to be aware that: bringing up a bilingual child will affect the rest of their lives and the lives of their offspring.

Many people don’t realise that being bi -or monolingual – will ultimately affect several areas of their lives; including their identity, marriage, where they live, travel, ways of thinking, their employment and social networks.

Children who are bilingual enjoy:

* Wider communication with community/extended family/international links.

* Literacy into languages

* Two worlds of experience

* Greater tolerance of people and diversity

* Raised self-esteem

* Secure in the knowledge of ‘who they are.’

* Achievement at school is often greatly enhanced

* Bilingual children often find it much easier to learn a third language

* Their thinking is exposed to a greater variety of situations which often results in

greater creativity, heightened concentration and sensitivity in different situations.

* Future economic advantage

Young bilingual children, who have to choose between two languages several times a day; often develop a much better awareness of the languages involved in their day to day lives.

They are much better than monolingual children at establishing an abstract connection between letters and sounds. They often become better writers, are more able communicators and effective uses of language because of they have a better understanding of how language works.

Controlled experiments have been conducted and reveal that often bilingual children enjoy greater academic success. This is due to the fact that bilingual children need to have a constant awareness of language and their ability within it.

As we have seen; bilinguals often enjoy greater academic success.

Bilinguals have been shown to excel in DIVERGENT THINKING : this is basically the ability to come up with various solutions to a problem or situation rather than just one solution.

Being able to think DIVERGENTLY is considered to be a pre-requisite and a basic element of creativity. So for example children are often able to think of more than just one use for a paperclip, box etc there are many other tests that have been conducted that show bilingual children excelling in academia compared to their monolingual peers.

Therefore it doesn’t really matter which languages the child is bilingual in – it just matters that you, as a parent, attempt to facilitate your child’s learning into languages.

The beauty of second and third generation British Asians is that they have often had enough early exposure to the language in order to make a start or indeed use the wider community in their endeavours to transform their family into a bilingual home.

So leave your distaste or embarrassment for the mother tongue and embrace – for the sake of your child – a world of new possibilities!

What is Happening to Minority Languages?: 2

Our identities are comprised of many facets; and for ethnic minority peoples our identity is closely related to our geographical homeland and ancestry.  The history of our nation, our language, religion and rituals have an irreplaceable place in our lives.

As British Asians our lives are inextricably related to various areas that we often give little thought to.  We walk a tightrope between two very different cultures managing, with expert ease, different languages and culturally varied situations.

But now things are changing for the children of second generation immigrants.  Our first-generation parents had little choice but to bring their children up with a minority language at home.  They often enforced stringent rules that rarely relaxed in the face of defiance from their children who were being heavily influenced by Western culture, foods, languages style and address.

This has now manifested in the third-generation children being less proficient in their ‘home’ languages and  it is becoming obvious that they know little of their ancestral background.

Some children are lucky enough to have frequent exposure to grandparents who still converse in their native languages with their grandchildren. Thirty years ago this knowledge would have been imparted (albeit unwittingly) by parents.

So why has this happened?

Parents today are busy. Changing gender roles for both the indigenous population and the British Asian community has meant both men and women work outside of the home. As a result children, in the most crucial stages of their lives, are brought up with the majority language that child minders , nurseries and schools use.  Unless a specific minority language speaking carer is sought by the parents, the child will grow up with very little exposure to the minority language. This would not have been the situation 30 years ago as mothers were still predominantly spending their lives in the domestic sphere.

Saturday schools in a child’s minority language of choice is not enough to develop adequate linguistic skills in the chosen language.

At the risk of judging parents and perhaps resorting to generalisations, I have found in my research for this book that the majority of parents tend to have negative associations with minority languages.  Whether the minority language is Punjabi, Hindi, Gujerati  or Urdu.  Often they feel that these languages are not held in high regard by the European and western world and therefore parents are reluctant to impart these languages to their children for fear of being ostracised by the host culture.

These ‘community languages’  are hardly thought to have the cultural connotations of French; the sophistication of Italian or the global popularity that Spanish enjoys.

Being bilingual for some British Asians is not something they view with high regard.  They have grown up with their minority language and for some that is (unfortunately)  viewed as  a secondary but a necessary part of their upbringing.  Necessary in the sense that they were required, as children,  to accumulate knowledge in the language in order to effectively communicate with their parents or the other ‘older’ members  in the community. For these people the minority language was and still is, only required to communicate with family and very close familial friends and the elders in the community. It is not something that they view with pleasure.

Now the friendships and ‘work’ networks of British Asians are specifically targeted in the majority language: English.  In fact most global business and networking is carried out in English. If one was to look at factual information 80% of all websites are actually in English.  Therefore any need to keep up minority languages has been eliminated.

These facts coupled with a negative attitude and connotations, minority languages are losing their foothold amongst the majority of British Asians in the UK.

Bringing Up Bilingual Children:1

Introduction

I feel I am very lucky. I grew up fluent in Punjabi and Hindi and even learnt to read and write these languages. Although I am slow in translation – I would consider myself a fluent speaker. After having my son I have become acutely aware of how much my son is acquiring these languages and his ongoing development in them.   I hope that the information on this site about bilingualism is useful for you.

From the Beginning

For my parents who were first-generation immigrants, the transition was an easy one.  Their natural forms of communication were derived largely from the back home. Conversations were mostly in Punjabi and occasionally they were painfully in broken English.  Often the language of choice at home was my parental mother tongue with smatterings of English.

English was the language of the school.  Our ‘home’ language was very much a separate and distinct entity and kept us in touch with the motherland.  Our parents in misty-eyed remembrance recounted tales of Eastern promise and grandeur. They failed to recount the idiosyncrasies of a culture made up of disparate peoples.  From where we hailed there were over 350 languages  and a myriad of different cultures.

They laughed fondly at the mannerisms of what they saw as ‘innocent, hardworking  people’, of which we too were supposed to be proud of. But they conveniently ignored the obvious disparity and ever increasing gap between British Asian children that the West had nurtured and the country that had long been left behind. Our parents  argued, they had physically moved away from their ‘Des’ but their souls remained there forever more.

Unfortunately,  or perhaps more appropriately, most second and third generation Asians have no such links with the homeland of their parents and lineage. We may visit often and keep in touch with our relatives but our homes are here.

Our concerns are altogether different. Second and third generations are focused on how we can assimilate into the British way of life and do the same for our children.  We want to do this but still retain some of the culture that we have been raised with.

What we want for our children, although different to the first-generation immigrants;  is to instil a subtle appreciation for our heritage and ancestral background.  We want our children to have the ability to converse in a language that we have grown up with and perhaps occasionally endured . But mostly we fondly remember and use our knowledge of our ‘home’ languages appropriately depending on whom we are socialising with.

It is difficult to imagine for those of us who have grown up confident in two or more languages not to have that easy and natural ability to be able to communicate in our ‘native tongue’.  The big challenge arises when we think about how language is picked up and learned by children who see both parents conversed mostly in English and occasionally in the language of their parents.

Recently this has been troubling me.  Since the birth of my son my husband and I, including the wider family have made a conscientious effort to ensure he learns the fundamentals of Punjabi.  He understands it, and he appreciates Bollywood! (Although I’m not entirely sure how much of the Hindi he comprehends.)

However since his immersion in nursery and the English language from most of the day, he converses less frequently with us in Punjabi.  He may occasionally utter certain words and makes up the sentences, but he predominantly communicates in English.  I frequently switch to conversing in Punjabi with him when I remember to,  and I promise myself that we will do as much as we can in order to develop his language skills. It feels like a duty  as well as a passion. I feel I must impart this knowledge on to him – not necessarily to keep our culture and heritage alive and well,  but also so that he can reap the obvious educational benefits that come from being Bilingual and Trilingual. These are clearly outlined in the following chapters.

I feel there is a considerable ‘lack’ of appropriate books for parents to aid them in developing their child’s language skills. DVDs are few and far between,  and those DVD’S that do constitute acceptable viewing, are often heavily ‘religious’ in nature or are just not interesting enough for the discerning youngsters we have today. Religious DVDs may include “The Mahabarata” “Oh My Friend Ganesha”  “Krishna” etc. these are often geared at a Hindi speaking audience and I have yet to find an appropriate Punjabi DVD that my son can learn from

There are sites that have Hindi options: for example at http://www.hindikids.com .  They try to cater for this market , but the quality of books can often be questionable.  There is often the English written with the Hindi , Punjabi , Bengali or Gujerati script.  But the problem arises if you’re not proficient in the written language. This can be a tricky thing when trying to teach your children to converse in your chosen community language.

Accessibility for children to the language can be significantly hindered as parents have no real option but to translate English on the spot.  I often take my Son’s favourite books like The Gruffalo or Three Little Pigs and translate them when I am reading to him – but this is less than ideal in many ways.  Trying to translate as you are reading a child’s favourite story into your community language can often make the process seem stilted and hesitant:  It considerably lacks the flow of a natural voice.

I want something neutral and fun and hopefully it won’t be long before publishers respond to the increasing NRI and NRP demand.