ABC Radio National has the perfect holiday treat for language lovers: a 5-part podcast series about multilingualism in Australia. In “Tongue-tied and fluent”, Masako Fukui and Sheila Ngoc Pham (who also blogs here on Language on the Move) explore how ordinary Australians navigate the tensions between the nation’s imagined English monolingualism and its de facto multilingualism.
The Twitter thread below offers a quick teaser for each episode. Indulge yourself, head over to the Earshot website, download the 5 episodes, and enjoy 2.5 hours of linguistic bliss!
In Episode 1, you will learn about the global #language hierarchy, and discover why a #multilingual person may not be able to say "take a shower" in all their #languages https://t.co/JfTzWUyqDV
— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) December 23, 2019
Part 3 takes us to #Armenian–#English #bilingual Galstaun College, an #Arabic community school, and to a frustrated #Japanese teacher in a Sydney public school … and you will begin to understand why #language #education in Australia is such a disasterhttps://t.co/L5OL2d3yG6
— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) December 23, 2019
And in Episode 5 @birdpham and @masakofukuisyd finally figure out that #English is a #migrant #language, too …
Ultimately, #multilingualism is not about #languages but about creating more inclusive societieshttps://t.co/DY5u9MzLvH
— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) December 23, 2019
This work is licensed under a
In the podcast, ‘How language education is failing and flourishing’, it was mentioned that monolinguals sometimes go onto learn a second language in adulthood. One of the topics discussed was if a required second language class in school is helpful to encourage this. However, they said that this kind of required education can lead to linguistic scarring where students do not go on to learn another language because of a trauma from those classes. During my time living and teaching in Japan, I have heard this concept summed up with the phrase, ‘English allergy’. This phrase is used by Japanese students to describe their past bad experiences in English classes. This negative attitude is difficult to overcome, especially at a post-secondary level when it is already deeply engrained.
“English allergy” – I’ll have to make a note of this – have never heard this term before … although I wrote a book chapter together with a colleague some years ago about its opposite: akogare for English, “English desire” (Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2006). A passion for English: desire and the language market. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), Bilingual minds: Emotional experience, expression, and representation (pp. 59-83). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. You can find a copy here.)
This podcast reminded me about the linguistic situation in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium.
French, the language of Belgium’s capital Brussels and its southern part, Walloon, has traditionally been the prestige language in all of the country. However, Dutch has undergone a revival in Flanders since the 1960s.
Recently, many Flemish people have in fact started to refuse to speak French to francophone visitors.
However, when I was in Flanders, I noticed that when i tried to speak broken Flemish to shopkeepers, they would often respond to me in French, assuming I was a Francophone Belgian. They appreciate outsiders paying respect to the language of the land, and are even willing to speak the visitor’s language in return.
Hi Ingrid, thanks for this interesting podcast!
Personally, I am so passionate about multilingualism, particularly in Australia. I wish we had a second language nation-wide curriculem within every Australian school, similar to English in Europe.. but the question is which language should we learn? I honestly get a touch of jealously too when I see international students writing in English as their second even third language.. yet I struggle with English being my first language.
My parents raised me within a bilingual household so it was interesting to hear about information that I didn’t really know or analyse in-depth. In my household, we speak Polglish (so a mix of English and Polish), however when I was a kid growing up, I definitely heard more Polish than English being spoken in the household! I’m very happy that my parents were able to communicate to me in Polish from a young age because there are so many people with Polish last names in Australia, but unfortunately a majority of them do not speak or understand Polish. What my parents mostly did was play child songs, speak all the time in Polish and recommended Nickolodean cartoons by with Polish only dubbing. It has certainly worked! My Polish is not on a native-like level but I can communicate and work there (easily with more exposure eg. if I lived there)
There are so many benefits from being bilingual, but unfortunately, I think it is a time strain – the earlier the person/child can get exposure the better. The later, the harder it is. I’m trying to learn German slowly and it is challenging, I believe if I had been exposed to the language earlier, I would be better [es ist sehr schwer und ist nicht so arnlich wie Englisch ;)]
I personally think it’s true that Australia is a graveyard of languages – we are so multicultural and diverse yet a lot of people seem to lose their heritage tongue very quickly.
Thanks again Ingrid, this subject really unlocks the passionate side of me.
Thanks, Ian, for this interesting reflection on your own bilingual upbringing! And about German: you know, it sits right in the middle between English and Polish 🙃 Alles Gute!
When listening to the “Talking through the generations” podcast, I was instantly reminded of my distant relatives living in the US. As history went, about 800,000 people fled the country after the Vietnam war from 1975-1991 (Vo, 2006). My grandma’s brother was one of those “boat people” refugees. Nowadays, he visits Vietnam once a year and I have a chance to talk with him every new year and keep in touch with him on Facebook. One point I am always intrigued by his stories about life and history, but there is one interesting point that I notice: his Vietnamese is slightly (just so slightly) different than those living in Vietnam currently. As I pay attention to his words and further research on texts produced by Vietnamese people living overseas (especially those belong to the boat people generation), there are more Chinese Vietnamese (Hán Việt) in their vocabulary. In Vietnamese, there are many synonyms for words, and the Vietnamese tends to use the Chinese Vietnamese equivalents of those words. For instance, most people I know use the word “bóng đá” or “đá banh” for soccer but Vietnamese overseas would use “túc cầu” instead. Although all these words are understandable for any Vietnamese, the usage of such words would make the context become too formal or literature-like. Perhaps, before 1975, Vietnam was still two separate countries with different education systems. Hence the divergence in language would become significant as a generation of Vietnamese move overseas for a long time as Vietnam kept on unifying their education system (and also how they teach proper writing) for the generations that stay back.
Vo, N. M. (2006). The Vietnamese boat People, 1954 And 1975-1992. McFarland & Company.
Thank you, Khai, for this interesting explanation! Sounds a bit like “ill/sick”, “shirt/skirt”, “house/mansion”, “royal/regal”, “catch/chase”, and all those other doublets in English we spoke about in class?
Absolutely! in Vietnamese, doublets/triplets are common since there are pure Vietnamese words/ loan English words, and Chinese Vietnamese. Depending on regions, circumstances that some words are more common than others.
Hi Ingrid,
Thank you for your sharing podcasts, the multilingualism is very interesting topic. It reminds me about my brother-in-law’s family. His parents are monolingual, they can just speak Vietnamese, but my brother-in-law came to Australia when he was under one year old and grew up there, so he speaks English. Because his parents cannot speak English, so he have to be interpreter for them and became bilingual. In other hand, his younger brother cannot speak Vietnamese. In the 2nd podcast, the young lady said if she doesn’t ask her parents in Cantonese, she won’t get the answer; her family forced her to become bilingual. But to younger bother of my brother-in-law, if his parents says like that he will say: “Fine, I will ask my brother”. What can the parents do? Nothing. I realise the multilingualism is no longer affected too much by family, but career and social can. Back to example of my brother-in-law’s family, his brother cannot speak Vietnamese but he can speak French because he is working in French bank, most of colleague is French or can speak French, so learn a bit and then he takes a French class. It is similar with the Chinese lady in 1st podcast, she can speak Vietnamese after working in Vietnamese restaurant. I think we don’t need to go to class to learn new language, we can learn it through informal immersion.
Thank you for sharing such a great series of podcast!! It was very interesting and fascinating to learn about multilingual parenting in Australia. The second and fourth podcasts remind me of my bilingual friend whom I met in college in Seoul. My bilingual friend was born in Korea and she immigrated to America when she was three. She lived there about 15 years and came to Korea due to her family situation. By the time, when I first met her in the class, she didn’t speak Korean at all so I couldn’t know her Korean skills. It seems like she preferred to communicate with others in English. When we became close friends, I asked her whether we can talk to each other in Korean since there were some words that I cannot express in English, maintaining the original meaning. We spoke Korean in the beginning of the conversation, but we often ended up speaking English as she can’t speak Korean fluently. She said that she is much more comfortable and confident when speaking English as she has been using English in home even after she came back to Korea. Her parents decided to teach her Korean language when she was young in America, but she had difficulty of learning it and gave up speaking Korean in home. I think her home language and the environment mostly shaped her being not able to use Korean completely. It is sad that she hasn’t been interested in any k pop music or some k drama which can give her desire to learn Korean. I definitely agree with the comments below made by our classmates that interests in the culture of the country can encourage for learning language.
Dear Ingrid,
Thank you so much for sharing these five wonderful blogs. I was born in a monolingual family where both parents speak Chinese, but I think that the benefits of bilingual education for children from an early age outweigh the disadvantages as children learn languages faster when they are young and are full of interest in learning. Secondly, accepting bilingual teaching in advance will lay a good foundation for children to learn English at school. I am envious of students who are proficient in multiple languages and can speak English fluently because Chinese schools do not pay much attention to the cultivation of students’ oral English, which makes it difficult for me to improve oral English now. Thirdly, bilingual education can help children understand the culture of other countries and make more friends. My sister’s daughter is currently receiving bilingual education in the United States, and she can communicate with me in two languages every time through the video. My English teacher’s daughter can speak fluent English at a young age and her pronunciation is also standard, which is not available to other children. I think this is a good phenomenon, so I will allow my child to receive bilingual education in the future.
Thank you Ingrid for sharing this five podcast series!
When it comes to bilingual, this reminds me of my cousin, she is a Chinese-German mixed-blood. Her mother is Chinese and her father is German. She was born in Germany. When she was in kindergarten, her mother discovered that she didn’t speak Chinese to herself anymore. Because her mother is a mother who pays great attention to Chinese culture and education, she is very anxious about this situation. Therefore, when she was 4 years old, her family moved back to China in order to better enable her to learn Chinese culture. After returning to China, her mother immediately sent her to a bilingual school to continue studying until now. I was fortunate to meet her the night before I went here. She spoke fluent Chinese with me and told me that she as a Chinese must be able to speak Chinese. She also said that she was particularly interested in Chinese traditional culture. What shocked me was that her Chinese folk dance was great.
Overall, language and cultural contact is ubiquitous for bilinguals or multilinguals.
Hi, Ingrid,
Thank you for sharing these five amazing podcasts. It is really interesting to hear about the situations of bilingual parenting in Australia. That reminds me of the days when I was a babysitter in Sydney. In this family, the mom spoke Cantonese, Mandarin and English while the dad spoke English because the mom immigrated here when she was an adult. However, the dad was born here. As children were born here as well, apart from speaking English, they spoke English to their dad and spoke Chinese to the mom. But due to the fact that the mom liked Chinese culture and believed that the competitive pressures will be increasing, the mom sent kids to Taiwan to learn Chinese. And the children told me that they felt it was hard to learn Chinese. Luckily, the children still seemed to have interested in language. And once we walked on the street, they helped an old couple who can only speak Cantonese to translate for them. So, I guess they can benefit from that. But we have to say that we can’t force children to do something that they hate.
True, Roxie! Below, 8030c has an interesting example of how to “lure” children into Chinese with martial arts novels …
Thank you for sharing this amazing podcast series! I am really into it. This series of podcasts made me recall my friends’ experiences in Australia. For new immigrants, raising children in Australia is a demanding task. Because the majority of new immigrants do not speak English as fluently as native speakers, many decide to teach their children English first, rather than their home tongue. My friend is one of them. He decided to teach his son Chinese in high school. But his son did not like extracurricular classes and even skipped class. Now his son can not speak Chinese and my friend can not speak fluent English. When they talk, they need my friend’s wife to be an interpreter.
My next-door neighbor is having the same problem. In order to help his son communicate better, dad exposed him to Chinese martial arts novels. His son can now converse and write in Chinese. His son even travelled to China to purchase the novels for his collection. This example indicates that learning a language entails learning about a different culture. Language and culture are connected. You can’t learn a language if you don’t like the culture.
Good point, 8030c!
Thank you for sharing this series! I found them very intriguing to listen to!! The second episode reminded me of two bilingual stories around me. The first one is a three-year-old boy in my homestay family. I had my undergraduate period in Canberra, and during that time I lived with a young Chinese couple that has immigrated to Australia for ten years. Their son, who was only three, was required strictly to speak only mandarin at home because his parents want him to remember his mother language. However, when this boy was at the preschool or playing with other kids outside the home, he was exposed to a pure English environment where he can only use English to communicate. Even there are kids from other language backgrounds in the preschool, English will be an “official” language for both kids and teachers. Since he was only three, his parents told us the boy often feel confused to change between languages, and because he spent more time in preschool, he was reluctant to speak mandarin at home. This made his parents quite worried.
The second one is a friend of mine who was also raised in a bilingual environment but the situation is different. Unlike the boy whose parents are immigrants, my friend’s parents are from different countries, China and South Korea. She lived and studied in China but communicate with her parents at home in both Chinese and Korean. A Chinese living background made her an expert in Chinese culture. She was also fluent in Korean and knows Korean culture well, because she has some friends and relatives from South Korea. I found these two examples interesting because although they both grew up in a bilingual environment, I can see that family impact is much stronger on the girl as she can directly get in close contact with different languages and cultures from her parents. Maybe for the boy, education and social activities would influence him more in the future. But there is one thing for sure, as children who can speak two languages, they will be more inclusive about cultural differences. And I believe that’s one crucial benefit to study more than one language.
Thanks, Xiaowen, for sharing these two interesting examples! I think age might also play a role in the differences you observe.
After listening to these podcasts, my biggest feeling is how fortunate it is for a language lover to be exposed as early as possible to another language other than his or her mother tongue, or to another dialect that is very different. Although I did not have this fortune, I grew up in a monolingual environment and learned my second language at school. In 2019, after I arrived in Sydney, the customs officer asked me to help interpret for an elderly Chinese Lady. After repeatedly speaking to her, I realised that she did not speak English, nor did she speak Mandarin or even Cantonese. I guessed that the dialect she spoke was probably some kind of language from the southern region of Fujian Province (southern China). Although she really needed help urgently (she needed to explain to the customs staff about the undeclared items in her carry-on luggage), I could not help her as I only speak Mandarin and English. The dialect system in the Fujian Province is very complex, and it is possible for two places in close proximity to speak completely different dialects. To people in other parts of China, the dialect spoken in Fujian seems to be a complex foreign language. This is one of the experiences that I have been feeling a bit sorry for over the past few years.
Thank you, Alicia, for sharing this interesting example! Reminds us how important the provision of interpreters is in institutional interactions!
Thanks, Professor Pillar, for sharing these five podcasts. It was fascinating to listen to other people’s personal views and experiences growing up or raising children in Australia. I felt that I am in the same boat because I am an immigrant and mother of one boy who speaks Spanish at home. I have heard all kinds of comments about the positive and negative because I keep encouraging my son to speak Spanish at home. Some teachers said that it affects my son’s performance at school and indirectly suggested that I should speak English to him all the time because the dominant language is English. Others think I must keep talking in my Spanish at home.
In the end, I am his mother, so from my point of view, transfer my language to my son is critical to his identity. Also, to help him to value our culture and our heritage and connect him with my family. I hope he can travel and have the experience to live in my country and learn more about his ancestors in the future.
Good luck, Anaid!
Thank you for sharing this fascinating podcast series. I now realized that how hard it is for bilingual parents to raise bilingual/multilingual children as well as to maintain the heritage language. However, I would like to tell you a story about a Vietnamese parent who speaks broken English (I’m not sure whether to call her a bilingual or not), bringing up her child bilingually with English as the first language and Vietnamese, the second.
My niece is about 4 and she, most of the time, speaks English but only knowing some Vietnamese words. She could barely communicate with other Vietnamese people around her such as her grandparents, relatives, and even her father. Surprisingly, her parents feel so proud of her for having English as the dominant language. Personally, I find this is… quite ironic compared to those parents from the podcast. While many parents out there are giving their best to pass down the mother language to their children, my cousin is doing oppositely. As a person who enjoys multilingualism, I am wondering whether to support or against this act of raising multilingual children. Honestly, I am utterly confused.
Thank you, Tram, for your comment! The story of your cousin is not unusual at all. Many adult migrants have struggled so much with learning English and settling in a new society, and they want to spare their children these troubles. As a society that is the message that we give to new migrants: English is the road to inclusion and to becoming Australian. What this overlooks is that language does not have to be an either-or choice. It does not have to be English OR Vietnamese, but can be both – English AND Vietnamese.
I wish that, as a society, we would support migrant parents more to raise their children bilingually, as language learning (just like child raising) cannot be done in isolation.
Having seen a lot of research with older migrant children, many of them feel regretful as young adults that they did not learn their heritage language. If the parents do not speak English well and the child does not speak Vietnamese well, there is also the danger that family relationships will break down when parents (not to mention grandparents and extended family) and children don’t have a common language (particularly when life gets complicated, as it often does for teenagers and young adults …)
Good luck to your niece! I don’t think you should support multilingualism in the abstract but maybe raise the importance for children to be able to communicate with their extended family to enjoy close relationships?
Thank you for your information and advice!
Thanks Ingrid for sharing this amazing podcast series.
Listening to this podcast made think think about multilingualism/ bilingualism from a second generation migrant point of view.
My parents are from South Korea but I was born and raised in Australia for pretty much 90% of my life. I have been here and there (Malaysia and Australia) before I was 5 and lived in Korea for a year before I officially lived here in Australia. So basically at the age of 5, I could only speak Korean because I pretty much had no contact with English speakers. I was raised under a household where only Korean was spoken (parents and grandparents spoke no English at all). However, due to the multicultural society I was exposed to in primary school, I gradually forgot the Korean language and became uncommunicable in Korean. Then when I got into high school I met a Korean student in my cohort but I was not able to communicate with her in Korean at all, while the friend constantly spoke to me in Korean. Ever since that encounter, I slowly became interested in the Korean popular culture and learned the Korean language through movies, dramas and tv show. The increase in interest in Korean culture has helped me significantly in listening and speaking in Korean and was one of the reasons why I decided to learn it in depth for my Bachelors Degree (Advanced Korean Studies).
Living in a monolingual household but also living in a community where most people speak English has shaped me in the way I am now. If it wasn’t for my interest in Korean pop culture, I would be speaking mostly in English.
Indeed there are many benefits for bilingualism/ multilingualism, however, I guess the down side of it is that I don’t think I can speak perfect in either languages and find it difficult where I belong. This doesn’t mean I am lost with my cultural background, because I’m sure am proud to be both Australian and Korean. I just wish to be perfect with either one of the languages but realise my vocabulary is limited and also realise I can’t express myself in just one language. To bridge this gap that I personally feel, I put in the effort to read Korean and English books to expand my vocabulary bank.
Thank you, Hee Won, for sharing your bilingual story! I’m a firm believer in reading. Not only because it expands our linguistic skills but also our thinking. Reading lets us inhabit the minds of others and walk in other people’s shoes. One of my favorite novels about the experience of growing up Korean (not in Australia but) in USA is Free Food for Millionaires, btw. Do you know it?
No I haven’t heard about it. I will sure have a read!!
Thank you for this fascinating podcast series! Parents are so often made to feel uncertain about their childrearing choices and deciding to speak another language at home is just another example. I have to admit that the choice to raise my children in German – the language in which my mother was also raised, and my second language – with my German partner is something I have never struggled to maintain as we simply carry on unapologetically speaking (and reading and listening to) German in all situations. While it is true that as a European language German is generally positively received in Australia, and that the confidence I have in my decision perhaps reflects my white, middle-class, educated, Anglo-Australian privilege, stubbornly refusing to switch to English for non-German speakers means that both my school-aged children as well as the outside world completely accept this arrangement. For my family, this has meant that German has been passed down from my grandparents, to my mother, to me and to my children with a high degree of success.
Glueckwunsch und weiter so! 🙂
Thank you, Ingrid,
Those vlogs all seemed quite related to us as international students living in Australia. To be honest, as mentioned in the first vlog, I am from a minority language background which is Mongolian and sometimes feel a bit jealous of people who are from dominant language backgrounds like Chinese, Arabic. Even though they don’t speak English here, they will survive somehow as they have such a big community and some signs/documents are already written in their language along with English which I believe is beneficial. But even though we are from a minority language background, we always try to keep our language and culture alive for our kids who are being raised here such as we celebrate our traditional holidays and organise small events to help each other here in Australia. Especially, it is very important for children who are born and being raised here to learn the language in order to communicate with their grandparents and relatives back in the country. It is funny that my little son is teaching Mongolian words such as greetings to their pre-school teachers even though his English is well. It is very nice that teachers acknowledged different cultures and greeting them in Mongolian makes me feel quite welcomed.
Also, I like Australia offers a lot of translating and interpreting services for those people who are not able to speak English. I have seen a lot of newcomers got help from those interpreting services.
Lydia
Thanks for sharing these meaningful podcasts. Bilinguals and multilingual seem to be increasing in recent decades in China. More parents raise their children to speak multiple languages at an early age, and some even send their children abroad at a young age. My friend Lily is an excellent example to learn bilingual, and she went to The United States with her parents when she was four years old. She has lived in the United States for more than 20 years. Every year, she returns to China with her parents to pay tribute to her ancestors. Every time we meet, I am curious that she communicates with me in fluent Chinese, not English. This is because her parents required her to speak Chinese at home, and her parents took her to a Confucius Institute every week to learn Chinese culture. Besides, her parents told her don’t forget her roots. This makes her Chinese quite excellent. Indeed, she also can speak English fluently. I believe this is an excellent example for bilinguals to learn the language. Keep balance in the relationship between language and culture is important.
Thanks, Lydia! Your friend’s parents have done very well! It’s a tough balancing act for parents to raise their children bilingually. If you are interested in the heritage language maintenance experience of Chinese families in Australia, check out this PhD thesis: Wang, Y. (2020). The heritage language maintenance of Chinese migrant children and their families. (PhD). Macquarie University, Retrieved from http://minerva.mq.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:71673
Thank you very much, Ingrid. I am quite interested in the heritage language maintenance. This is because I would like to bring up my children bilingually in the future. This is a good and valuable article for me to explore the methods. Thanks for your sharing again!
This series is very appealing. I have similar language learning experience when I was learning English. I am Chinese, in China, English is a mandatory course for all the students, we even started to learn English since we were in our kindergarten. Just like one of the series mentioned, language can be learned in our daily life. I remember when I was in my primary school, my English preferred to teach a new vocabulary through our daily life by using our first language. For example, she took a ‘pencil’, and asked us to say it in Chinese, then she would pronounce it in English. Same as ‘chair’, ‘table’, ‘chalk’ etc. By using objectives, students could clearer know the difference between Chinese and English. But, this was in my primary school. Since I grew up, the way I learnEnglish is pretty boring, to be honest. We focus more on our books and doing a lot of practices, we also have regular English exams, as a preparation for our college entrance exam to ensure that we can get a high score. Even though we got a high score, this doesn’t mean we can speak English fluently and use English appropriately. Firstly, what we learned is mainly for passing exams rather than daily life communication. Besides, our family background is Chinese, and people around us speak Chinese as well, we don’t have opportunities to use English after school. After we enter our colleges, most people no longer need to learn English, gradually, we even forget what we learned before college. Therefore, cultural background is really important for language learning.
Besides, this series also reminds me my Spanish learning journey in my bachelor degree. There are many similarities between Spanish and Englishs. Some words even have the same spelling, but actually they have different pronunciations, for example, ‘regular’. ‘r’ in Spanish is a twist tongue pronunciation, and it pronounces very differently from English. But as I have been learning English for many years, when I met such words, I am still used to pronouncing them as the same as their English pronunciations. In this case, English learning background really influences me a lot in my Spanish learning. If I learn English and Spanish together at the same time, probably this will not happen.
For language learning, I personally do not like relying on too much first language teaching, but I really enjoy teacher using first language as a comparison to see the differences between the first language and the target language(s). This may be more implementable in our own country. But, my English does have improved a lot since I came to Australia, as I began to use English a lot. I feel ashamed to speak English with my friends in China, as people may feel strange about us, but I won’t have this feeling in Australia, even my friends are Chinese, sometimes we still use English to communicate and to help each other correct mistakes. I feel like this should be the correct way of learning English rather than only focus on textbooks.
Those are such intriguing postcard series! Raising bilingual children seems to be a rapidly growing trend because of its significant advantage in today’s globalized society. Besides, I also had an opportunity to see some challenges that come along with it when I looked at the language-learning journey of my cousin’s children. My cousin’s family immigrated to America when her son was five years old. English is an official language there, so she and her husband decided to speak only English with her son to help him adapt to his new life abroad. As a result, her son gradually became passive bilingual as he can understand Vietnamese but cannot speak it. My cousin regretted making her son lose his mother tongue’s speaking skills, so she tried to talk to her second son in Vietnamese since he was born. She admitted that it is tough to help her son retain his mother tongue since he went to kindergarten. Her son prefers speaking English and usually replies to her in English when she talks Vietnamese to him. To solve this problem, she has to create consistency by speaking only Vietnamese to her sons and always asks them to communicate with her in Vietnamese.
Thanks for sharing. It’s a great podcast series.
There are many different languages in the world, and behind these languages are different cultures. People have a higher sense of identity with their mother tongue than other languages.This may be true from the perspective of the past, but from the perspective of development, we still need to strengthen the learning of other languages and their cultural backgrounds. Multilingualism is a global trend in which different cultures meet and merge to produce new “dialects”. In my country, for example, there is a policy of comprehensive Mandarin in China, but I think there are branches of the language such as Cantonese that are still worth learning and understanding. Mandarin and Cantonese are just like English and Spanish in other countries where certain words from other languages have become part of the culture. We should be optimistic about linguistic diversity and open to multilingualism.
Thanks, tviq, for your uplifting message on this Monday morning 🙂
Raising bilingual children in Australia is one of the most difficult challenges. My first child didn’t attend childcare before school and we used to speak Arabic with him. In his first year at school, his teacher asked me once to do a hearing test for him because he didn’t follow instructions. I knew that it was because he wasn’t
able to understand them as he was able to follow instructions in Arabic. With my second child, I decided to teach him English before he went to school to not struggle like his brother. Currently, my second child doesn’t speak Arabic properly while my oldest is fluent in both languages. Therefore, I am trying to fix my mistake by not allowing English at home.
Thank you, WAA! It’s such a struggle, and, as you point out, it’s about much more than language choice. Much too often the choice is presented to parents as being between the home language and educational success …
You might enjoy this article: Piller, I., & Gerber, L. (2021). Family language policy between the bilingual advantage and the monolingual mindset. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 24(5), 622-635. doi:10.1080/13670050.2018.1503227
Thank you for such a list of diverse podcast. Bringing up a bilingual baby is the most relatable for me because when I moved to Australia I shared a place with a Pakistani family who immigrated to Australia. Both parents were Urdu speaking while their kids were born and brought up in Australia. The challenge for the kids was to speak Urdu at home while they were going to an English medium school provided the fact that national and official language of Australia is English. I saw the kids struggling to maintain a balance between their mother language and academic language.
Thank you for sharing this series! I indeed enjoyed listening to them. This series of podcasts is highly relevant to my current career as an early childhood teacher. I have seen numerous children obtain the capability of using two or more languages by speaking different languages at home with their families. I believe that multilingualism and multiculturalism bond closely as they provide a strong sense of cultural belonging to the speakers about their unique cultural identity. However, there are still misconceptions held by some parents because they are afraid that their children might not be catching up with English when they attend primary school. Based on research and my life experiences, children often feel more confident when they develop their cultural understanding concerning home language as a part of their heritage passed from the previous generation and have a positive attitude towards language openness. As a bilingual teacher, I always devote myself to implement a range of intercultural and cross-cultural learning experiences for the children and encourage parents to value the importance of maintaining their home languages as much as possible.
Thanks for amazing podcast series! I’m really into it. It made me recall an American TV series: Fresh off the boat which talks about an immigrant Taiwanese family and how they try to adjust to socio-cultural and socio-economic reality of living in the US. Same with the content in episode 2 and 4 in the series, the older generations and the parents always expect their children to learn the the first their language. They tried to find the educator or childcare worker who speak their own language when their kids were in the young ages or the Mom prefers her child to date a Chinese girl (in the TV series). There is only one reason that is they want to keep the soul of culture alive and their children acquire their custom, original point. As the language carries the values and cultures, the children are being raised bilingually.
However, it could be challenging to keep children interested in pursuing their parents’ language. In my cousin’s situation, she tried to teach her son Vietnamese at home, he did speak this language like 4-year-old kids in Vietnam. But since he went to kindergarten, he has been no longer speaking Vietnamese unless his parents force him. Or some cases in my neighbourhood (Lidcombe), I see so many teenagers, from Chinese-Australian or even Chinese-Chinese families, only know to speak Chinese without reading and writing. I wonder if they could meet their parents’ expectation. One more example I want to mention here is my bilingual friend, she was born in Australia and her parents are both Chinese. Different from her siblings who only know to speak Chinese, she asked her parents to find Chinese class for her to learn writing and reading skill, even she often watches Chinese news, joins in Chinese writing workshops. She told me that she loves and respect her parents’ culture and she would never lose her family’s original value.
So, maintaining the migrant language in generations is always a controversial topic depending on both internal and external factors (the children themselves, family, school, community).
Amazing series! I totally agree with one of these moms in the 3rd episode who said the language was not just to communicate and there were values within the culture. I learned English as an adult, still, English has a profound impact on my mindset, and sometimes the cultural difference marks my own cultural background and reminds me that I am loath to have my future children miss that.
For example, the other day, I was having dinner with a group of friends, we basically are all bilingual and speak both Chinese and English. When a dish was served on the table, I actually got stuck to remind my fellows in English to eat the food while it is “just out of the pot” and warm. My friends and I talked about why it is this unusual to say this every day –sometimes every meal– utterance in English, then we noticed that it is typical in China that we care about how well people eat, and freshly cooked food is regarded as one of the best. This could be partially ascribed to some historic events of great famines and Chinese traditional medicine.
Thus, to speak a certain kind of language is intimately involved with the spiritual contact, and for my future children, I wish they could understand my mother’s or grandmother’s greets and cares from our own culture.
This series of programmes highlights the succession of language change events from many different languages to English in Australian society. In my own family the original settlers were Gaelic and Irish speakers and conversed at home in these languages but used English in their official lives. Subsequent generations moved completely to English but retained strong connections to cultural activities like music while not maintaining the language. I think that this has happened quite widely in the diaspora where there are many highland gatherings and pipe bands but little attention is paid to the Gaelic language and it was quite interesting to see this mirrored in other communities.
There were a lot of things that I could really relate to in this week’s podcast series.
While I do not necessarily have “multi-nationalities”, I do identify myself as multilingual. My parents are both Korean and I am 100% Korean, but I was born in Thailand, speaking Thai in my daily life, yet receiving education in English (at an international school). Before going to nursery, Korean was all I spoke (I also did hear Thai all around me), but once I started school, English was my main way of communicating. With an older brother going through the same education process, I spoke mainly English with him. With my parents, it was Korean.
In the third episode (podcast), someone mentioned it being “a struggle to remain their nationality when not in their homeland” and that speaking the language helps to keep that sense of root and identity. I could relate to this in several different ways.
While I have never lived in Korea, I was proud of my “home” country and had that attachment with Koreans in the foreign land. Being at home with my parents and going to a Korean church, speaking Korean, was the closest feeling I could get of being Korean. That was what helped me hold on to my Korean identity.
However, during my childhood, I also had that sense of not belonging. I could not say I was American nor Thai, but I also couldn’t see myself as being like the other Koreans who lived in Korea. The only thing I had in common with all the other Koreans was that I spoke the language and I looked like them. But as we say, language is not simply the language itself but has a lot to do with culture, which I know for a fact. While I was Korean by blood, I was more familiar with the American culture and ways of living. My teachers at school would teach us all about the culture, tradition, history, etc and my school environment was basically American. I would only barely learn about Korea once in a while from my parents (Korean history was covered on only a single page during World History class).
To this day there are some sides of me where I identify myself to be more Western than Asian.
Now that I have lived in Korea for over 5 years I have lost a lot of sense of belonging to the Thai/American community. And not hearing the languages where I live, I intentionally try to speak the languages and find ways to get exposed to them. Someone in the podcast mentioned that he experienced a sense of joy hearing his language being spoken where it is often not heard. Likewise, when I was in Thailand, I was happy to hear Korean around me; now, it has become the opposite. I feel that bond with random people who speak Thai here in Korea. In fact, I try to find opportunities to actually meet Thai people or Americans, and communicate with them, because it brings back my sense of belonging to those cultures.
Language definitely has a strong power in giving that sense of identity and the environment plays an important role too. That is why I believe that it is difficult to raise children as bilinguals when living in a country where one language is barely used…
Thank you, Kim, for sharing your experience with your languages and cultures! I think we do not often enough recognize the fact that both belonging and “un-belonging” are valuable …
I LOVED this series!!! I devoured it all in one sitting. I absolutely identified most with the second episode about raising multilingual kids as my nephews are being raised bilingual (my sister is American and my brother-in-law is Spanish). I am lucky that I also speak Spanish, so I can speak in both languages with them. One of the women in the episode remarked that she just doesn’t feel right calling her child “honey” or “sweetie” but rather uses terms of endearment from her first language. I find I am the same way with my nephews and, even when I’m speaking to them in Spanish, I fall straight back into English when I want to use a term of endearment.
I once read (and I’m sorry that I can’t remember the source!) that your first language is usually the one that your mother sung you lullabies in, and that really brings home the connection between one’s first language and the most primal feeling of comfort and security. I really hope the mothers (and some fathers) in the episode don’t feel that pressure (that Hanna talked about) for their children to be “dual monolingual” because that connection with that first language of comfort is SO important. I love the idea of reaching a state in the world where we could all feel comfortable code-switching and translanguaging, and we didn’t feel the pressure to speak a language “correctly” all the time in order to feel valid as a speaker of that language. However, in order to make that happen I think we need to teach monolingual speakers (especially monolingual English speakers) to be better listeners.
Thank you, Brynn, for your enthusiastic response! Good point about terms of endearment – I’ve never warmed “sweetie”, “honey” etc. myself; to this day I somehow feel they are not genuine …