英語Ⅶの３

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It wasn't until he was almost four years old and still showed very few signs of learning any English?in spite of first having been going to a day-care centre and later to a playgroup for more than two years altogether?that we had to acknowledge that bringing up one's child with two languages is not just a matter of course, that it might pose too many problems for the child involved, and that we had to make a conscious decision as to whether or not we wanted to keep up our mother tongue at home.

「訳」　彼が４歳近くにもなり、まだ最初に、全体で2年間以上デイケアのセンター以降に私設保育園に行きますが、 どんなイギリス人についても知るほんのわずかな兆候を示すまで、私たちは、2つの言語をもっている人の子供を育てるのが、 もちろん問題であるだけではなく、かかわった子供のためにあまりに多くの問題を引き起こすかもしれなくて、 家で私たちの母国語を維持したかったかどうかに関して意識的な決断をしなければならなかったと認める必要はありませんでした。

彼が四歳近くにもなり、それまでに最初は保育園へ、後にプレイグループへと、合わせて二年以上も通っていてにもかかわらず、 依然として英語を覚えそうな気配がほとんど見られないという事態にいたって初めて、 二カ国語が身につくように子供を育てるというのは単に当たり前と行ってすまされる事柄ではなく、 それは当の子供にあまりにも多くの問題を投げかけることになるかもしれず、 家庭で母国語を使い続けたいか否かについて私たちは冷静な判断を下さなくてはならない、と認めざるを得なかった。

うむ～かなり微妙な感じだが～「参考」ということで納得しよう。

3  Why parents opt for a bilingual upbringing
[24]
As I explained in Chapter 1, my definition of a bilingual upbringing is
that the parents involved have chosen to create and to maintain the
bilingual situation as opposed to a situation where parents and children
just have to adjust to it in order to survive. In this chapter, I want
to look at why and when parents decide on a bilingual upbringing.
Is it essential to resolve upon a course of action before the child is
even born? What are the advantages of being bilingual? What
happens in the case of a drastic change in circumstances, such as a
divorce? The reasons why parents decide to bring up their children
with two languages are manifold. And, as we shall see, there are also
many ways in which the decision can come about.

Making a choice
'For me and my husband, a bilingual upbringing wasn't a conscious
choice from the very beginning. We never thought about the matter
very much until we noticed that our children weren't reacting very
favourably to the fact that they had to cope with two different lan-
guages. Until then we had more or less considered the bilingual
upbringing as a fact of life, because the language of communication
between ourselves, and thus the language we spoke to our children,
was not the language of the country where we lived.
  Our children's difficulties forced us to think carefully about their
bilingual upbringing, but we didn't change our course of action. We
have now made a conscious decision to keep up the Dutch language,

[25]
and this is still the language in which all four of us communicate most
freely and easily at home. At the same time, we trust that by learning
English in the outside world, and especially at school, our children will
stand every chance of becoming native speakers of that language.'

  There are also many parents who do sit down and give the matter
considerable thought well before the birth of their first child. I found
this particularly true for couples who have different mother tongues.
In theory, couples with a mixed-language marriage are in a position
to define the problem in advance, to weigh the advantages and dis-
advantages, and to assess the feasibility of a certain course cf action.
Of course, practice may prove to be different from theory and the
original choice may need to be reconsidered. But these parents are
very likely to have considered the pros and cons of a bilingual up-
bringing from the start.
  Gaby is Dutch and her husband is English. They have lived in
England since their marriage and their children are now five and
two-and-a-half years old. Their common language is English. Gaby
told me:
  'We did think and talk about the possibility of a bilingual upbringing
before the birth of our first child. I come from a bilingual background
myself, but both of us felt it was a good idea to bring up our children
with two languages and that we would have to do it from the very
beginning. It was now or never. Also, we thought that the kind of
mental training it involved for the children would benefit them.
  'And if I had any doubts about the feasibility of it, they soon
disappeared after the arrival of my first baby. I could never have
talked to him in any other language but my own. As a new mother

[26]
I had already enough to worry about, and therefore I didn't want
to have to bother about speaking a foreign language or to wonder
whether I was using the right words or sentence constructions. David
understands Dutch, so he doesn't need to feel excluded when I am
talking to the children, but he always speaks English to them himself.
Our children have had a truly bilingual upbringing from the very
beginning.'
  So far the older one, a boy, has responded better than the little
girl: he is capable of keeping the two languages separate and speaks
both of them, while the girl understands both English and Dutch,
but will only speak English. Of course, these children are still young
and only time will tell whether the parents will be able to stick to
their original plans.
  Another mother, with two little daughters, described how she had
come to her decision to speak her own language with them. Kerstin
is Swedish and is married to an Englishman. Their two girls are now
five and one. She wrote:
  'It made a great difference to me when, not long before my first
daughter's birth, I realized that I was going to speak Swedish to a
Swedish child?I mean that I realized suddenly that the child would
be as much Swedish as English. It then came totally naturally to me
to speak Swedish to her. Until then I had unconsciously thought I
would be speaking Swedish to an English child and that would have
been much more difficult to keep up.'

Taking a risk
But how are we going to find out whether these decisions and pro-
cedures will have worked by the time the children have grown some-

[27]
what older? One way is to look at a different though similar case
of a family with older children: here is a mother who took the
decision to have two languages in the house quite some time ago.
Annick comes from France and she has lived in England for almost
twenty years now. Her husband was born in Germany, but he was
brought up in England. Their children are fifteen, thirteen, and ten
years old. For all three of them English is the more important
language, but they all speak French fluently. I asked her how and
when she decided on a bilingual upbringing. This is what she
answered:
  I actually thought about it before they were born. I had seen two
examples in my immediate neighbourhood which helped me to decide:
one family succeeded in bringing up their child with two languages
right from the very beginning, and the other waited until the age of
seven and then the child refused to speak French. My main reason
for speaking French to them was that I knew that whatever I was
going to do English was going to take over anyhow. So I thought,
the more French I get into them the better. At the same time I was
warned that a lot of children who speak two languages don't know
either of them very well and can have all sorts of difficulties. But I
was prepared to take the risk.'
  Annick said she took a risk, but obviously she has succeeded in
bringing up her children bilingually. Parents often worry about this:
whether they are actually taking a risk and how great that risk is.
The fact is that there is still not much known about the effects of a
bilingual upbringing in the long run, for the bilingual input can never
be singled out as the one cause of a person's achievement, or failure,
in a certain area of life.

[28]
I think the important thing to remember is that the language
development of a bilingual child is different from that of a mono-
lingual child and that, as we will see in the following chapters, some
problems may indeed arise. But we will also see that, if parents take
their time and don't make a great fuss about it during some of the
more difficult periods, a bilingual upbringing can be a happy experience
for parents and children alike.

Visits and visitors
One reason why Annick and her family have been rather successful
in maintaining both languages is that over the years they have spent
almost all their holidays in France and have had a constant stream
of French visitor to their house in South London. As a matter of
fact, practically all parents mentioned this as an important reason
for embarking on a bilingual upbringing: the children should be able
to communicate with the relatives who live abroad.
  Travelling is now comparatively easy and cheap, and I found that
many families see their relatives quite regularly, either visiting the
original home country of one or both parents or having visitors from
abroad. There often seems to be a smaller or larger group of people
'back home', consisting of relatives and friends, with whom we want
to stay in touch. Some of our friends will get by in one or two
foreign languages, but many of them don't. And the grandparents
and cousins will usually speak only one language, while they are often
the people that parents want their children to become particularly
close to.
  Rosella is Italian and lives in England, married to an Englishman.
I am sure that she spoke for many other parents when she said:

[29]
I wanted my children to have a close relationship with the grand
parents on both sides. And I realized that they could only love their
Italian grandmother in the same way they loved their English grand-
mother if they could feel comfortable when speaking Italian.'
  She then continued:
  'It has worked for my daughter, who is the eldest of my three
children. She is now eight years old and although English is her best
language, she will speak Italian to my mother, who stays with us in
England regularly. But my four-year-old son has declared that he
finds Italian too difficult to speak. Also, all the cousins who live in
Italy happen to be girls, so he tends to stick to his father a great deal
when we are there.'
  Not only do parents want their children to be able to communicate
with the grandparents, but parents also hope that grandparents will
provide a natural impetus for the children to practise the foreign
language, as Kaska pointed out to me. She and her husband are yet
another example of a mixed-language marriage: Kaska comes from
Poland, her husband is Dutch and they live in England, just outside
London. Their language of communication is English, but Kaska has
been speaking Polish to their daughter. She said:
　　'My parents are coming to visit us in a few months' time. I am
looking forward to their stay because it will provide a natural setting
for speaking Polish. Up till now I have mainly talked in Polish with
my daughter, who is now three-and-a-half, and she understands it
perfectly well. But since she started playgroup half a year ago, she
just wants to speak English. Having the grandparents around will
hopefully make it more worthwhile for her to speak some Polish again.'
Another way to ensure that children will practise the other language

[30]
is to let them stay abroad on their own with their grandparents?or
other relatives or friends. The age at which children will feel confident
enough to do this will vary a great deal and it also depends on how
well they know the people they are visiting. But if hosts and guests all
feel comfortable about it, such visits can be a great success all round.
There may even be an added bonus for the parents in that it gives
them a chance to go on a holiday elsewhere. It was Magda, who is
also Polish and lives in England married to an Englishman, who first
mentioned this to me. Her two children are eight and five years old.
She said:
　'Up till now we have spent almost all our holidays in Poland. But,
frankly speaking, I want to see a bit more of the world myself. The
plan for this summer is that the children will go to Poland together
to stay with my parents. This way they have a chance to see the
family and practise their Polish, while there will still be time and
money left for us to go elsewhere for our holiday.'
　　Holidays abroad?or having visitors from abroad?offer a natural
opportunity for a language to be used and practised, and I feel it is
very important for a child to be able to see some point in learning
or keeping up a second language. The fact that more and more parents
are now choosing to bring up their children bilingually, and are doing
so successfully, may actually have a lot to do with travel being so
much easier.
One begins almost to wonder whether parents could in fact leave it
to those holiday occasions and forget about the bilingual upbringing
at home. The point is, however, that a language can't be learned from
scratch within the time limit set by a holiday period. It is true that
children can tremendously improve upon their command of a language

[31]
over a two, three, or four week period, but only if the basic knowledge
of the language is there. A parent who was quite explicit on this
matter was Angelina. She came from Spain to live in England and
marry an Englishman almost twenty years ago. She had the following
observation:
　'My children have been accepted in Spain as Spanish children, be-
cause they can speak the language when they go there. Communication
must be given a chance, otherwise people are less interested in you
as a person. If we had gone to visit my relatives and friends in Spain
with the children just speaking English, they would never have had
a chance to become fully integrated in the lifestyle of the people we
know there. And because they were accepted and integrated, they
learned to speak the language even better.'

A matter of taste
In my search for information on parents and bilingual children I often
came across families where one or both parents seemed to have a
particular interest in languages. ; Such an interest may not be a
necessary condition for marrying someone from abroad or for moving
abroad oneself, but it certainly helps/) And for many people it is by
no means a mere coincidence that they end up living in a country
where the language spoken is the language they studied at university.
Parents with this kind of background and keen on studying lan-
guages themselves are usually very enthusiastic about bringing up
their children bilingually. But like all other parents they have to
adopt a pragmatic standpoint on the matter. These parents had
certainly succeeded in doing so: Marie-Luce is French, her husband is
English, and they both teach French at a university in the North of

[32]
England. Both were at home when I arrived to interview them.
Marie-Luce:
  'When we met we were both fairly fluent in each other's language,
but although we have lived in England since our marriage we have
mostly communicated in French with each other. When Maxime was
born it was fairly natural for both of us to speak French to him, for
that was the language of the house. Moreover, we wanted to establish
French as a language before he would be exposed to English, which
he would learn in any case. Also, we reckoned that if English had
been his first language, the need to learn French wouldn't have been
half as strong from his point of view. So for Maxime, and for his
younger brother, French was the first language.'
  Her husband continued:
  'Nowadays, however, English is a lot more around in the house, not
least because the two boys, now six-and-a-half and four years old,
always talk English to each other. I also speak English more regularly,
for instance when playing with the boys, as their games become more
intricate and technical each day. And we are both convinced that
conflict situations are to be avoided, as language development should
be natural and we want to be careful not to build up any resentment.'

Language and culture
Language can't be isolated from the rest of life. A nation's language
is inextricably linked with its culture and there is no way of separating
the two I found people very aware of this. During almost every
interview my informants would sooner or later bring up the re-
lationship between language and other aspect of life. The relationship
isn't always simple or straightforward, but parents frequently men-

[33]
tioned the fact that one can't talk about the circumstances of a
bilingual upbringing without looking at what it means to live with two
cultures as well as two languages.
Francoise comes from France, lives in London, and has an English
husband. She simply stated:
  'Language is a way of life. It's food, discipline, children's bed-time,
the way you spend your free time. My children know both ways: in
England they know how to be English children, in France they can
be part of the French community.'
  An important reason why parents want their children to become
bilingual is that they want them to be familiar with the culture of
the other country. For people who feel strongly about their back
ground, teaching their children their own language is a way (though
it is not the only way) of transmitting their own identity.
  Johan's parents moved from Hungary to Australia when he was nine
years old. As an adult he moved to England and through his education
and training English has inevitably become the language in which he
expresses himself most fluently. However, he has always regretted the
loss of the Hungarian language and culture by his family in Australia.
His wife is also Hungarian and moved from Hungary to England upon
their marriage. I spoke to her and she told me:
  'We decided that the children should be brought up with both
Hungarian and English. For me and my husband Hungarian has
always been our main language of communication, although I speak
English fairly easily as I worked in a London office for a number of
years before our first daughter was born. Both of us have always talked
in Hungarian to our daughters, who are now eight and six years old.
At the same time, English has gradually taken over as the more

[34]
important language for the girls through school and social contacts.
My husband, however, is quite strict in his efforts to keep up Hungarian,
even by practising reading and writing the language with them,
something he had to re-learn as an adult.'
  The decision to keep up a foreign language is different for couples
with a single-language marriage than for parents in a mixed-language
marriage. It is easier for parents with a common native tongue to
use this with their children than for a parent who is the only one who
speaks the other language. But, especially after the children have
reached school age, it always needs a certain commitment on behalf
of the parents to see to it that their own language and culture are
passed on to their children.
Suso and his wife come from Catalonia in Spain and together they
have lived in England for fourteen years now. He pointed out that
his children, who are now thirteen and ten years old, were not bilingual
in Spanish and English, as I first assumed, but in Catalan and English.
The Catalan language has been preserved in Spain in spite of many
years of oppression and it seems that this couple try to continue the
tradition, even far away from their country of origin. I was given the
impression that Suso's determination to do so has had the required
results so far. But he also insisted that just keeping up the language
is not enough, for he said:
  'If you want to teach your children your own language, you have
to teach them about your culture as well. Some immigrants don't even
know their own history and then you cannot expect the children to
feel proud of it.'

[35]
Changing circumstances
The decision to bring up one's children with two languages is hardly
one that can be taken once and for all. Changing circumstances and
unexpected reactions from the children may force parents to alter
course. Whether parents decide to teach their children two languages
simultaneously, whether they put them through the process of learning
a second language after the first has been established, or whether they
want to keep up the first language after the children have acquired a
second one, parents have to opt for a bilingual upbringing time and
again. And it always needs an effort on the part of the parents to
see to it that their children become or remain bilingual.
Jeanette moved from Holland to marry an Englishman when her
children were nine, ten, and twelve years old. Her story:
  'My first concern was that the children would learn English and I
actually started teaching them while we were still living in Holland.
We sat down for an English lesson twice a week and I even gave them
some homework to do. Before we moved to England, we spent a short
holiday there, but at that time the children were quite disappointed
when they found out how little they already knew of the language.
After we had settled, however, and they had started school, English
came along fairly quickly, especially for the boy, who is the youngest
of the three. They have all received remedial teaching at school and
from the beginning we made an effort to speak English at home
during mealtimes.
  'And now, after three years the problem has reversed 180 degrees.
My main concern now is to keep up Dutch, and it is turning out to
be more difficult than I had anticipated. I would have thought that
my children had reached an age where a language is so well established

[36]
that they wouldn't forget it. But this is true only if you really make
an effort to keep it up. Also, we live in the North of England and we
have to make quite an effort to go to Holland. For this reason the
children don't get as much practice as I would like them to have.'
Jeanette's case isn't all that extraordinary. Circumstances may
change more quickly and more drastically than we sometimes like to
think. She is not the only mother I talked to who moved abroad with
her children to marry again. For younger children the transition
might be easier, but it is true that children don't necessarily learn a
new language quite naturally or automatically. And keeping up an old
one is even less automatic, for the language spoken at school will
gradually take over as the more important one for the children.
At any given time, life may force us into a sudden change of direc-
tion. What happens after a divorce, or when one of the parents dies,
and the surviving parent considers returning to his or her country
of origin? None of the parents I talked to actually mentioned the
possibility of becoming a single parent?and therefore of wanting or
needing to return to the country of origin?as a reason for bringing
up their children with two languages. After all, we can't predict or
guard ourselves against all possible events in life. But the eventuality
of going back to one's own country can be in the back of one's mind.
Many considerations will come to bear upon such a decision, and
language will only be one of them. Let us see what the reality looked
like for someone who had to face this situation.
  Mushi moved from England to live in Paris fourteen years ago when
she married a Frenchman. They separated five years ago when the
children were seven, three, and two. She explained her situation to
me:

[37]
'I considered going back to England, but it turned out to be im-
possible for me to find either a job or suitable housing there. Here
I can at least earn some kind of living by teaching English as a foreign
language. The children understand English and I will sometimes speak
it with them, for one consequence of the separation has been that I
myself speak a lot more English and far less French than when
I was still married. But my children are basically French children. When
they were born I decided they should become firmly rooted in one
country, for I never had that experience myself. It is important to
me that my children should feel at home here, even if for myself I
have given up hope of becoming fully integrated into the French way
of life.'

Advantages
So far I have suggested a number of reasons and circumstances which
affect how parents decide upon a bilingual upbringing for their
children. Up till now, it seems as if the reasons that were mentioned
were all at least as much for the parents' sake as for the children's.
It won't come as a surprise, though, that parents who are in favour
of having more than one language around usually also produce a
long list of the advantages this has for the children.
  When asked about the advantages of a bilingual upbringing, one
father simply wrote down 'legion'. Others were more specific, and
the answers given most regularly were: 'knowing two languages
makes it easier to learn a third or fourth', 'later it will benefit them
job-wise', 'increases self-confidence', 'makes them more tolerant and
open-minded', and 'more choices and more chances'. And Anne, who
brought up two children in France while she and her husband both

[38]
have English as their mother tongue, wrote:
'The obvious advantages are that two worlds are open to you rather
than only one. Besides being able to communicate verbally with
everyone, from the dustman to the distinguished neighbours, the
mentality of the people of a particular country becomes familiar to
you through language. Therefore, later on, in the working world for
example, you are not only able to converse but also able to understand
and cope with people'.
  Only one parent I talked to was somewhat more cynical when asked
about the advantages of a bilingual upbringing for the children them-
selves. She remarked:
  I used to study languages and it is true that people with a bilingual
background were often streets ahead of the rest of us. No doubt it
is very useful if you want to become a simultaneous translator. But
how many of our children will actually choose that as a profession?'