Grüezi, bonjour, bongiorno!
Nathalie has a Swiss-German mother and a French-speaking father from French-speaking Switzerland. Growing up in Switzerland, she learnt both Swiss German and French and now speaks both equally. The 24-year-old says she benefits greatly from this, as she can easily make new friends without language barriers. Nathalie is currently training to become a secondary school teacher. She would like to teach German, English and French as a foreign language in the future. Her bilingual upbringing also influenced her later career choice: «It sparked my interest in languages. Not only was I able to learn German and French effortlessly from an early age, it was also easier for me to learn my additional languages, English and Italian.»
The more you are together with your child, the more intensive the linguistic exchange will be.
According to a survey conducted by the Federal Statistical Office in 2015, almost 20 per cent of the permanent resident population in Switzerland are bilingual. A further 4 per cent state that they speak more than two main languages. This includes the ability to speak two or more Swiss national languages (almost) equally as main languages. The most common combinations are German/French (10 per cent) and German/Italian (10 per cent), followed by French/Italian (6 per cent). Romansh as a mother tongue usually goes hand in hand with fluency in German or Italian or both. However, multilingualism also means speaking another mother tongue in addition to one of the four national languages. Among the most frequently mentioned are: English, Portuguese, Albanian, Serbian, Croatian and Spanish. Looking at both the time spent at home and at work, 40 per cent of the Swiss population speak two or more languages on a daily basis.
More and more young Swiss are multilingual
More than a third of the younger Swiss resident population (15-24 years) are multilingual in everyday life. Around 12 per cent even speak three languages or more - and the trend is rising. More and more children like Nathalie are growing up multilingual in Switzerland. The increase in intercultural couples also means that more parents are multilingual. The most common reason is relocation. When moving from abroad, a different language of origin often comes together with a Swiss national language, or a change of canton can lead to a new neighbouring language.
Children learn the surrounding language quickly and are highly motivated to make new friends.
If a French-speaking couple moves to Zurich with children, for example, the children speak French at home but German at school. However, the children may also go to a French-speaking school so that the language of origin can be better consolidated alongside the local language. In general, children learn the local language quickly and with great motivation in order to make friends and communicate with the world around them. In individual cases, however, extraordinarily complex constellations can arise: A Swiss-German woman speaks High German with her partner, who comes from French-speaking Switzerland. Now they are moving to Norway with their two-year-old son. The child would therefore be confronted with High German, Swiss German, French, Norwegian and - as is often the case in Scandinavian countries - English. Which languages should the child learn and how can this be done?
One person - one language
Even with less complex language constellations, it is worth thinking about the language education of the children. Parents can, for example, consider together which languages they would like to pass on and how they would like to organise this. There seem to be an infinite number of constellations and models for this. The most popular and most promising is «one person - one language»; this means that the child always speaks the same language with one person and a different language with another person. The person in question does not have to be a parent, it can just as easily be a carer, teacher or grandparent. The «one person - one language» concept has already been tested many times in practice and is intended to reduce the risk of children mixing languages.
Parents should have a (near) perfect command of the language before teaching it to their children.
This rule was also applied to Nathalie. Her mother consistently spoke Swiss German with her and her siblings, while her father spoke French. The parents spoke French to each other, and the language of the neighbourhood was also French for Nathalie - except for one school year. Despite this, Nathalie does not remember her mother ever deviating from her rule. Authors such as Elke Montanari advise adherence to this rule, even when difficulties arise. She describes how the daughter of an Italian mother found it embarrassing that her mother only spoke Italian with her in public (in German). She wanted to be like everyone else and wished that her mother would speak the same language as those around her. Today, however, her daughter is happy about her bilingual upbringing.
The joy of communicating
Sometimes it takes a certain amount of composure if the child refuses and doesn't want to speak a language (anymore). In such situations, Montanari suggests playfully pretending not to understand the child in the other language. Or to «let the sentence pass» in the other language (especially with small children), but to repeat it in your own language (see book tip). In the end, multilingual education succeeds even without the «one person - one language» model. According to research findings, however, the chances of a child retaining a language and mastering it to a good level are higher. In some families, a certain amount of flexibility and individual solutions are also required: for example, if one of the language-learning people is frequently absent or if a family member does not understand the language and feels excluded. However, the most important thing is to enjoy communicating! Do we talk to our child a lot? Or are we travelling too much and the child speaks a different language in our absence (e.g. with the childminder or babysitter)? The more you spend time with your child, the more intensive the language exchange can be.
Native speakers have a larger vocabulary
Will my child be left behind in the globalised world if they don't grow up multilingual? If the environment makes multilingualism possible, it is always advisable to make use of these opportunities - provided it is done according to certain rules and in a child-friendly way. A child should be able to enjoy learning different languages without pressure or excessive demands. For a long time, people were convinced that a multilingual upbringing would overtax children and lead to deficits in language acquisition and development. However, this opinion has been outdated since the 1970s: children can easily learn two or more languages from birth, and certain studies even point to a cognitive advantage for multilingual children of school age. If two parents speak different mother tongues or a family moves house and a new language is added as a result, then it makes sense to pass on these resources and embed them. However, teaching a child a language that you do not speak perfectly yourself is controversial.
Children can easily learn two or more languages from birth.
The ability to hear the language correctly is of great importance for sound and correct language acquisition. When parents struggle in a foreign language, children learn one thing above all: their parents' grammatical mistakes. Native speakers have a larger vocabulary and use different grammatical tenses more effortlessly. Passing on a language therefore requires not only consistency (consistency in how multilingualism is implemented), but also competence.
A language should be mastered at (almost) native speaker level before deciding to teach it to a child. Nowadays, no child will be able to avoid the most common and important languages. This can be confidently left to specialised teachers who have been trained to teach children a new language with grammar and wording in a competent and age-appropriate way. As a family member, however, you can support this. Introducing children to other languages through play facilitates access and awakens their interest in a language. Of course, you can teach a child colours, numbers or animal names in another language without being a native speaker. Books, games and films in the foreign language are also suitable for promoting acquisition.
The language of the holiday destination
Not only media in another language are interesting, but also visits to the corresponding regions. A child who looks forward to a holiday in Italy or Ticino every year will be more motivated to learn how to order an ice cream in Italian and how to communicate with other children. For parents with a language of origin that is not the local language, there are special playgroups for children in some regions.
There, not only do the children hear and speak the language in question, but the parents are also given the opportunity to communicate in their mother tongue. If there is a (positive) connection to the language, a good foundation has been laid. Parents should not devalue foreign languages and their acquisition («Nobody in our family knows French anyway, you'll never need it!»), but rather encourage children to learn new languages («You can almost speak English better than me!»). This promotes children's cognitive skills, makes it easier for them to learn other languages and thus not only enables future advantages in the world of work, but also friendships across geographical borders.
Picture: fotolia.com
Book tip:
Elke Montanari: Growing up with two languages: multilingual education in the family, kindergarten and school. Kösel-Verlag, 2002, ca. Fr. 25.-
