Bilingual = 2 Tongues?

 
If we can imagine how language acquisition, thought patterns and personality would fuse as a child grows up, we might well appreciate that learning two languages at once is not an easy task: unless circumstances so prevail, making it more natural. Given a relatively lengthy stay, children of English speaking families living in Italy seem to find it easy enough to learn Italian whilst maintaining their spoken English at a reasonably fluid level. There is the immersion effect of being surrounded by the omnipresent host language. What seems to happen here is that English becomes an internalised "private" language of family life while Italian is the language of the "external" world. So in the mind of this type of "immigrant" bilingual, there is a clear delineation of language usage. On the other hand there appear to be greater difficulties for the parallel acquisition of English for children from homes where one parent is Italian and the other an English speaker, especially in cases where Italian is the predominant family language. Obviously the host language here is a barrier since Italian is spoken in both home and outside environments. Nonetheless the mere fact of parentage seems to create an expectation that the child would somehow automatically learn English at the same pace as the Italian. Obviously an unrealistic appraisal but given that even fully Italian families have strong linguistic ambitions for their children with regard to English, it would seem paradoxical if a child with an English speaking parent were not to have at least a head start on their Italian counterparts.

There is a theory that each parent ought to speak to the child from an early age in their separate native languages. No doubt this works but in the cases that I know, it seems to work only up to a point. I have my own theory that in much of what a child learns, there is also a factor of listening intently to what his parents are saying to each other. If this is right then the difficulty is partly explained. In later years many of these children from mixed backgrounds turn up at international schools and for those who can afford it, this is a good solution in ensuring that the linguistic base established at home can then develop further in a structured school setting. For those for whom this is out of reach, insisting that they continue to speak the language at a functional level at home is probably the only solution but this requires careful strategies to ensure that the child is actually doing this voluntarily, otherwise there is the danger of courting resentment from trying to combat the spontaneity of the dominant language. Family dialogues are intricate multi-dimensional things and communicating emotions is a big part of them. As we all know it is the emotive tone in languages that is the most difficult to translate. Languages are thus never completely interchangeable in their affective senses. Understandably, children in bilingual situations are always more expressive and fluent in Italian than in English. Even in cases where their English is very good (usually when the family language happens to be English), the reality of having developed without being immersed in the native colloquial mode, makes their expressions somewhat wooden with discernable traces of hesitation. This is not a point of criticism, just an observation of fact in seeing how language operates as a merger of societal background and family influences inside a person's mind. In short, it is my considered opinion that there is no such thing as perfect bilingualism. The word bilingual itself places too much emphasis on an equivalence of capability which is not really the point of having command over two languages. We need to recognise that language acquisition is a product of language usage and that the level of language usage itself is entirely a factor of circumstance. Put simply, one can't become good at a language just because one wishes it. For the learning itself to be effective, there must be some compelling need to use it. In almost all cases, the ability to speak two or more languages well appears to be a consequence of having lived in different countries, having had specialised schooling or an extraordinary level of interest and determination to learn other languages. I am convinced that language is not a piece of personal property that resides permanently in a fixed form inside someone's head. Instead, a certain proficiency merely allows one to partake in the 'body-politic' of the language in the way a society uses it. In order to improve one has to run foraging into the book stores, the lecture halls, the coffee shops and with hope, back into the theatres. Language exists principally in the dimension of shared thoughts via speech, hearing, writing and reading. Learning occurs by constantly practising these faculties: by building on what one already knows.

Rome, 12 12 2005