As a growing number of families immigrate & emigrate across the world, speaking multiple languages is a highly useful skill when moving between countries, maintaining family connections or pursuing higher education abroad. Raising multilingual children can be incredibly useful for their future – but what are the challenges of multilingualism?
Trilingual Anna Pujol-Mazzini was born to an Italian mother and French father. Here she recounts a list of the advantages and disadvantages of multilingualism that she faced growing up as a multilingual child.
The Benefits of Multilingualism
There are a multitude of pros and cons for children growing up in bilingual or multilingual households. All studies tend to point to fantastic sociocultural, cognitive, educational and economic benefits:
Sociocultural: As Dr Ana Aznar writes in a recent article for MumAbroad on raising expat children, multilingualism helps to give people a broader, more global perspective. Experiencing life in different parts of the world increases empathy and makes people more culturally aware. A more intuitive understanding of cultural nuances helps to build friendships with people from diverse backgrounds.
Cognitive: Multilingualism promotes mental flexibility and may delay cognitive decline as you age. Research shows that speaking more than one language builds significant neuroplasticity and resilience in the brain. According to a 2020 review, bilingualism can delay the symptoms of Alzheimers for up to five years.
Educational: Multilingualism often helps students to be more successful in dual-language programmes, improves their learning outcomes, lends itself to creativity and supports their ability to learn even more languages in the future. Many international schools offer a world-class education in multiple languages at once.
Economic: Multilingualism opens up greater job and business opportunities, with many employers looking for coveted language and communication skills when hiring.
From the Office of English Language Acquisition
Top 10 challenges of multilingualism
For many people growing up multilingual, or who hope to raise their children to speak multiple languages, there can be downsides too. Certain difficulties and inconveniences are certainly more prevalent among expat children due to adjusting to life in another country or language. Children and young people can be particularly affected by the judgement of their peers, or feelings of isolation that stem from being “different”.
1. “Say something in XYZ language”
When someone who speaks multiple languages reveals that they can do so, people tend to ask particularly pointed questions: “How do you say, Hello my name is … in German?”, “How do you say ice-cream in Italian?”, followed by emphatic “oohs” and “aahs”.
While this can be fun, being singled out and put on the spot in this way can feel isolating, with pressure to say something “cool” or “interesting”. This can become particularly wearing for young people experiencing a transition to a new school or environment, at a life stage where fitting in socially is incredibly important.
Much of the advice around this issue centres around ensuring kids and teenagers have regular interactions with bilingual peers, creating a sense of community with others who have the same languages in common
Child psychologists specialising in the expat experience, such as Madrid-based Marisol Cortés, Isa Soler of Expat Therapy Barcelona and Catriona O’Curry, who offers family systems therapy online can be of great support to children experiencing some of the challenges of life in a second (or third) cultural environment.
2. Switching languages to reprimand bad behaviour
Misbehaving children in bilingual and multilingual families tend to be corrected or told off by their parents in a different language. This can be embarrassing as it draws attention to the fact that they are being told off. The language may be different, but the tone of voice and facial expression inevitably calls attention to a child’s behaviour to other people as well.
3. Being autocorrected in the wrong language on your phone
Anyone with multiple language keyboards on their phone will relate to the fiddly task of trying to text on the go, and realising that they have the wrong language keyboard for the language they are trying to write in.
Texting family and friends in a second or third language can be a highly frustrating aspect of multilingualism as words are substituted in the wrong place and become confusing.
Even the most straightforward phrases can sound too informal or grammatically incorrect, baffling friends, colleagues and bosses alike. More than one awkward situation has narrowly been avoided at the last minute due to an autocorrect blunder.
4. Becoming a human google translator
A restaurant menu? Song lyrics on the radio? People tend to forget that google translate exists when they know that you can speak a local language that they aren’t familiar with.
This can be fun at first, but can ultimately lead to frustration for multilingual people, as their own café experiences and song filled car journeys are interrupted by constant questions about words and translations.
Pressure to translate on the spot can grow tedious, adding to an often already heaped mental load. The art of instant translation requires brain gymnastics that may not be welcome in the moment from a tired or busy individual.
5. Having to prove or justify your nationality
Most children who speak a foreign language from a young age develop a perfect accent and sound like a native speaker. Often when bi-national people share that they are from multiple places, they tend to face questioning and disbelief.
An awkward silence ensues before having to prove your mixed origins. It can be tiring having to defend your own identity just because you have the ability to speak multiple languages.
6. Badly dubbed movies in other languages
Dodgy dubbing can be particularly distracting. Prevalent in most central and southern European countries, where it’s the norm to watch films with dubbed dialogue, it can be a struggle to ignore and not subconsciously be tuning in to both languages.
One lesser known fact is that many of the best-known actors tend to be dubbed by the same voiceover artists throughout their career. This means many people whose mother tongue is not English can recognise a Hollywood actor simply by the sound of their dubbed voice (even when it isn’t actually their voice)!
7. Making friends abroad
Trying to make friends from various countries of origin, who are also multilingual, can be tricky.
There is such nuance in multilingualism, with varying levels of fluency in a shared language leading to at times stilted conversation or misunderstandings. Despite multilingualism improving social skills and adaptability, it can still be hard to communicate without a common language, or when in larger groups.
A fantastic way to combat this is by exposing a multilingual child to other expat and international kids. Participating in school exchanges and study programmes or travelling abroad for language courses and summer camps can be a huge confidence booster for teens.
8. Having your language be made fun of
While speaking multiple languages can be an extremely useful skill to have, no matter how many languages you speak and how fluent you have become, it’s common to mix up words and make some mistakes.
You may speak Frenglish, Spanglish or any other combination of languages at home, with friends and family who also share these languages in common. Invented words and altered pronunciation might become the norm at home, but detractors may comment on or make fun of this.
This can knock a young person’s confidence and lead to not wanting to switch between languages in public.
9. Being called a “show off” for speaking a second language
After any length of time living abroad, it’s normal to take on aspects of that language in day-to-day life. After studying in the UK, Anna returned to Italy for Christmas. Accustomed to British politeness, whenever someone brushed past, she would turn around and say “sorry”! Her Italian friends would quickly accuse her of showing off just because she can speak another language.
This situation can cause embarrassment and wanting to suppress additional languages you may know. Like many things, language can become a part of one’s identity, and is much more than just a skill or talent that someone “shows off”.
10. Mixing up languages or code switching
Speaking two languages on a regular basis means constantly focusing on what you’re saying and how you are saying it. Starting a sentence in one language and finishing it in another (like the aforementioned Frenglish) is called code switching. If someone is not aware of its existence, the way you speak can seem informal and incorrect.
Many of the myths surrounding bilingualism state that speaking more than one language can hold children back and delay their speech development. In an article for MumAbroad on raising bilingual children, Canadian mum and writer Erin McGann explains that in fact code switching is often an example of a child “using their dual vocabulary resourcefully, picking the most appropriate words for any given context”.
Confidence is Key
Instilling confidence in children from a young age is key to helping separate the two (or more) languages they speak. Having a bilingual nanny or babysitter, English-speaking nursery or language lessons is an excellent idea. **
There are a number of talented professionals in the MumAbroad network supporting bilingual families addressing speech and language difficulties. Bilingual Speech and Language Therapists such as Johanna Pino Grisales, Grace Lindley in Paris, and Sofía Zelou in Barcelona offer in person and fully online speech therapy to help tackle any difficulties.
As much as these disadvantages or inconveniences can be tricky to navigate in the moment, the benefits of speaking multiple languages do far outweigh the disadvantages.
Families relocating across the world will face plenty of ups and downs, and their children will grow up experiencing the issues and challenges of multilingualism. It is up to their parents to help them celebrate their newly acquired language while still being able to form their own identity.
Parents contemplating a move to France, Italy, Spain or Germany will find extensive resources on MumAbroad to help support them on their journey.
For more insight into the realities of the expat experience, read MumAbroad founder Carrie Frais’ anthology #LivingTheDream: Expat Life Stripped Bare.
Parts of this article first appeared in www.thelocal.it
Read more advice, interviews and articles on the MumAbroad blog
Leave a Reply