No one promised us
a multilingual
rose garden
By Alice Lapuerta

People like to think that we’re experts in the field, after all we’re straight at the front battling with our three languages. But the truth is, most of the time I feel just as lost as everyone else. Eager in my quest to find enlightenment, I turn to books and studies. Only to encounter a similar answer everywhere: the presentation of various models and the recommendation that model A is probably the best. Then I read that “there is no single, correct way of bilingualism,” that the “forms of multilingualism are infinite” and that, ultimately, that I “should trust my instincts and do what I think is best for my family.” Oh, and of course to be consistent, to always be consistent. I leaf through the pages in frustration and wonder why this is of not much help. This is because I crave simple answers to complex problems, and then realize that they don’t really work in our situation.

Responsible for triggering this current angst was an article which I’ve read recently, in which the author delineates a situation that is very similar to ours. The father speaks the minority language with the children, the mother the majority language, while the parents speak a third language with one another. The result: their daughter is firmly trudging down the path towards monolingualism in the majority language. This is partly due to the father’s lackadaisical interest in strengthening the trilingual situation at home. It seems as if he just isn’t encouraging the minority language enough. And it is partly due to the de facto situation: if the minority language is spoken by a parent who is out working the whole day, so that the children don’t get to hear the language for more than 2 hours a day, what can one expect? The linguistic scale is pushing down heavily on the majority language side. If nothing is done to re-create the balance, one language will ultimately dominate.

I saw our situation mirrored in this article. Our kids are surrounded by German, which is not only the majority language, it is also the language spoken at kindergarten, at playgroups, at the playground, by Omi (grandma)- and here is the thing - by myself. Spanish and English they hear only when Papi is around - which isn’t a lot, especially when he’s on business trips! So are we to suffer the same fate as the family of the man who wrote the article? Are our attempts to raise our children trilingually doomed to failure? Already our daughter is showing a marked preference for German. Even though she seems to understand Spanish and English, she hardly ever speaks those languages.

Initially I chose German as the language of mothering because I thought it made sense: we thought we were going to live in Ecuador for a while, where they speak Spanish. But after only a year there we re-located to Austria. This is when I realized that if we don’t change something about our situation, we will end up having monolingual kids. Common sense told me: speak to them in English now! After all, I am speaking English to my husband all the time anyway. It’s not new to them, they hear English on a daily basis anyhow. New will be that now I will be addressing them directly in English as well.

So from my perspective I thought the solution was straightforward: if I speak English I not only reinforce one of our minority languages, thus evening out the balance somewhat, but we’d also have an easier time communicating with each other when the whole family is together. We’d no longer have conversations over our kids’ heads, but we could include them because they’d be able to speak back in English. German we leave to our environment and to Omi, at whose house my kids hang out every day anyway, for several hours. They get more than enough German input. I became convinced that the right path for us at this time was to reinforce English and Spanish.

Yet the range of arguments raised against me switching to English astounded me. The most popular argument was “it will confuse the kids, for one shouldn’t switch languages when they are that young” followed by “it’s better for them to have one language established first,” to some insistent voices claiming “you should always speak your own mother tongue to one’s children, never a foreign language, and English isn’t your mother tongue even you are fairly fluent in it” to the implication of “think of the poor child at school when she is unable to speak proper German, and all because you decided to switch to English”. All of this made me highly uneasy. To top this, Isabella developed a speech delay in German, and experts told me to keep exposing her to as much German as possible, even at home. I should read to her, play finger games, and speak to her as much as possible – in German!

I really didn’t know what to do anymore. It was like choosing the better between two evils: ignore the voices of admonition, speak English anyway and Isabella might develop a lasting speech defect, in addition to becoming a poor performer at school; as well as confusing the poor baby, who, at his young age, might not be able to handle his mother’s switch of languages. Or stick to German and so much for our trilingual endeavor. What to do now? What’s the enlightened choice here?

Sure, nobody said they promised us a rose garden. But nobody said that it was going to be this messy, either. It took me some time to realize that this multilingualism-phenomenon is not static, cut in stone, that once set up it will always stay that way. Multilingualism is also about change. Our environment changes and things happen constantly. We move and relocate, families change, divorce happens, death happens, unforeseen events and the hands of fate intervene. This all affects our choice regarding language. After years of sticking to one model, we may suddenly find ourselves in a situation where we have to forego the previous model and embrace another, because the old model simply doesn’t work anymore. We may have to switch from OPOL to minority/majority language. We may have to switch between two languages or use two at the same time. We may have to go against the face of all advice to be “consistent” simply because this is what works best for us. As much as our language choice changes, so does language itself. One moment one language is dominant, then another is. Receptive languages become active, active ones come receptive. As we no longer need one language, we file it away in our attic of languages and pull it out again when we need it. So that is really what multilingualism is about: It is a reflection of all that happening, it’s a reflection of life itself. It is, bluntly put: a mess.

So I just did it. I speak English to my kids now. Isabella’s reaction was interesting: she grinned. She actually seemed to like it! And she definitely understood what I was saying. “Let’s go get ready for bed,” I suggested. And she went to her room and put on her pajamas.

My switching to English raised a whole series of other problems. Will I speak English only at home and switch to German outside of our home, thus changing from one parent to one language to home language versus environment language? Or will I stick to English all the time? Or speak English only when Papi is present, and switch to German when I am alone with my kids? It’s not so easy. While switching from one language to another itself is not a problem for me, the problem is remembering to switch. So often I find myself speaking German when I should have spoken in English, simply because I forgot that I was supposed to speak English now.

My daughter’s initial reaction encouraged me that what I was doing was right.
“I love you, Mami,” she said one morning, out of the blue. In English!
“This is my house,” she said, and pointed to her little tent in her room. Amazing!
She never said this before! So my speaking English with her caused her to tap into her passive English reservoir and activate it. In the meantime, of course, her enthusiasm for English has slackened off and yet again she resorts to German to tell me stories of what happened at kindergarten. I listen to her and nod, and keep replying in English.

Still, I feel worried about this experiment. Some negative voices are still not put to rest. What if I end up confusing my children hopelessly? What if she falls behind with her speech again? What if, because of this, she starts to stutter, develop a speech defect, ADHD, autism, a mental defect, a knotted tongue and purple mushrooms in her ears?

And I still haven’t made up my mind what to do with little Niki, who is one year old. This is tough. Speak English to my little guy? Never again to call him “Mein kleiner Raunzerbub?” For I have no idea how to translate that into English.

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Alice Lapuerta is the Managing Editor of Multilingual Living Magazine as well as a monthly columnist. She grew up in a trilingual household of German, Korean and English and now, together with her husband, is raising her daughter and son trilingually in German, Spanish and English. Check out her Multilingual Melange column each month. Learn more about Alice at her blog: http://www.stitchdiaries.blogspot.com.

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