Growing up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven

by Xiao-lei Wang

Overview

This book is based on an eleven-year observation of two children who were simultaneously exposed to three languages from birth. It tells the story of two parents from different cultural, linguistic, and ethnic-racial backgrounds who joined to raise their two children with their heritage languages outside their native countries. It also tells the children’s story and the way they negotiated three cultures and languages and developed a trilingual identity. It sheds light on how parental support contributed to the children’s simultaneous acquisition of three languages in an environment where the main input of the two heritage languages came respectively from the father and from the mother. It addresses the challenges and the unique language developmental characteristics of the two children during their trilingual acquisition process.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847691071
Publisher:	Channel View Publications
Publication date:	11/06/2008
Series:	Parents' and Teachers' Guides , #11
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Dr. Xiao-lei Wang is currently a tenured, full professor at Pace University, New York. She was born and grew up in the People’s Republic of China and came to the United States on a graduate scholarship awarded by the United Nations. She received her Master’s degree from the Erikson Institute in Chicago and her Doctoral degree from the University of Chicago. Dr. Wang has conducted research in different cultural communities and worked with children and parents of immigrant and multilingual families. Dr. Wang has traveled in many parts of the world and studied languages such as English, French, Russian, and Japanese. She also speaks several Chinese dialects in addition to Putonghua (“standard” Chinese).

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Complexity of Trilingualism

One day, my family and I were dining in a restaurant on a trip to Chicago. A middle-aged couple at a table near ours kept eavesdropping on our conversation. Before they left the restaurant, the woman came to us and asked, 'How many languages do your kids speak?' We answered, 'Three'. 'Oh boy, oh boy!' she cried out, 'Three languages, just like that! My goodness, these kids are so smart ...'. She mumbled her way out of the restaurant, saying, 'It's really a miracle that these kids can switch from one language to the other ...'.

Another time, when my family was shopping in a jade store in Beijing, several shop assistants dropped what they were doing and gathered around us just to compliment me about my children's ability to speak such good Chinese in addition to other languages (though they had no clue what the other languages were).

Still another time, at a New Year's Eve party given by my in-laws in Neuchâtel, my husband's elementary school teacher Madame Guillaume was so impressed with our older son Léandre's trilingual ability (our younger son Dominique was still prelingual at the time) that she literally spent the entire party following him around to listen to him switching languages with multilingual guests and family members.

Although my husband and I have felt flattered by many such compliments over the years, we have also had some unpleasant experiences. For example, a few years ago, a man approached my husband at our community swimming pool to tell him off, saying, 'It's about time you speak English to your boys. If you continue to speak your language, they will not be able to speak English. You know, they live in America!'

When our children were younger, a Hungarian woman in our neighborhood bet with us that in a few years our children would give up their French and Chinese and switch to English, based on her 'evidence' that her son dropped Hungarian as soon as he had entered elementary school. One summer evening, she stopped me on my routine stroll and told me with a grin that her prediction had proven to be right. She said that she had 'caught' my children speaking English to each other that afternoon. She was blissfully unaware that Léandre and Dominique were actually talking to their English-speaking friend Galo who was playing on the floor of the terrace and could not be seen by her.

When Léandre was in first grade, one of his classmates told other children that Léandre had 'something strange on his tongue' because he could speak weird languages (after he had learned that Léandre could speak other languages).

And, in Dominique's third week of kindergarten, he brought back a consent form from a school-district language specialist seeking parental permission to enroll Dominique in a therapeutic language session. Alarmed and nervous as any parent would be, I immediately called to ask what led her to this decision. The language specialist explained to me that as part of her routine entrance screening, she had read a school information sheet which noted that Dominique was trilingual, and it also seemed Dominique was not able to open his mouth wide enough when speaking. Puzzled by her rationale, I asked her whether she had observed Dominique speaking in other circumstances as well, such as with his peers or his classroom teacher. She said that she had not. I suggested discreetly that she observe him a little longer before deciding what to do. I never heard from her again.

I could go on with such stories. The point of sharing a few of them with you is not to blow my own horn with other people's compliments or to be bitter about their not-so-flattering comments, but to show that many people may have extreme and skewed reactions, opinions and even biases toward trilingual children. In our conversations with people, we noticed that few realize that the process of becoming trilingual is not as simple and straightforward as they imagine. The small linguistic 'miracles' that my children have demonstrated involve many layers of complexity. As Colin Baker, a bilingual education expert in the United Kingdom, lucidly points out, bilingualism is a simple term that hides a complex phenomenon. In my opinion, the same goes for trilingualism.

This chapter discusses the complexities and intricacies of the trilingual phenomenon. The questions that are explored include: who is trilingual, why equal competence and performance in three languages are unlikely, why purity in three languages is an illusion and why trilinguals should be treated as a separate group instead of being 'judged' according to the standards of monolinguals and bilinguals. The purpose is to weed out many of the commonly held myths and misconceptions regarding trilingualism and to present a realistic picture of what it means to be a trilingual.

Who is Trilingual?

The complexity of trilingualism begins with the question, 'Who is trilingual?' The American Heritage Dictionary defines a trilingual person as someone who is 'using or able to use three languages, especially with equal fluency or nearly equal fluency'. Most people probably will accept this definition without questioning, as shown by my survey of 200 preservice education graduate students, in which 96% think the definition is accurate. The truth is that if we use this definition, particularly the 'with equal fluency or nearly equal fluency' part, as a yardstick to measure trilinguals, I am afraid that very few of them would qualify. To put this discussion in context, I would like you to consider four individual cases.

Are these four people really trilingual? Are any of them more trilingual than the others? Perhaps to your dismay, all four of them are indeed trilingual! According to linguist Jasone Cenoz, there are at least four types of trilingualism distinguished by the order of acquisition:

Types of Trilingualism

Type 1: The three language systems are acquired consecutively.

Type 2: The third language system is acquired after the simultaneous acquisition of the first two.

Type 3: The first language system is already acquired before the simultaneous acquisition of two other languages.

Type 4: Simultaneous contact with three language systems.

Based on Cenoz's categories, Joanne belongs to the Type 1 trilingualism. Her three language systems were acquired consecutively (first Korean, then English and finally German). Philippe belongs to the Type 2 trilingualism. His third language system (English) was acquired after the simultaneous acquisition of the first two (French and German). Andrea belongs to the Type 3 trilingualism because his first language system (Polish) was already acquired before the simultaneous acquisition of two other languages (German and English). Maria belongs to the Type 4 trilingualism. She has had simultaneous contact with three language systems (Spanish, Portuguese and German) from birth.

With these four trilingual cases in mind, when we go back and examine the definition of trilingualism in the American Heritage Dictionary, we begin to see that it is too narrow and simplistic for at least the following reasons:

First, the dictionary definition lumps all trilinguals into one category, and the differences among them are completely ignored. Yet, as we just witnessed in these four trilingual cases, they are all different with reference to:

• the age of their trilingual acquisition (all four people acquired their three languages at different ages of their lives);

• the order of their trilingual acquisition (all four have different orders of three language acquisition);

• the circumstances of their acquisition (all four acquired their three languages in different environments).

Second, the dictionary definition assumes that people can acquire equal fluency in three languages when their trilingual environments vary. As shown in Maria's case, her experiences in her three languages are different. She has lived in a Spanish linguistic and cultural environment all her life and was educated in that language as well. Thus, she is competent with it at all levels (listening comprehension, speaking, reading comprehension and writing). However, Maria's major linguistic and cultural experiences in Portuguese and German were from her parents (Portuguese from her mother and German from her father) and she did not live either in Portugal or Germany, except for a few trips during childhood. Although Maria did not formally learn to read and write in Portuguese or German, she did pick up some rudimentary skills by browsing through magazines, newspapers and advertisements, and writing a few words to her relatives on holiday greeting cards. Thus, it is natural that Maria has developed only listening and speaking and not reading and writing proficiency in two of her heritage languages.

Third, the dictionary definition of trilingualism is unclear with respect to the word 'fluency'. It does not specify whether 'fluency' means competence, performance or both. According to some linguists, there is a difference between the two. Competence is what speakers know about a language, and performance is what speakers actually do in the use of a language. An inability to perform does not necessarily indicate a lack of competence. It is likely that a language user knows the rules of a language, yet does not always perform according to the rules in real communication. For example, if you test my younger son Dominique on his knowledge of the usage of the Chinese verbs dài/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (wear, as in wear glasses) and chua/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (wear, as in put on socks), he knows the differences. However, in his actual communication, he often says 'chuan yan jing/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]' instead of 'dài yan jìng/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (wear glasses)'.

Fourth, the dictionary definition fails to consider that trilingual people's competence and performance are influenced largely by their education levels, not just the age at which they are exposed to the three languages. There is a popular belief that the younger a person is when exposed to a language, the better the chances are that the person will be able to achieve proficiency in that language. This may be true to some extent as far as the pronunciation of a language is concerned. For example, Joanne, Philippe and Andrea have various degrees of accents in languages they acquired later in life. But Maria does not have an accent in any of her three languages because she acquired them from birth. However, research indicates that older children and adults sometimes have more advantages than younger children in learning another language. As shown earlier, both Philippe and Joanne achieved high proficiency in English despite the fact that they acquired it late. Judging from the scholarly work they published, these two people have surpassed many so-called English native speakers. By contrast, although Maria acquired Portuguese and German from birth and is fluent in the spoken part of these languages and accent-free, she is not very competent in reading and writing in these two languages because she did not have the opportunity to develop these two languages in higher education. Similarly, Andrea does not function at a higher level in reading and writing in all his three languages because his education is limited. It is clear that education is associated with a person's degree of language competence and performance (listening, speaking, reading and writing). The chances are that the more educated and literate a trilingual person becomes, the more competent she or he will be in the three languages.

Finally, the dictionary definition treats a person's trilingual competence and performance as static, and completely neglects that linguistic competence and performance change together with linguistic environments. Using Philippe's case as an example, although he felt initially more comfortable discussing kitchen experiences in Swiss–German than in French, after his linguistic environment and needs changed, he felt equally comfortable in describing kitchen experiences in French, English and Swiss–German. Linguists Malcolm Edwards and Jean-Marc Dewaele called this process a dynamic, ever-evolving system.

Having discussed the limitation of the popular definition of trilingualism as indicated by the American Heritage Dictionary, we are now in a better position to explore the complexity of trilingualism.

Why are Equal Competence and Performance in Three Languages Unlikely?

In principle, anyone has the potential to be capable of having equal competence and performance in three or more languages. However, to achieve this potential, a person's language experiences and contexts for learning would have to be parallel across languages. As we have seen in Maria's case, it is very unlikely in reality that the language learning experiences for a trilingual child are parallel. To illustrate this point further, I will use my second son Dominique's acquisition of the French verb tomber (tumble) and its Chinese equivalent shuai jiao/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as examples. Dominique acquired the French verb tomber at one year and one month, and he only acquired the Chinese equivalent shua jiao/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] at three and a half. Upon analyzing the contexts of Dominique's acquisition of this verb, it is clear that Dominique's experience of this word was very uneven, that is, not parallel. He heard tomber much more frequently than shuai jiao/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. As a matter of fact, his father used tomber 45% more frequently than his mother used shuai jiao/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] by his mother. Interacting with his father, Dominique had much more freedom in climbing and running than with his mother. As a result, he also had more incidents of tumbling, and thus, he had more opportunity to hear and use tomber rather than shuai jiao/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

This example shows that it is unrealistic to expect a trilingual to have equal performance in three languages as their linguistic experiences are different. Even monolingual people, as linguists Tej Bhatia and William Ritchie remind us, cannot have equal control over all aspects of their language. For example, a friend of mine, who is a very well versed mono-English speaker by any standards, discovered to her shock one day that she did not know many of the terms used by her car mechanic.

Although monolinguals are not necessarily competent in all aspects of their language, multilinguals are often subject to more severe evaluation and categorical judgments than monolinguals. Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley, authors of The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents, pointed out that the problem is that people do not judge people with more than one language by the same standards they use to judge monolinguals. They judge people with more than one language in reference to 'an impossible ideal, the "native speaker" who supposedly speaks all possible varieties of his language, who can, linguistically speaking, do everything in all domains and on all topics in his language'.

Thus, competence and performance in a language are only a matter of degree; they often depend on the needs in the environment. Because the needs for each language are different across a trilingual's life, the ability that they develop to respond to them will be different. Elite Olshtain and Frieda Nissim-Amitai, authors of a book chapter titled 'Being Trilingual or Multilingual: Is There a Price to Pay?' illustrate this point well by using the cases of multilinguals in South Africa and India:

Since each speaker uses two or three different languages in daily encounters, the need for mastering each language may not be the same. One language might be used only within the family and the close environment; another may be used especially at work and a third for educational and professional purposes. This situation leads speakers to think of the knowledge required in each language as suited to the actual patterns of language use. We would like to refer to this as the multilingual perception of proficiency.

Tej Bhatia and William Ritchie look at the same issue from another angle by differentiating between children's competence and dominance in their linguistic abilities. Although their concern is bilingualism, their insight sheds light on trilingualism as well. They wrote:

... when the two language systems are fully developed to form the linguistic and pragmatic competence of an adult bilingual, they do not form a symmetric relationship. Due to socio-psychological factors (some members of the society favoring one linguistic system over the other) or temporal and input relationships (lack of equal exposure to the two languages from birth), one system invariably holds the upper hand over the other and in that sense an asymmetrical dominance relationship is found between the two participating linguistic systems. Consequently, one of the bilingual child's languages becomes dominant though he or she is competent in both.

Taken together, it is clear that language acquisition, whether monolingual, bilingual or trilingual, is not just a matter of language per se. It is rather a complex process involving many intricacies. A trilingual's language competence and performance must be considered holistically. I have identified several contributing factors that preclude equal competence and performance in three languages.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Growing up with Three Languages"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Xiao-lei Wang.
Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Acknowledgement

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Complexity of Trilingualism

Chapter 2 In the Beginning

Chapter 3 The Home Years (Birth to Ages Three and Four)

Chapter 4 Transition from Home to Preschool and Kindergarten

Chapter 5 The Elementary School Years

Chapter 6 Identity and Personality Development: Children’s Voices

Chapter 7 Concluding Remarks

Epilogue

Appendix: Useful Websites for Parents

Editorial Reviews

Wang has written a highly readable and entertaining real family story but it is much more than that. It is an encouraging and supportive book for parents not only through the real family story but also through its description of how to plan, steps to take, developmental information, description of successes and difficulties, related to language, culture and development. It is worthwhile for educators as well; a scholarly well referenced work in the genre of Gnyx T Wrk.

Carol Keyes

This a must-read book for any parents who wish to raise children with more than one language. The useful strategies provided by the author help parents raise happy children while passing their heritage languages and cultures.

Ping Huang

This book is hugely enjoyable! It is written in a highly accessible style, and yet it is academically rigorous. The author has a profound understanding of the linguistic, social, cultural and psychological aspects of trilingualism and uses her large corpus covering more than 10 years of trilingual interactions in a family setting as an illustration of successful trilingual development. The book reads like a novel: the characters are two determined parents, one Chinese and one Swiss, and two biracial and trilingual boys growing up in New York, proud of their unique identity. The author presents different perspectives: the parents' view, the children's opinions about their multilingualism, and the researcher's perspective. She draws excellent conclusions for prospective parents of multilingual children and has a clear message to those who doubt that multilingualism can work: it is possible, her children developed superior cognitive and communicative skills, but it involves a constant, unrelenting effort from the parents' part.
Dr. Jean-Marc Dewaele, Department of Applied Linguistics, Birkbeck, University of London

From the Publisher

The book, part of the Parents’ and Teachers’ Guides series published by Multilingual Matters, is written in a highly reader-friendly, non-technical and comprehensive style making it accessible to readers from all walks of life. It draws on the unfolding, entertaining story of an actual family, yet it is academically rigorous with details of evidence and data typical of research work…This book is highly worthwhile reading for parents, educators and researchers. It is useful not only for families with three or more languages but also for any bilingual or monolingual diasporas who can also benefit from understanding the role of multilingualism in children’s language learning and identity development.

Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 2010, Vol 33, No 3 - Hongyan Yang

This book sends an encouraging message to immigrant, inter-cultural, and inter-racial parents: Raising children with heritage languages and cultures is an important element in childrearing.

Carmen S. Rodriguez

This book is hugely enjoyable! It is written in a highly accessible style, and yet it is academically rigorous. The author has a profound understanding of the linguistic, social, cultural and psychological aspects of trilingualism and uses her large corpus covering more than 10 years of trilingual interactions in a family setting as an illustration of successful trilingual development. The book reads like a novel: the characters are two determined parents, one Chinese and one Swiss, and two biracial and trilingual boys growing up in New York, proud of their unique identity. The author presents different perspectives: the parents’ view, the children’s opinions about their multilingualism, and the researcher’s perspective. She draws excellent conclusions for prospective parents of multilingual children and has a clear message to those who doubt that multilingualism can work: it is possible, her children developed superior cognitive and communicative skills, but it involves a constant, unrelenting effort from the parents’ part.

Dr. Jean-Marc Dewaele

This wise and engaging book is rich with detail on how normal multilingual acquisition works, where the challenges lie, and why raising children in multiple languages is worthwhile. I want to hand this book to my kids: “See? This is what we’ve been trying to accomplish.”

Sharon Flank

Packed with research, advice and personal accounts of trilingualism, this book will quickly become every multilingual family's treasure trove. Written specifically with the multilingual parent in mind, it is easy to read, full of real-world experiences, and replete with researched facts and wisdom: an essential read for any family raising children in more than two languages.

Corey Heller