Thursday, March 04, 2010

Do non-native speakers make better parents?

Keda, whose baby daughter is a polyglot in the making, said this in response to my concerns about being a non-native speaker missing the intimacy that would otherwise come from speaking my mother tongue with Griffin:

"I don't think you need to worry. [An Italian woman] commented that what she noticed was that when you raise a child in your mother language, you tend to do what your parents did (or say). And this is true. When I speak Afrikaans to my little girl, I can just hear my mother speaking through me. But when I switch to English...I have to think up things to say, they don't come automatically. So when I speak English it is all me, but when I speak Afrikaans, it is my ancestors. ... [G]rammar and pronunciation can always be corrected, but you are doing your child a real service by speaking to him in another language simply because you are more you."

This intrigues me, this idea that we are perhaps more ourselves in a second language because we chose to learn it and now choose to speak it. We often plan, deliberate, organize our thoughts before we speak in our second languages rather than letting it flow. Since it doesn't come automatically (at least, not for me), that makes it more purposeful, and thus more "us."

Does it? Do I agree? I'm not sure. I'm certainly more comfortable with the moi who speaks English. When I was a student in France, I used the unfamiliar language as a mask, trying out different personas before finally settling on the whimsical, word-loving, open-minded one. (Oh wait--maybe that wasn't so different from the original.) Living in Europe, attending university classes with native speakers, traveling on a shoestring, eating noxiously stinky cheeses in chalets without electricity or running water (and loving it)--all that did make me more adventurous. And all that helps me as a parent, now that I think about it. (Stinky cheese, stinky diapers, whatever, right?)

Anyway, what do you all think? Are you more "you" in your second language? Do you parent better in your second language?

8 comments:

  1. This is an interesting topic. I have mused about it before here and here. My take is that I am someone else but not necessarily "more me".

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  2. That is fascinating. Perhaps I'd stop cringing at the things that come out of my mouth when angry if I spoke to my son in French (my second language learned mostly as an adult) instead of in English, where I find myself saying the sorts of things that were said to me. Not so nice things, but weirdly things that seem correct to say in the context of being frustrated with a difficult preschooler. Sigh. I should try it for a day or three! Maybe I'll be a nicer, or at least a more well thought out parent, in French!

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  3. @Wenjonggal--Yeah, since I don't actually know what French parents holler at their toddlers when they misbehave, I just kind of make it up for myself! It may not be grammatically or culturally accurate, but at least it's not something that I have any negative connotations with.

    @Jan--Thanks for sharing your perspective. I wonder if this self-identity issue is different for people like you and Keda who are multilingual versus those of us who operate in just two languages?

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  4. Maybe some people ARE better parents in their second language in certain situations because it causes them to pause before reacting in high emotional situations? Sometimes I think that people don’t think before they speak to their children and they SHOULD. (None of us of course!)Your blog entry is an interesting topic though. I never would have thought about it. I know that I’m the same in both languages (although I only parent in one). What I think is also interesting is something that you touched upon when you said that you were more comfortable with the “moi” in English. This is very related to something that I am working on for an upcoming blog and haven’t finished that has to do with cultural identity. Won’t our kids be a riot with all of our mish-mashing them? Thanks for the food for thought!

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  5. That is of course dependant on whether, in a highly charged emotional context, I can actually count on myself to speak in spanish instead of my native english. I think it's common for us moms speaking non-native languages to revert to the 1st language when we're emotional.

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  6. I just get plain incoherent when emotional! I don't know what language I cry in. :)

    If I spoke fluent, native-like French, my self-identity and feelings about parenting in French would probably be different.

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  7. Mom is fully herself in her second language but wants to pass her heritage on to her son in her native tongue. We're lucky that while Mother's at work he stays with both Father and Aunt who speak to him all day in THEIR native language.

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  8. I've been thinking about this question. I think I was actually less me when I was speaking non-native German to them all the time, because I couldn't express my whole complexity. However, I was certainly nicer!

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