"First French Rhymes"--first choice for moi!

Nursery rhymes are the foundation on which childhood literacy and language acquisition are built. We may not feel that nursery rhymes play a role in our daily lives as adults, but I dare you to hear "hickory dickory dock" and not automatically think of mice. And I bet "the old woman who lived in a shoe/who had so many children she didn't know what to do" came to mind when you first learned of Nadya Suleman, the Octomom. Mary and her little lamb, Old Mother Hubbard, Little Boy Blue, a short and stout teapot, Thumbkin, the baker-man with his pattycakes...these characters peopled my childhood like aunts, uncles, and cousins I only saw once a year but heard about regularly.

Nursery rhymes teach lessons, present positive behaviors to emulate and naughty behaviors to avoid, explain how people interact, show that it's okay to play with language, and much more. Internalizing the rhymes and rhythms helps us learn to speak, and later, to read. They give us glimpses into history and cultures from centuries past and ensure that most speakers of a given language have a common base, a frame of reference, to build upon.

All this is why I felt it was crucial for me to use nursery rhymes in French (comptines) with my son. This meant that I needed to learn many more of them myself--I hadn't encountered too many when I studied French as a teen and young adult. When I taught college French, I found a few that I used when teaching, usually as an introduction to the vocabulary topic we were about to tackle. But that wasn't nearly enough!

In all, we now have four or five nursery rhyme books in French which I read often to Griffin. Some are large hardcovers, others have lengthly CDs, but the one I like the best is the smallest, cheapest one, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to other English-speaking parents like myself:

Un Deux Trois: First French Rhymes, edited by Opal Dunn

Dunn has gathered some of the most common comptines and arranged them by category--"dans la prairie" and "au cafe," for example--so that rhymes on similar topics are on the same two-page spread and that the illustration contains elements from all the rhymes printed on the two pages. She labels the relevant pictures in French without giving English translations.

In fact, she doesn't provide English translations for any of the comptines. Rather, at the back of the book, she explains what each rhyme is about or what it was used for, occasionally suggesting movements or fingerplays to accompany them. The teacher in me likes that she doesn't set up the idea that one line in French equals one line in English and also that the illustrations and her comments allow you to get the gist of the rhymes without needing to know what every word means. (At least, that's my impression--maybe someone who doesn't speak much French could weigh in on that?)

Moreover, the paperback comes with a half-hour-long CD of native speakers (one adult female, joined occasionally by children) reading all the comptines, repeating some of them several times. (Another technique that makes me the teacher nod approvingly.) And the best part? It sells for $9.95. What's not to love?

Please click on "comments" to let us know of any nursery rhyme books (English or French) that you adore (and tell us why)!

book review: "Spoken Here" offers a different perspective on bilingualism

Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley (Mariner Books, 2003) isn't about people raising children bilingually so that they can attend elite universities or communicate with family members in another country; rather, it's about people desperate to keep their disappearing native language alive but who must also become fluent in the majority language around them. It's a compelling, disturbing, readable book suitable for a general audience, not just linguists, and especially of interest to those who travel, who speak less-common languages, who want to understand different cultures better.

In Spoken Here, Abley chronicles his visits to communities all over the world--literally--whose languages are endangered. He spends enough time with each group to develop an understanding and appreciation of the culture that the language reflects, learning about the people's history, geography, politics, conflicts, dilemmas, education, and everyday life. He listens to elders, learns some of each language, attends school, and more. His passion is evident and his descriptions fascinating, making this a really good read for all of us interested in languages, how they evolve, how they coexist, and why and what happens when they don't.

Book Review: Baby's First Steps in French: Parents' Guide

Well, I suppose it's more like a booklet review: Baby's First Steps in French: Parents' Guide is a CD-sized 74-page book that accompanies a music CD of the same name. In it, the author, Erika Levy, a French-English bilingual professor of linguistics at Columbia, provides a compelling argument for raising children bilingually via a concise explanation of how children learn languages. Her book is very readable--little jargon, clear definitions, amusing anecdotes, related notes, and subheadings for every idea. While I was already familiar with many of these ideas, reading Levy's book reassured me that yes, I am understanding the research and aware of the issues surrounding bilingualism, and yes, I am doing a good job so far in trying to teach French to my nephew Carl.

Levy champions the idea of beginning a second language with a child when he is still an infant, citing research that has discovered that while babies are capable of hearing and distinguishing among all sounds at birth (such as the two "u" sounds in French which are so hard for adults to learn), this ability disappears by age six months if the child is not actually exposed to those different sounds.

By the way, I was fascinated by the description of how these studies are carried out on infants--how can researchers tell that, say, a Japanese baby hears the difference between "l" and "r" sounds when his parents can't? I haven't read much primary research myself. Well, it turns out that the babies are given "non-nutritive nipples" to suck on while a native speaker of the second language(s) says one word of a minimal pair over and over and over. (A minimal pair is two words that are almost identical except for one sound, like the French "vous" and "vu.") The speaker then switches to the other word in the minimal pair. The researchers, who are tracking the speed and intensity of the baby's sucking, notice a difference when the sound changes. This is apparently the case for sounds in any language, including African languages that involve clicking. However, if the baby is not exposed to these diverse sounds again during his first six months, that ability disappears: "When sounds do not exist in the languages of their environment, babies will lose their ability to perceive them" (p. 2). The research also shows, though, that if an adult heard those sounds as a baby, but not as a child, he will be able to hear and pronounce those sounds better than average if he starts studying the language as an adult. Speaking the second language with your baby really does train his ear! Levy's advice for parents? "Don't dilly-dally" (p. 15).

Levy offers other concrete advice for exposing your baby to the new language. While it all seems logical and reasonable (and in fact identical to what you would do with the child anyway in his first language), it is helpful to see that parents don't really need to do anything differently when teaching a child a second language. She recommends "engaging" your child in conversation, even if he is only babbling, and speaking motherese, which she refers to as "parentese," a simplified, exaggerated repetitive way of talking to the child about the world around him (drawing out the vowels and repeating items makes it easier for the child to understand). She also recommends reading to your children. Finally, she warns parents not to tell their children that they're saying something wrong and touches briefly on the fact that language delays or disorders are not a result of being bilingual. One concept she brings up that I wasn't familiar with, though, is that "a correlation exists between children who have speech disorders and those who had chronic middle-ear infections in their first year of life. It appears that these children's ears were blocked during the critical period when sounds are most easily learned, and as a result, they did not learn to master the sound system of their languages while the brain was at its most receptive" (p. 24). This underscores the fact that exposing the child to languages during the first year really is essential.

While Levy states unequivocally that "bilingualism does not cause language delays or disorders. Countries in which people are bilingual or even trilingual do not have a higher incidence of language delays or disorders than other countries" (24), she does address both the pros and the cons of being bilingual. Among the latter, which she terms "inconveniences," she discusses misconceptions, misspellings, and mixing languages, a slightly slower processing speed (0.2 seconds slower, according to a study), and feeling obligated to perform as a translator for others. Ultimately, Levy concludes that "if you raise your child bilingually, minor glitches may occur. But these usually resolve themselves quickly enough to allow your child to reap the linguistic, cognitive, social, academic, and personal benefits of multilingualism" (p. 35).

Levy concludes the book with a description of children's linguistic milestones (what they can be expected to say and understand at what age), suggestions of how to use the accompanying CD (with its folk songs, "comptines" or nursery rhymes, and parentese), some background on French pronunciation, and lists of resources and references.

Baby's First Steps in French: Parents' Guide serves as a fantastic introduction for parents who are curious about how and why to raise children bilingually. It provides an overview to the relevant issues and then encourages you to try it with French and keep gathering information that will help you understand the process. Plus, I like the CD too! To read a review of a more academic text on bilingualism, click here; to read a case study about a trilingual child, click here; to read a review of a short article which covers some of these same topics, click here.

Levy, E. S. (2001). Baby's First Steps (in French, Spanish, and Italian): Series of 3 books and CDs. NY: Living Language, Random House.

Book Review: Introduction to Bilingualism (chapters 7-14): Sociolinguistics

(Click on the following concepts to see previous reviews of Introduction to Bilingualism by Charlotte Hoffmann: Defining bilingualism , Language development in children , Features of bilingual speech , and Contradictory and inconclusive research.)

The rest of Hoffmann's very informative but somewhat dry book concerns bilingualism in social and societal contexts; much of it is not relevant to the target audience of my blog (parents and teachers of children learning second languages), so I'll try to be quick in my summary. Chapter 7 discusses views of bilingualism across the years--for example, some experts in the early 20th century believed that bilingualism leads to "moral inferiority" (p. 138)--and emphasizes the challenge that bicultural bilinguals have in establishing and/or articulating their identities. Hoffmann suggests that parents should help children sort out which groups and nationalities they identify with.

Chapter 7 also addresses the difficulty in assessing bilingual proficiency: the current methods and techniques are unsatisfactory, the setting in which tests are done can render them invalid, they are hard to compare to other tests, the language used and information tested may not mirror a bilingual person's skills and experiences, taking tests is not the normal way bilinguals use language [and I would add, not the normal way any of us use language!], and "formal tests tend to stress linguistic form....[and] may not reveal the bilingual's ability to communicate" (153). Additionally, in other sections of the book Hoffmann points out that many degrees of bilingualism exist; rarely does a bilingual person have the exact same level of competency in both languages, comfortably using both equally well in any given situation.

In chapter 8, Hoffmann discusses multilingual societies by way of historical and contemporary factors, such as the use of French, German, Italian, and Romansch in Italy. Chapter 9 covers language choice and language shift (the latter due to factors like migration, industrialization, and prestige). Chapter 10 develops the idea of language and national identity mentioned in chapter 7, while chapter 11 delves linguistic minorities (focusing on western Europe keeps it from getting overwhelming and allows Hoffmann to discuss topics like assimilation). The book concludes with detailed summaries of three case studies of bilingualism in western Europe: the Alsatians in France, the Catalans in Spain, and migrant workers in Germany.

The discussions of the Alsatian dialect and its speakers were of particular interest to me personally, because I lived in Alsace for a year (1996-7) where I met many young people who understood their grandparents' Alsatian but couldn't speak it themselves. Occasionally the local newspaper would publish articles in Alsatian, though, and all the street signs in my modern, industrialized city (Mulhouse) were written both in French and in Alsatian.

However, there is a very distinct difference between the two sections of the book (Part I: Psycholinguistic Aspects of Bilingualism, with its focus on individuals, and Part II: Sociolinguistic Aspects of Bilingualism, which examined bilingual societies). The latter half seems very well suited to a graduate-level class on sociolinguistics (or to people curious about places where the residents are bilingual), but I would recommend the first half to those wanting to learn more about the effects of bilingualism and how children acquire a second language. Still, this is definitely a tome with a theoretical focus--good for academics and linguists, but not offering a lot of ideas or techniques that a parent or teacher could apply to a would-be bilingual child. The fact that it's no longer a recent book (published in 1991) concerns me, too--I'm sure that in the past fifteen years research has emerged that clarifies some of the issues that Hoffmann admits we don't have answers to or explanations for. Perhaps ways of assessing bilingualism and its effects have also been finessed. But I chose this book to review well aware of its publication date, expecting it to give me a good, academic overview of bilingualism, and indeed it did. My next book review will cover something more practically rooted, I promise. Thanks for wading through all this theory and research and linguistic terminology with me!

(To see a review of a case-study book by a linguist who raised his child trilingually, click here.)

Book Review: Introduction to Bilingualism (chapter 6): Contradictory and Inconclusive Research

Just joining us here at Baby Bilingual? Check out parts 1 (defining bilingualism) and 2 (language development in children) and 3 (features of bilingual speech) of my review/summary of Charlotte Hoffmann's Introduction to Bilingualism (click on the blue words).

Okay, so "Contradictory and Inconclusive Research" isn't really the title of this chapter, but that's the gist. Hoffmann details a number of research studies about bilingualism from the past century, telling us that we can't trust most of them and that the rest aren't large enough in scope to generalize and apply to other groups of learners. (For example, no longer do we believe that bilingualism causes stuttering and left-handedness!)

However, she does cite recent research that drew conclusions about the effects of bilingualism on children; while these studies had shortcomings as far as their generalizability, overall they did find more positive than negative results. Here's what struck me:

One researcher proposes that a higher IQ is "simultaneously the cause and effect of bilingualism" (p. 124), while another concluded that bilinguals "showed greater cognitive flexibility and were capable of more complex analytical strategies in their approach to language operations" (125). (To be fair, other researchers have found that bilingualism has no effect on intelligence, which at least invalidates early research that warned of lower IQ scores for bilingual kids.)

Want to hear more pro-bilingualism? How about "bilinguals may possess greater sensitivity towards verbal and nonverbal feedback cues than monolinguals [because they have a] wider and more varied range of experience than monolinguals, as they have access to two cultures and operate in two different systems" (126). And, "there is no evidence that bilinguals suffer any negative effects in their development on account of their bilingualism, nor do they acquire a split view of the world" (134).

Convinced?

(Or perhaps just convinced there's no way to quantify once and for all the cognitive effects of bilingualism?)

Click here to read part 5 of this review.

Book Review: Introduction to Bilingualism (chapter 5): Features of Bilingual Speech

Just joining us here at Baby Bilingual? Check out parts 1 (defining bilingualism) and 2 (language development in children) of my review of Charlotte Hoffmann's Introduction to Bilingualism (by clicking on the purple words).

This section of the book review is where you'll probably find yourself nodding your head in agreement. "Yes," you'll say, "I've seen that. I've done that. Oh, is that what that's called? Okay, this makes sense." Hoffmann enumerates five practices that can occur when bilinguals speak: interference, borrowing, individual creations, mixing, and code-switching. Her descriptions are clear and she illustrates them with real-life examples. How many of them do you recognize?

1. Interference from the speaker's first language (L1) is generally involuntary. It occurs when your L1 influences what you say in the second language (L2). It--like many of the following features--can depend on the context (for example, how formal the situation is or whom you are speaking to). We've all seen this when we recognize, say, "zee Frwench accent een Eengleesh," which would be phonological interference. Interference also can be seen in orthography (spelling). Another type of interference, lexical, happens when the speaker tries to invent a word in the L2 based on the words he knows in the L1 by manipulating the morphology (that is, adding endings onto the L1 word that make it match other L2 words), such as an Anglophone learner of Spanish calling what holds up your pants a "belto." (I'd like to point out, though, that my students do this sort of thing all the time when they don't feel like looking up unknown words in the dictionary; in that case, the interference is no longer an involuntary speech act but deliberate laziness!)

The final type of interference that Hoffmann identifies is grammatical, when you apply the rules for your L1 to the L2. For example, in English we put the adjective before the verb: a purple flower. But in French, the adjective generally comes afterwards: une fleur violette. To Anglophones, "a flower purple" sounds vaguely poetic but mostly "wrong," whereas a French speaker just learning English would be likely to produce that utterance based on his knowledge of his own language. Or take the example of toddler Lily telling her mother that she is "mange-ing a banana," adding the -ing of English to the French word for "eat."

2. Borrowing, or using loan words, is another feature of bilingual speech. This comes about when a speaker chooses a word from the L1 to use in his L2, either because he doesn't know the L2 equivalent or feels that the L1 word expresses the idea more aptly. Hoffmann is careful not to criticize borrowing, pointing out that when borrowing occurs among bilinguals speaking together, it doesn't cause confusion: "on the contrary, they can add interest, humour or intimacy to the conversation and cause delight to both interlocutors [speakers] at their shared linguistic knowledge" (103). In fact, the phenomenon of borrowing even exists in my small household! My husband and I say "Bon appétit" at the beginning of every meal--there's no pithy English equivalent of that expression. French just works better.

3. Individual creations occur when the bilingual speaker invents a new word for the L2 which is neither interference nor borrowing (nor an honest-to-goodness in any language) and may include elements from both languages. Here's another example from my life: My hubby and I call each other "boule de goof," which is our Frenchified but not-really-a-word rendering of "goofball" (with French grammar, two French words, and one word in English). I don't even remember now how we came up with that one, but it resonated with us so much that my monolingual American husband even had it engraved inside his wedding band!

4. Mixing is the switching between two languages at the lexical level (usually one word at a time within a sentence); it is a voluntary phenomenon, unlike that of interference, mentioned above. (However, Hoffmann notes that there is some overlap between mixing and borrowing, with mixing seen as more "habitual" and perhaps undesirable) Research shows that bilingual children raised in the OPOL format ("one parent, one language," that is, each parent speaks only his primary language to the child) tend to mix less. To further reduce the amount of mixing, it is important to expose the bilingual child to monolingual speakers who will not recognize the words that come from a different language, asking the child to clarify or paraphrase to be understood. Mixing is thought to decrease with age.

5. Code-switching is the final feature that Hoffmann lists, and as I read this chapter I realized that I had been imprecisely using the term "code-switching" to refer to all five of these phenomena. According to Hoffmann, true code-switching involves using the L1 in the L2 over the course of more than one sentence (unike mixing, which is just one L1 word in an L2 sentence); it can also include exclamations and "tags" at the end of a sentence (such as a Spanish speaker adding "verdad?" or a Francophone "non?" to a statement in another language). This act is perhaps the most researched of these five features and occurs in both child and adult speech (and especially among bilingual immigrant teens); older bilinguals can control their code-switching more than younger ones, however. Hoffmann suggests myriad reasons for code-switching: it is situational, contextual, topic-related, emphatic, clarifying, and much more.

Hoffmann describes code-switching as a "habitual and often necessary part of social interaction among bilinguals. Whereas monolinguals have only one linguistic code at their disposal, bilinguals can rely on a four-way choice (the two languages and various forms of mixed and switched codes, since they are able to code-switch in both their languages)" (116). In fact, while many monolinguals might hear any of these five practices typical of bilingual speech and be critical of what they hear ("funny accent," "strange words," "confusion between languages"), thinking something unkind and ignorant about the speaker's "inability" to learn the dominant language like a native, it's obvious to me that these phenomena reveal the richness of the bilingual speaker's linguistic systems.

Click here for part 4 of this review.

Book Review: Introduction to Bilingualism (chapters 2, 3 & 4): Language development in children

Continuing with my book review of Charlotte Hoffmann's Introduction to Bilingualism, I'd like to share some ideas gleaned from chapters 2 through 4. (This is turning into more of a summary than a review per se, perhaps because I'm not yet knowledgeable enough about this topic to poke holes in the author's ideas.)

You've probably heard that we should teach languages to children as young as possible because they'll learn much more easily than adults would. I mean, that's one reason why I started speaking French to Carl the day I visited him and his excited new parents in the hospital. But Hoffmann argues that children are not necessarily better than adults at acquiring language, except with regards to pronunciation: "Children are believed to have greater phonetic-auditory ability, which enables them to distinguish and reproduce new sounds quite easily, whereas adults many experience some degree of interference from their first language" (p. 35-6).

So why do we mostly monolingual Americans curse the fact that we had to wait until 9th grade to take a foreign language in school? Here are some of the qualities that children do have that facilitate their acquisition and fluency: lower inhibitions than adults, willingness to learn via play, great mimicry skills. But kids don't have the same skills and knowledge that adults have developed, like an understanding of how languages work (i.e. they can't transfer concepts from one language to another), abstraction, classification, and generalization. (I don't know what age group she's referring to, though--while this is perhaps true for toddlers, these skills do emerge in elementary school, perhaps earlier.) At any rate, these ideas don't mean that we shouldn't bother to teach languages until the child is a more sophisticated thinker.

Here's what I've read and heard over and over: consistency is important when teaching second languages to children, exposing the kids to the pattern of each person always speaking the same language in the same contexts. (This is known as OPOL: the one parent, one language approach.) Most researchers seem to agree on this point. This prevents the child from seeing language use as arbitrary and confusing (45), and it "helps the child to understand that the two codes are possible and distinct means of communication, existing in their own right, rather than being attributes of certain people." Mixed input can lead to mixed speech--but this does not mean delayed language development (87)!

Research also shows that infants develop receptive language skills very early on (which implies that they should be exposed to both languages from birth). They can recognize and distinguish between human and non-human sounds, familiar and unfamiliar voices; they can also hear nuances of sounds like pitch, stress, vowel length, and intonation. Wow! Infants!

I'm going to quote Hoffmann at length here, because this is important, if considerably daunting:

"The degree of success of OPOL will depend mainly on such factors as whether the parents are consistent enough in their language use, whether the child has enough exposure to the [second language], whether (s)he perceives the need to use both languages, and whether (s)he receives the right kind and amount of social support. Providing the first two conditions, consistency and exposure, are met, the establishment of bilingualism is not usually problematic. However, the maintenance of the [second language]...is much less certain. Some children may not see much point in using the language of one parent, once they realize that he or she also speaks the language of the other....When the child is older the input from the weaker language may be too one-sided, too limited in register and style...for the two languages to develop on the same level. In fact, judging from the parents' accounts (and my own experience), bringing children up bilingually requires considerable effort, expense and ingenuity." (44-5) She implies throughout the book, however, that these efforts are worthwhile.

Speaking of research studies, two theories for explaining children's bilingualism emerged in the 1960s:
1. The unitary language system: The child starts with one language system which gradually separates into his understanding that two languages exist.
2. The separate/individual development hypothesis: The child differentiates between the two languages from the beginning. This theory is growing more and more popular. (Keep in mind, though, that I'm summarizing from a work published in 1991, so I don't know yet where the trend has gone in the past decade and a half.)

Which of these theories you subscribe to determines whether or not you can refer to the "onset" of bilingualism at a certain age. Hoffmann cautions that it is important to keep in mind that it's not always possible to identify when a child becomes aware of the existence of two separate languages and that children don't name the language at first (this is too abstract a concept for them). Code-switching and mixing languages tends to subside with the child's awareness of the separateness of the languages.

Hoffmann lists these cues as signals that the child is aware of the two languages:
· He uses the languages in appropriate contexts.
· He knows who speaks which language in his circle.
· He translates spontaneously for his parents.
· He doesn't like when one parent uses the other parent's dominant language. (84)

These points, of course, raise the question of how exactly does the child grow aware of the fact that he's hearing two languages? While some theories exist--growing familiarity with both languages, social experiences, modeling the adults he encounters--basically there is no certain answer to this question. (85-6)

I'll conclude this part of the book review with some information that ties into the next few chapters, about features of bilingual speech:

The task of processing the languages he hears is more complex for the bilingual child, because "a larger number of features have to be recognized and produced, and this bigger cognitive load may well lead to a later onset of speech production or even an initial period of some confusion" (57). The "semantic load" is larger for them, as assigning two different labels to each concept requires more effort (65). On the other hand, other studies have found no difference between monolingual and bilingual kids' cognitive processes. Hoffmann points out that both sets of children are prone to overextension of meaning when learning to speak, like where "car" refers to any vehicle or "doggie" is any four-legged animal. (60-1) Both monolingual and bilingual children also make the same kinds of grammatical errors, which may persist longer for the latter group (plurals, for example). (68-9)

I'd like to hear from readers--do you agree with the research cited here? Do you think kids have it easier or harder than adults when learning second languages? Do the "pros" outweigh the "cons" when it comes to teaching a child a second language? Click on "comments" to share your thoughts!

Click here for part 3 of this review.

Book Review: Introduction to Bilingualism (preface & ch. 1): Defining Bilingualsim

Introduction to Bilingualism, by German academic, linguist, and mother Charlotte Hoffmann, married to a Spaniard and teaching in England at the time of publication (1991), is part of the respected series Longman Linguistics Library and the type of tome grad students might read as part of their coursework or amateur linguists might read for fun. It assumes a general familiarity with linguistics but not bilingualism, so it really does function as the "introduction" proclaimed in its title. Hoffmann divides her work into two parts: psycholinguistic aspects of bilingualism (including salient definitions, discussions of patterns of acquisition and features of bilingual speech, contradictory research findings about brain function of bilinguals, and lists of sociocultural elements of bilingualism) and sociolinguistic aspects (like social patterns, language choice, identity, and linguistic minorities, illustrated by detailed case studies). I will review it several chapters at a time so as to avoid extremely long posts, I promise!

Hoffmann begins with a very simple description of what it's like to be a polyglot with several languages to draw from: "I use different languages depending on whom I am speaking to or what I am talking about, and I feel a different kind of cultural and emotional attachment to the languages involved" (xii). This sets up her focus on the sociocultural aspects of bilingualism as well as the exploration of theories and facts. She addresses perceived problems with bilingualism (such as the low status of bilinguals in some cultures, like for the Turkish guest workers in her native Germany) but prefers to promote the sociocultural advantages--deepens understanding of two cultures, enriches one's life, provides a "wider range of linguistic resources" (p. 5-6).

Early on the book, Hoffmann concedes that defining bilingualism is a tricky task, as we must take many factors into account (age, background, living situation, education, contact, environment, the function/s that the language fulfills for the speaker, and more) and consider that proficiency is a continuum, not a certain point that a speaker passes and suddenly becomes fluent. In the middle of this continuum is the "equilingual" or "balanced bilingual," originally defined in 1959 as someone "fully competent" in both languages (22). (See my previous book review for a more contemporary perspective of the BB.) Nowadays, being a balanced bilingual doesn't imply native-like fluency in either language, just being equally comfortable in both, according to Hoffmann.

While becoming a balanced bilingual is perhaps ideal, this is not necessarily a reasonable goal for many people who speak more than one language, as most people bilinguals are dominant in one language. (The child, Noam, described in the previous book is not a balanced bilingual by these standards because he doesn't have equal ability in his different languages--but Faingold considers him one.)

Hoffmann contrasts the balanced bilingual with the "perfect bilingual" (or "ambilingual"): someone who has equal knowledge and ability with two languages and can use either one with equal comfort and fluency in any given situation. Hoffmann points out that "true ambilingual speakers are very rare creatures. Who ever has identical linguistic input and output in both languages? And who would habitually use both languages for the same purposes, in the same contexts?" (p. 21). In my opinion, having that second language to draw from when English doesn't work as well for me is one of the thrills of being bilingual. (And yes, I regularly find myself speaking French with other Americans--it just makes sense to use French when discussing what we do when we teach French, for example.)

Moreover, when we are defining bilingualism, some researchers and linguists take into account function--what language does the speaker use for which purpose and to what degree? For example, if an immigrant can understand the second language but not write or read it, is he bilingual? Again, it's a continuum--it's all relative. After a long discussion of possible definitions of bilingualism, Hoffmann basically says that there isn't any one definition that both captures all the salient aspects and pleases academics and bilingual speakers alike. But here's the one I like the best so far, cited by Hoffmann (p. 26) from Skutnabb-Kangas' 1984 work Bilingualism or Not (p. 90):

"A bilingual speaker is someone who is able to function in two (or more) languages, either in monolingual or bilingual communities, in accordance with the sociocultural demands made of an individual's communicative and cognitive competence by these communities or by the individual herself, at the same level as native speakers, and who is able positively to identify with both (or all) language groups (and cultures) or parts of them."

One final comment: Hoffmann points out that "bilingual" does not necessarily imply "bicultural," which might be the case with me teaching French to baby Carl. (Without regular trips to France, contact with French relatives, participation in French customs and traditions, and lots of input about France, he won't "feel" French. But that's not what his parents and I am aiming for, and besides, with so many countries that speak French, it would be hard to pick which one we wanted him to identify with!)

So that's what the academics have to say, according to Hoffmann's 1991 book. Fifteen years later, I'm curious: What do the bilinguals reading this blog have to say? What is your operation definition of a bilingual? Where do you fall on the continuum? What are the most important aspects for you? Click on "comments" to post a reply! (Or, if you would like me to profile you or bilingual kids you know in greater detail, email me at babybilingual (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll do a separate post!)

Click here for part 2 of this review.

Book Review: Multilingualism from Infancy to Adolescence

You might say that my sister- and brother-in-law are ambitious in hoping that my speaking French with their son will enable him to grow up bilingual. But then you haven't met linguist Eduardo Faingold and and his wife, who helped their son Noam learn four languages by the time he was in elementary school. Faingold, a professor of Spanish at the University of Tulsa, has written a book about this process, a case study of the first 17 years of Noam's life.

In his 2004 book (one of the most recent books on bilingualism that I found at the university library when I started this research), Multilingualism from infancy to adolescence: Noam's experience, Faingold traces his son's linguistic development in two countries and offers theories as to why and how Noam acquired (and lost) languages along the way. Born in Israel to an Argentine Spanish-speaking father and a Brazilian Portugueses-speaking mother, who both used their native tongues with their son, Noam also encountered Hebrew outside the home. They later moved to the United States, where he quickly learned English. By the time he completed high school in the US, he had lost and regained his Spanish and Hebrew, and to an extent, his Portuguese . Whew! Interestingly enough, Noam can't be considered fluent (native-like) in any language but English.

Faingold begins his book by explaining the pros and cons of a linguistic case study (a qualitative, detailed, long-term approach whose results are not easily generalized to others because they concern only one subject). He also shares his rationale for teaching Noam these four languages: to allow him to communicate with relatives, to be able to travel in countries where these languages are spoken, to familiarize him with their cultures, and to enable him to speak like a native in the countries they immigrated to. These are all understandable goals (but none of them apply to my situation of teaching French to my nephew Carl). Each subsequent chapter of Faingold's book examines Noam's language acquisition at specific points in his life, which unfortunately means we don't get to hear much about exactly how his parents taught him to speak.

The story opens in medias res with trilingual toddler Noam already speaking and understanding Hebrew, Spanish, and Portuguese. At age one, Noam was using a strategy known as "referential avoidance" when speaking--using "expressive" words like verbs, adjectives, and demonstratives, along with "quasi-words," rather than object-oriented nominal language. The former indicates that he was using language for interacting socially rather than for naming things. His parents, however, wanted him to know the words in three languages for the objects he talked about, so they increased their "motherese" speech--speaking slowly, exaggerating their intonation, using short sentences, repeating names of items, encouraging him to use those names, and so forth. (Though not a mother myself, I suspect that this is typical of monolingual parents too.) They found that Noam's vocabulary in all languages expanded dramatically by age 2 (although Faingold concedes that this could be due to his growing older and not just their "intervention"). He concludes that parental intervention ("motherse" speech) is not necessary but still useful for language acquisition and is particularly helpful for teaching referential terms.

In this chapter, Faingold also raises the issue of language status: in Israel, Spanish and Portuguese are not considered as useful or important as other foreign languages such as English and French. Thus Noam picked up on the fact that the languages he spoke at home had lower status than the Hebrew he spoke at day care and with friends. This is an issue that arises often when children grow up bilingual: they are aware when a language has a "bad reputation" and when one is considered "prestigious," which influences their interest in speaking it. (Faingold doesn't explain how language status is "assigned" in general--I imagine it varies greatly from country to country--and I'm wondering what status French has here in northern Colorado. Naturally, I think it's pretty cool, but do others see it as a "desirable" language to know?)

In chapters 3 and 4, Faingold discusses syllables and toddler speech, for example the strategies of reduction (where the speaker eliminates the unstressed syllable of a word) and maintenance (where the child produces a word with the same number of syllables as the word is supposed to have). He proposes that "children acquiring similar languages seem to prefer maintenance as a strategy for the construction of the early lexicon, while children exposed to non-related languages appear to prefer reduction as a strategy" (38). (Faingold neglects to define "similar" in this context; as usual, I'm thinking about Carl and wondering if English, a Germanic language, and French, a romance language, are considered dissimilar, or if that term is reserved for, say, Chinese and Hungarian.) Another feature of "baby talk" is the reduction of words by dropping either the first or last syllable. These features have traditionally been considered universal--true across languages--which Faingold illustrates by comparing Noam's speech to that of a child who knows other languages. However, he also posits that there is variation from child to child. Here he compares Noam to a cousin who speaks his same three languages. Faingold provides copious tables of the words spoken by his subjects. (Note: one "universal contraint" that he observed is that baby talk usually features syllables composed of a consonant followed by a vowel. Toddlers seem to prefer this structure. Interestingly, this is how syllabification tends to work in French, which means that Carl's natural baby talk tendencies will prepare him for proper pronunciation in his second language! You think?)

Chapter 5 looks at Noam's patterns of language use through adolescence. Up to age 2, he uses S, P, and H with all interlocutors. At age 2, he uses S with his father and P with his mom, but then begins code-switching (this is a stage that occurs in all children learning more than one language). At this point, Noam sometimes used more that one language even in the same sentence, regardless of whom he is addressing (parents, himself, babysitter, even the cat!). At about age three, he understands S and P, but prefers to respond in H, the community language. When 3 1/2 to 6, Noam seems to prefer H and speaks it like a native even to his parents, who respond in S or P. After moving to the US at age 6, Noam becomes fluent in English within six months and claims not to understand S, P, or H. Despite the fact that he visits relatives in Israel and Argentina yearly, and that he lives in NY and CA where there are significant Spanish- and Hebrew-speaking populations, Noam refuses to speak either language. By age 12, however, he has started studying Spanish at school and Hebrew at the synagogue in preparation for his Bar Mitzvah. As a boy born in Israel, his Hebrew classmates admire him, and as the son of a Spanish professor, he's a star of his Spanish class. Thus H and S no longer seem "low-status" languages to him, and he begins to speak them more at home and ask questions about them. He even jokes and swears in H and creates neologisms in S. (To me this implies that he had not lost H and S permanently when he stopped speaking them as a six-year-old, or at the very least that his mind was wired to relearn them more quickly than his peers who were starting from scratch.)

In his discussion of the factors that influenced Noam's language use, Faingold points out that children being raised with a language(s) different from the majority language quickly learn that their parents speak the majority language too (they hear them on the phone, talking to neighbors, and so forth). This reduces the children's motivation to speak the minority language, because now they know they can communicate with the parents in the majority language. While I would like for Carl to hear me only speaking French, that will be impossible--I speak English with his parents before and after my babysitting shift and we all speak English at family get-togethers. Faingold also recommends that kids have peers to speak the minority language with, and that will be hard for Carl (at least until he gets some French-speaking cousins via me and my husband or until I can find or create a francophone play group in the area). Peer pressure is powerful--kids typically don't want to feel or appear different (because of their language(s) or any other reason). Because of Noam's family and religious connections, reacquisition of the minority languages was easier for Noam. How can I find something analogous for Carl? If we don't want him to reject French, we need to make him believe that it's important or useful or cool or fun. (I'm going to enjoy this challenge.)

Faingold's book concludes with the results of various tests that Noam took as an older adolescent (AP Spanish, university language placement exam, Oral Proficiency Interviews). Of his foreign languages, his Spanish is strongest and Portuguese weakest. While not "fluent" even in Spanish, he actively uses all three, thus reaching his father's goal for him as being a "balanced bilingual." That sounds good to me, but part of me winces--after all that exposure in the home, formal study, and travel (he even participated in a summer study abroad), Noam still isn't fluent in Spanish. What chance does Carl have? On the other hand, I teach French at a university, and I don't speak like a native myself. I'm not fully bilingual, but I read fluently and can communicate very well in French (and being a teacher, my grammar's impeccable!). Carl's in good hands.

Faingold, E.D. (2004). Multilingualism from infancy to adolescence: Noam's experience. Information Age Publishing: Greenwich, CT.