Prof. K.Wilson Rezwana Islam
Eng103.0855 5/5/2007
Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens
George Saunders Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens was written for those parents who are raising children bilingually. Saunders focuses on child Psychology and history of bilingualism. The writer is mainly giving a background in linguistics, and explaining some terminology and procedures in terms in a bilingual world. Bilingual families are not an uncommon phenomenon now- a- days. As Joshua Fishman says, “more than half of the world’s population today uses more than one language while engaging in the activities basic to human needs”. In some societies such as: India, South America, south east Africa bilingualism has been considered a norm. Other facts such as: interest for acquiring new languages and leaving homelands to settle or work in other countries for a better opportunity also lead bilingualism. Saunders explains the reason why language shirt takes place, and why some parents fail to pass their language on to their children? If an immigrant settles in an area of his new country where he has scope to speak his language to a considerable number of people, he will not loose contact with his language. His children would be able to communicate with them frequently and they will improve their native language. Unlike this incident, if a family settles down in an area where they don’t have much scope to use their language, they wouldn’t see any valid reason to pass on their language on to their children. Some parents simply don’t want to overwhelm their children with the load of two languages and shift quickly to using only the majority language. Thus, children ended up learning only the majority language of the country they live. According to the Australian linguist Michael Clyne, “the children of immigrants will learn the majority language better if they forget their home language and if only the majority language is spoken in the home”. Unlike this comment, this book portrays an optimistic view of raising children bilingually. As Henriette vent says, “I do not think that in bringing up normally intelligent children bilingually, there is any danger that their English will suffer and turn in to a hodgepodge. Their schooling as well as the fact that most of their day is spent speaking English outside the home should prevent that”. Even though becoming a balanced bilingual would be hard for children, it would be a wise decision to teach them to know and speak their home language than to drop it all together for fear of achieving ‘mediocre’ result.