EDUCATION - RAISING MULTILINGUAL CHILDREN

The two most common erroneous beliefs about multilingualism is that it increases the IQ or intelligence of a child, or that it may be detrimental to the development of one or more of the languages. There have been numerous studies in the past 50 years, and all show these both to be untrue.

Both of my children were brought up from birth with three languages (English, French and Spanish,) and there was never any difficulty. I would say the only problem was when we arrived in Colombia, and here I made a grave error. When with my children, we were often in the presence of our maid, driver or body-guard. So to be polite, I would constantly lapse into Spanish with my children until it became habit and we lost the English.

And, here I hope that people will learn from one of my biggest mistakes. The problem is that it’s common courtesy to speak in the common language of a multi-lingual group, but if you ever find yourself in the same circumstance as I; then be impolite!

And as to those who avow that “if you speak more than one language, you will never speak any one properly.” I am probably what is known as the proverbial multi-lingual person who mixes up her languages, however, I find it extremely difficult to reduce myself to the vocabulary of one language. There are words and expressions that are impossible to truly translate, or at least to do so concisely. I have often been criticized by my imperfections in French and Spanish, as well as my span-fran-glish; but I defend that in my grammatical incorrectness, I gain precision and time.

by Quenby Wilcox - Fall 2006