Growing up with two languages
Hello folks! It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to share for you one of my vital experiences in my life. Today I wanted to talk about how I became bilingual and what I did to maintain my language. I won’t be posting any sources nor factual number, as I’m sure many of you have already read several articles on it and already have an idea about it and the several theories behind it. For this article I will be explaining what my family did to develop and maintain two languages in an international setting.
Really quickly I will give you a quick rundown of my childhood. My parents were both born in Japan and moved to the USA where I was born. I went to a normal public school where I strictly spoke English only and at home I would speak in Japanese only (aside from my brother, we always spoke in English). If I spoke English at all at home my parents would act like they don’t understand what I’m saying. I wanted a drink of water, if I wanted to watch T.V. I had to ask for permission in Japanese and if I couldn’t figure out how to say it I couldn’t get it. Both my parents were working and so most of the time my parents weren’t at home. Fortunately for us, our grandma would come to the US as often as she could to take care of us. Our grandma didn’t have to act like she didn’t understand English, she really didn’t know a single word.
During the summer we would always get the opportunity to go to Japan to visit our grandparents and relatives. We had three months of summer vacation so we would have ample time in Japan to polish our Japanese. Aside from my grandma coming to the US or us going to Japan, our opportunities to speak Japanese was very limited. In order to give me more opportunities to exposed to Japanese my grandparents sent us video tapes of Japanese cartoons which me and my brother watched and loved.
English was not a problem for I went to school for majority of the day. Japanese was from watching Japanese shows and talking to my mom about my day at school. I didn’t do any sort of special English classes, I learned both languages naturally and effortlessly. That was because of the environment my family has set for me. I feel that the most important thing to obtain two or more languages at home is the exposure. If your child goes to an international school I feel that that is enough and you can speak your native/second language at home.
If I were to sum up the article into one word it would be, “Exposure”. I was constantly exposed to both languages everyday which I believe was the key point in obtaining and retaining them. I sincerely hope this article helps as this is just my personal experience being brought up in USA with Japanese parents. Each child is different and learns differently so this method may not work for everyone, but it is something that can be easily incorporated. Wish you all the best!
