Abstract
Not all children who grow up in bilingual families become bilingual. Learning two languages as a child is not as simple or spontaneous as is sometimes thought; but neither is it as difficult or traumatic. In any case, it is not impossible. The undeniable need to communicate is sufficient motivation to make the child speak one or more languages, but it is also absolutely indispensable. Given this motivation, it is practice which leads to a more or less thorough and perfect knowledge of the two languages. The bilingual needs practice in speaking his two languages, just as an athlete needs to train, and a pianist needs to play. The question of whether a child becomes bilingual or not depends upon the quantity, form, and quality of this practice.
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References
For a detailed description of the linguistic environment of other bilingual children, see Cunze [1980], Bizzarri [1978b], and El-Dash [1981].
Here, “dominant language” means the language which the bilingual uses most frequently, in the sense which Dodson (in Baetens-Beardsmore, 1982) calls “preferred language”. As Dodson says, the “dominant”-”preferred” distinction is useful above all when considering late bilin-guals, who may use the second (preferred) language more often, for contingent reasons, while they nonetheless have better grammar in the first (dominant) language. Dodson’s distinction is not used here, because the simultaneous bilingual differs from the late bilingual in this respect. Nor is the term “preferred” used, because it may easily be minsunderstood to mean that the bilingual likes, admires, or has less difficulty with one of the two languages.
Leopold [1939, p. 179] says, “While she was a small child, Hildegard’s speech was not yet aiming at this ideal (of bilingualism). Bilingual conditions were not yet permanent: her speech was still striving to make one unit of the split presentation. That is why the list of bilingual synonyms is so short. Incidentally, it omits all instances of single forms which were the result of bilingual models.”
Leopold [1939, p. 159] says, “This is the course of development which was to be expected under the circumstances. As the child grew up, her circle of English-speaking friends widened. Playmates and their mothers, maids, etc. ... reinforced the English element. The importance of the father, the only significant German speaker in Hildegard’s world, became absolutely and relatively smaller.”
Leopold [1939, p. 163] says, “German words continued to be acquired, but their constancy was much inferior, because most of them did not stand up against the English competition for long.”
It should be recalled that the girls were already using equivalents as a strategy for other purposes (Sect. 2.2).
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© 1983 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Taeschner, T. (1983). A Bilingual Upbringing. In: The Sun is Feminine. Springer Series in Language and Communication, vol 13. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48329-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48329-5_6
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