Ozlem and I have been asking parents we run into about their experiences raising kids with different languages, to get an idea of what we'll do ourselves. I'm now poking around on the Net a bit to see what's out there on the subject.
One of the more common situations we hear from parents who have different native languages is that it's important that each parent consistently use their own language with the child. An article by Marsha Rosenberg Raising Bilingual Children expands on this a bit, according to her the importance is consistency of situation. So it's not that the parent has to only and always speak the same language, but that they have consistent boundaries about the speaking of each language.
This fits with some people we've met recently, who both speak Portugese fluently (although the mother is not a native speaker) and speak it consistently with their daughter at home, but use English when outside. Rosenberg also suggests parents might alternate based on the day of the week, but that seems weird to me. The important thing, though, is that parents don't mix languages in a single conversation, otherwise the children will tend to learn it as a hybrid language - they won't easily distinguish the two lanuages.
Parents we've met who both speak the same language, but a different one than the community they live in, don't seem worried about speaking the local language at home. Certainly by the time the kids start school they will pick up the local language, and end up speaking it, possibly better than the parents' language. I do know one person raised in England by Greek-speaking parents, whose parents decided that one of them would use English with him, but it doesn't sound like that's strictly necessary.
One useful not from Rosenberg is that children should be exposed to the non-local language "in a variety of situations and with a variety of speakers. Rich language experiences in both languages are essential for good bilingual development." So for us, if the kid only speaks Turkish at home with Ozlem, over time (especially after starting school) their Turkish won't develop as well. I have a friend raised in Germany whose father speaks Danish with him, but he tells me when he visits Denmark people think he's retarded. I think we'll have an easy time of it since we know plenty of Turkish speakers in London, and hopefully we'll also get fairly frequent visits to Turkey to spend time with family.
One thing I haven't yet found any comments on, but is a concern of ours, is how we communicate with each other. Ozlem and I speak English to each other, because my Turkish sucks (and that phrase can also be turned the other way around - my Turkish sucks because I don't use it). Will this confuse the kid? Maybe not, but when Ozlem says something to the both of us, she'll want to use Turkish, which I may not understand, rather than English, which will dilute her use of it with the kid. The answer will probably be for me to raise my game. I should be able to improve my Turkish along with our kid!
More links:
- the bilingual families web page, is maintained by Cindy Kandolf, apparently in conjunction with a mailing list, looks to have useful resources.
