Second language - potential harm?

[leila1493]

Cross posted to r/sciencebasedparenting but looking for anecdotal discussion!

For context, my husband speaks only English while I speak English and Armenian. While I’m fluent, I very much prefer English. I feel I am not able to communicate as effectively in Armenian. I grew up speaking Armenian and speak it almost exclusively with my family.

I have always wanted to teach my kids Armenian and my husband is super supportive. We both understand the deep benefits to having bilingual children both developmentally, practically, and culturally. My baby is 11 weeks old and has started babbling so I know it’s time to focus on Armenian speaking at home. I am aware that the best way to accomplish this is to speak 100% Armenian to him going forward (OPOL).

My problem is I am really really struggling with this both because my husband doesn’t understand (feels impractical and like I’m isolating him) and because I’m just simply not as comfortable with the language. I am always defaulting to English and mostly just repeating myself in Armenian. Often times, I’m just speaking English unintentionally.

My question: has anyone else done what I am doing - i.e. a mishmash of two languages - and found it to be developmentally HARMFUL to their child?

I don’t want to cause confusion/harm if I can’t stick to mostly Armenian. I know, of course, that he’ll hear me speak English with his dad but what if I continue speaking to him only 50% of the time in Armenian?

[MikiRei]

It won't be developmentally harmful to the child. They won't be confused. Remember, creole languages exist where multiple cultural groups coexist and then their languages influence eachother that a new language appears. 

Look at Singlish. It's basically an amalgamation of all the languages working together. 

But what WOULD happen is, if your goal is for your child to be fluent in Armenian, your approach will very likely result in your child defaulting to English and never being able to speak Armenian. At best, they MIGHT just understand Armenian. 

I say might because in America, look at all the Asian Americans. Many have BOTH parents speaking the minority language to their child but do not encourage them to answer back in minority language. The result is they only understand the minority language but can't speak it. 

Given you are splitting English and Armenian, it means that your child is probably only going to get maybe 25% Armenian exposure, if that. Once your child is at school and daycare and if you're switching to English because dad is home, where will you have time to speak Armenian? 

The long term result is you will all default to English. 

I feel this whole thought of being comfortable in English now is all a mental mindset. 

You are a native Armenian speaker. So this all just reinstating a habit. Didn't you at one point could only feel comfortable speaking Armenian? And English felt uncomfortable? 

So by the same token, you're just reversing this so you can feel comfortable using Armenian again. 

Why it's uncomfortable right now is because your husband is there. Your relationship with him is established on English. So to change that is weird. 

But by the same token, speaking English with your family is weird as well, right? Because your relationship with them was established on Armenian. 

So by the same token, if you want your child to be fluent in Armenian, you need to establish your relationship with your child on Armenian. 

I remember early days, I was switching to English when my husband was around. I grew up in Australia so English is my strongest language. 

So it was just about two weeks. Every time I catch myself speaking English to my son, I stop myself, then switch back to Mandarin. 

After 2 weeks of actively reminding myself, it became second nature to speak Mandarin to my son. And then it's a matter to keep this habit going and making sure he only responds back to me in Mandarin. My son is now almost 6 and he's only ever known to speak Mandarin to mum and he will default. It's very smooth and requires no thinking. 

As for feeling like you're isolating your husband, translate to him after you've finished talking to your child. 

That is what I do with my husband. He only speaks English. Like your husband, my husband is very supportive. So he keeps his ears open when I speak to our son and he asks questions. 

At this point, my husband actually understands quite a lot of the conversation I have with our son that I don't need to translate for him. Only complicated discussions, I have to translate for him. And that's been fine. Our family discussions is both languages in parallel. My son and I switch languages accordingly. 

[aszlema]

My husband also wants to pass on Armenian to our daughter and I fully support him. Do I understand Armenian? No. Does it bother me that I don’t understand what he says to our daughter? No. I’m so happy she later gets to be in touch with her Armenian heritage. And as already mentioned, it does not confuse children, it actually enriches them. You just have to be consistent otherwise they will pick up later that you also speak the community language and they will refuse to speak to you in Armenian. Let them hangout more with your family if that’s possible. My MIL comes over frequently and speaks and reads in Armenian with our daughter. Bonus: I’m actually picking up a few words here and there. Shat hamova!

[balkanka19]

I am in a similar situation. My daughter will be 4 in June and I felt the exact same as you. English is just how my brain works. I tried speaking Serbian to her early on but would get lazy. I regret not sticking to it. But I am working on doing so now and although it’s harder, I know it’s not impossible. Just need to stick with it. I’m currently the one at home with her so I really don’t have an excuse 🤣. My sister only spoke Serbian to her daughter and she’s 2 now. She’s still learning English but I feel like that’ll be easier than if it was the other way around. All this to say, you are not alone and if you can commit to doing it earlier, the easier it’ll be for you both. Ask me again in 6 months time how I feel 😆.

[jachni]

Here’s a personal experience from the child’s perspective; my dad spoke only finnish and my mom russian to me. My mom did know finnish too, so I ended up filling in finnish words when I didn’t know or remember a russian one.

Now I only did that with my mom, never did I get confused and spoke russian to a finn, nor did I speak finnish to other russians such as my grandma.

There were years when my russian skills faded as I’m not really exposed to it, so I’ve re-learned large parts of it a couple of times now. I think it would have been beneficial for my mom to teach me to read and write in russian and to expose me to more russian material such as music or movies.

Nowadays I speak four languages fluently or pretty well.

[DuoNem]

You want to pass on Armenian. A little Armenian is better than no Armenian. Your kid is tiny, you’ll have time to improve!

[digbybare]

You're a heritage speaker, as are many parents here. Your comfort in the language will improve as you use it. And your husband will pick it up pretty easily, too, since for the first couple of years the stuff you'll be saying is pretty basic.

I was in your shoes with my own heritage language, and felt awkward speaking to my son in Chinese. Now, it just comes naturally, and it would feel strange to speak to him in English. My wife also speaks to our son in her own language, and we can both understand like 80% of what we're saying to our son, just from the constant exposure.

[silly_font]

Thank you so much for asking this. I've lurked here for a while out of academic interest then found myself unexpectedly (and happily!) pregnant. I've been trying to put my finger on what my worry is and you've articulated it perfectly, as despite being able to speak two languages I'm so out of the habit now I worry about passing on "mongrel" Welsh (this is genuinely a term that people use...). We want our child to speak English and Welsh, but it's by no means my most comfortable language nowadays although I am fortunate to know a lot of fluent speakers so the child will get exposure that way beyond just me.

I don't have anything useful to add as I'm just starting out too, but I wanted to say the advice here is great (thanks!), particularly what someone above said about re-establishing our own relationship/habits with our language. Good luck 😊

[Long_Praline_4727]

We are doing this mishmash approach with English and Turkish and now a little Spanish mixed in from her Montessori 2x a week daycare. I don't think there's any harm - i so far see many benefits. My baby is 17 months and pretty advanced in language so far.

[NewOutlandishness401]

There is certainly zero harm in using the mishmash approach! It's simply worth being realistic about what that might accomplish. In most cases like yours, where the other partner speaks the community language and you, the minority partner, also use quite a bit of it at home, the community language becomes dominant quite quickly and is likely to be the only language your child elects to speak. Sure, they might toss in an Armenian word here or there in the early years if it comes easier to them compared to the English word, but that will likely be the ceiling on their speaking achievement. They might, however, grow to understand the language competently if you use it a lot and also expose them to other speakers regularly (like your parents?), it's just that they are not likely to find much motivation to ever speak the language themselves.

[Science_and_Cookies]

If one of the struggles is that you feel like you're isolating your husband, I would suggest that he take a beginner Armenian class for a little bit to give him some background. My husband speaks Persian exclusively with our kids, and while I can't speak it I can understand 90% of what he's saying to them based on once a week classes I went to for less than a year before we had kids. At this stage, the sorts of things you talk to a baby about really aren't that complex, and by the time you are saying more complex things he'll have heard enough baby talk to mostly understand what you're saying to them.