Why It’s Easier for Children to Become Bilingual
Syelle Graves talks about language fluency, how people learn language, and why it’s easier for children to become bilingual.
Today’s topic is language fluency, and how people learn language. Linguists use the verb acquire instead of learn because it better describes the way babies speak their first language: largely without any active or conscious effort, which is very different from the way an adult studies a language. Many of these facts about language may seem familiar to those of you with children or who speak—or used to speak—more than one language. As we describe language acquisition, remember that this process applies to any human language: There is a universal process in language acquisition, no matter how different languages sound on the surface.
What Is the Difference Between Language Acquisition in Childhood and in Adulthood?
Although most of us know how challenging it can be to learn a second language in high school, most people don’t realize how remarkable that makes the speed and effortlessness with which children acquire their first language. It is also a common misconception that children are “taught” how to speak. Most scholars agree that even imitation plays only a limited role, while the baby’s brain, which comes equipped with specialized areas like Wernicke’s and Broca’s, plays a large role.
It is also surprising to learn that parents actually correct children very little, and even when they do, it has little effect. Studies show that while parents may correct children when they say inaccurate things, like calling someone by the wrong name, they seldom correct children when they make grammatical errors (like “I eated that” or “I have two foots”). Many of us find these temporary mistakes too cute to correct, and further, many parents who try to correct grammar in young children notice that their children seem impervious to the corrections, and continue to make the minor error until they are ready to produce the correct term themselves.
When psycholinguists say “corrections,” by the way, they aren’t referring to correcting stylistic rules like “never end a sentence with a preposition”; they are referring to the remarkable unconscious rules that all native speakers of every language produce with no effort. Either way, one thing is for sure: Children who are never corrected reach language fluency at the same time as the children of parents who try to correct them.
The reason adults do not “absorb” language by exposure alone is because of something that psycholinguists refer to as the “critical period” of language development. Although it varies from person to person, adolescence is a good approximate cutoff, in that from as young as ten, and as late as the mid-teens, we lose our ability to acquire language without instruction the way children do. This is related to plasticity of the brain as it develops. Remarkably, although the spectrum of the critical period ends around adolescence, monolingual children generally complete the majority of the acquisition process by the age of three! There is always more vocabulary to acquire throughout childhood and life, but syntax (the order in which our words appear automatically when we speak, and in which they must do so in order to make sense to others) and other basic elements of linguistic grammar like phonology (sound patterns) and morphology (word components) are produced with ease before the end of preschool and toilet training! This is especially fast when you consider how complex and intricate human languages are. When children are exposed to a second language at four or five, they may still acquire it fluently if they get enough exposure to it, because that critical period of language development is still open.
Adults have a very different experience. Most adults can learn a second language, but it requires great effort, work, time, energy, and memorization. Plus, some elements, like vocabulary or native-like pronunciation, may never be fully achieved by adult language-learners (adult acquisition is more like learning, so linguists may use that verb more to describe second language acquisition). For example, many English speakers learning Spanish have trouble rolling the double r, and Hindi has a d sound with a puff of air that many English speakers cannot even hear, let alone pronounce (click on this UCLA link to see if you can!). You may speak another language at a rudimentary level, but never encounter thousands of low-frequency words like appendix or anesthesia, and hopefully, you’ll never have an urgent need to know those words while traveling.
A fascinating side note about the fact that all children universally acquire the language spoken to them at the same rate is that there is no such thing as a “simple” or “complicated” or an “easy-” or “difficult-to-learn” language. Some languages have more complex syntax, but very simple phonology. Others may have complex phonology, with many different sounds, but a smaller vocabulary, so there are slightly fewer words to learn.
What Does It Mean to Be Bilingual?
People who speak two or more languages fall on a spectrum of linguistic knowledge. One of the most common misconceptions is that bilingual adults are “balanced”—equally fluent in both—but this is rarely the case. A lot of adults who learned a second language later in life, and speak it very, very well, still recognize that they have an accent in the second language, or that they may not know every idiom or word like a native speaker does. They also may describe always speaking their first language fluently, no matter how many years go by. Conversely, some adults report that speaking that second language for many years can subtly but adversely affect their first language; perhaps when they travel to their home countries, they discover that they have lost some words or newer cultural references, and that they even pronounce that first language a bit stiffly, although this accent may disappear after a few days of being with family and native-speaker friends. We often hear language learners make mistakes that sound like their own first language, but believe it or not, second languages can influence our first language, too.
Sometimes people may exaggerate their language abilities, and claim to have acquired a second language in adulthood with fluency, when in fact they are only able to communicate in limited circumstances, such as when asking for directions or ordering food. This is still a form of bilingualism, but not as balanced as many imagine. Some scholars call them “situational bilinguals.”
Again, there is no such thing as an inherently inferior or complicated or simple language. Because we speak language every day, and don’t remember learning our first language, it is difficult to reflect scientifically on how language actually works. So, people who say “x language was totally ‘easy’ for me to learn as an adult” may be less fluent than they realize, or, their first language may be closely related to x language on the language family tree, which can sometimes facilitate language acquisition in adulthood. Linguists call this the “typological distance” between languages. (Linguistic typology is the study of language similarities and relationships.) For example, German and English are much more closely related than German and Korean, and they share an alphabet, plus some word roots.
However, again, there are many exceptions to this; some Hebrew speakers can become outstanding speakers of French, even in adulthood, with the right circumstances. Some Spanish speakers may struggle to learn even rudimentary Portuguese. In addition, although some studies claim that being bilingual from childhood facilitates learning a third one as an adult, even after that critical period, and many believe that this must be true, it is actually very common for people who acquired two languages as children to still struggle enormously to learn a third in school. Conversely, some monolingual adults wind up being able to learn a second language through study and travel very well, due to talent, interest, and variability from one adult to the next.
What About People Who Acquired Two Languages as Children?
Many people all over the world spoke one language at home and then a different one at school, as young children. Because both languages were technically acquired in that critical period, we (and these speakers themselves!) expect them to be balanced bilinguals. However, this is rarely the case, because language dominance will occur quickly, especially if the speaker does not attend a bilingual school, or learns to read and write only in the community language. Also, if speakers don’t have other types of exposure, like regular travel to a country where they can become immersed in the other language, the school language can take over.
Linguists often refer to these bilinguals as “heritage speakers.” Heritage speakers may understand that home language better than they produce it, or, have “no accent” yet not know very basic vocabulary. The more fluent in the school language that these speakers’ parents are, the more likely the children are to lose their home language because children quickly figure out that their parents understand the school or community language. Then, their brains “resort” to the community language, in order to save resources and communicate more expediently. Heritage speakers come in many different levels of fluency, but all possess a rich and special familial and cultural connection to the home language. It can be helpful for these folks to understand that it is totally normal to default to a dominant language, and to realize how challenging it can be to maintain two languages throughout one’s life, when both languages aren’t necessary.
What About Raising Bilingual Children When You Are Monolingual?
Well, this is unlikely to be effective, although some foreign language exposure is great and fun for kids. As linguist Francois Grosjean explains, two of the most important factors in achieving success are amount of exposure, which is difficult to get enough of if neither the parents nor the society speaks the language, and then need, meaning that children must be in a position where they truly need to use the language to communicate most effectively with certain people. A 50/50 bilingual school can sometimes work, but they are hard to find.
Use It Or Lose It
So, a critical element of human language that is frequently overlooked by non-linguists can be expressed by that old saying “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” Some people may plan to move abroad for a few months, or study a language for a few years, and expect that this knowledge will be set for life. However, trying to speak a language that you studied years ago and never spoke again usually doesn’t work very well.
In addition, some research shows that speaking more than one language can have some cognitive benefits, such as a delayed onset of dementia, or slightly faster reaction time, but as linguist Ellen Bialystok confirms, you have to regularly speak both languages. Studying Spanish for a few years in high school and rarely using it again won’t help you stave off Alzheimer’s.
Interestingly, some studies suggest that because bilingual people are so good at switching between languages, they’re better at switching between other tasks too. Other studiesopens PDF file contradict this, but the important thing for sure is that being able to communicate with so many more people around the world is a true advantage! It is a challenge to learn a second language as an adult, but it’s worth the effort, and if you want your children to have the advantages of being bilingual, try to speak only that home language to them, as early as possible, and as much as you can.
That segment was written by Syelle Graves, who is a linguist and professor at the City University of New York at LaGuardia Community College.
Multilingual Children image courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Syelle Graves has a PhD in linguistics and is the assistant director of ILETC (Institute for Language Education in Transcultural Context). She was also a 40 under Forty alumni award honoree at SUNY New Paltz. You can find her at syellegraves.com.
