Bringing up baby bilingual

As a child living in Portugal for a year with his Portuguese father and American mother, Jayme Simoes became fluent in the language. But when the family returned to Chicago, English prevailed. For three years he lost his second language entirely, regaining it only after spending summers in Portugal with relatives.

Now married and a father, Mr. Simoes is determined that the couple's toddler son, Marcus, will grow up bilingual, learning the ancestral language he and his wife, Laura, share.

Even before Marcus was born, the Hillsborough, N.H., couple played tapes of famous Portuguese poetry for him, hoping to instill - even in the womb - the cadences of the language. From the child's earliest days, Mr. Simoes began teaching him Portuguese. The family has even traveled to Portugal twice with Marcus.

"At bath time, we speak in Portuguese, read him stories in Portuguese, listen to Portuguese folk music together," Simoes says. "In Portuguese, he can count, say 'hello' and 'goodbye' (olá and adeus), 'up high' and 'down low' - para cima and para baixo."

As the United States grows more culturally mixed,more parents share the Simoes's desire to raise bilingual children.

According to the US Census, 11 percent of the population was born in another country. That marks the highest percentage since 1930 and the largest number of immigrants in the nation's history. At least 10 million school-aged children live in homes where family members speak a language other than English, the Department of Education reports.

When some family members speak little or no English, teaching children a second language is a necessity. In other cases, parents simply want to pass along their family heritage.

"There is a growing appreciation of retaining one's home culture," says Carey Myles, author of "Raising Bilingual Children" (Parent's Guide Press). "There's a recognition that you can be an American and still have associations with another culture." That represents a sea change in attitudes from earlier generations, when the goal was assimilation and Americanization as quickly as possible.

Whatever the motive for maintaining a bilingual household, linguists emphasize that parents must understand the long-term commitment it requires. That includes having clear goals.

"You must have specific ideas about what you want your child to be able to do in both languages," says Ms. Myles.

Parents must devise strategies for achieving their goals, she adds. And they must be consistent, using a particular language at a certain time, with a certain person, or in specific situations. Myles also advises parents to avoid mixing languages, so children will hear each tongue in a pure form.

Some families follow a pattern Myles calls One Parent, One Language. One parent speaks only the minority language to a child, while the other speaks English. Other families use the minority language at home and English everywhere else.

Myles knows firsthand the challenges and rewards of living in a bilingual home. Her husband, an Iranian, speaks Farsi to their third-grade daughter. Their original plan to spend summers in Iran, near his parents, changed when the couple decided the political situation there is too unstable. That diminished their daughter's need to learn Farsi.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4