The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents Review

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The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents ReviewI'm a native English speaker, married to a Russian, and we want to bring our daughter up bilingually. I found this book very useful - it is easy to read, easy to understand, and a good survey of the main issues, while raising some of the deeper issues of language acquisition. I would recommend it to anyone in my position. Like all the best books on child raising, it acknowledges that each child is unique, and so restricts itself to general guidelines on how to approach each situation. One minor quibble is that it does not deal with the problems of teaching two alphabets, but this is not a common problem, and we will just deal with this when it arises. The thing that I really like about this book is that both authors are bringing up their children bilingually, and use their children as case studies. They have many other case studies, which makes it clear how many different situations can arise, and what has worked in each case. They are also smart enough to include the case of parents with different native languages who choose to bring up their child with a single language.
They emphasise the importance of establishing consistency in the approach to language - whatever you decide is the best way, you should stick to it, and let the child work with this situation. This could be the standard one parent/one language approach, modified as appropriate when there are non bilinguals present, or it could be one language for the home, the other language outside. The book has other approaches that have worked in other situations, including trilingual situations.
The other thing that I learned from this book is that it is crucial to expose your child to situations where they use the language. If they need to speak a language, then they will. There were many stories of children who refused to speak one language, until they were confronted with a grandparent/cousin/friend who could only speak that language, and then the fluency came fast.
Another interesting point was that you should not be worried if your child mixes the languages - they will sort things out in time. It may not be a misunderstanding about meaning, it may just be that different words have different associations, and these get distinguished eventually. The authors also caution against correcting your child's language too much, which seems like good advice to me. Language is more a tool, than a skill; you are using it to communicate, rather than score points for correct usage.
I read this book in a day - it's readable, with lots of real-life examples. It also has some side-tracks into the deeper issues of linguistic theory, which raises some interesting issues, and there is a list of books suggested for further reading.The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents OverviewFirst published in 1986, The Bilingual Family has provided thousands of parents with the information and advice they need to make informed decisions about what language policy to adopt with their children. This second edition contains updated references and new entries to the alphabetical reference guide.

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