These were questions also faced by the author of the following article. Nadine Lichtenberger is an American who has lived in Linz, Austria since 1989 with her Austrian husband and their two children. Below she offers a personal account of her efforts to ensure that her children can communicate in the two languages spoken by their parents: English and German. The problems encountered in doing this in a German-speaking country largely mirror those in an English-speaking country. Nadine shares her personal concerns, methods, and resources used to help in the sometimes daunting task of raising truly bilingual kids.

After we made a conscious decision to be a bilingual family, I began to search for information on raising bilingual children as I had many concerns. For example, what are the results of research concerning bilingual children? Which method is best? Would learning two languages simultaneously be too difficult or “confusing”? Would peers see them as “different” and tease them? And would they perhaps refuse to speak English to me when they were older in an effort to conform with peers? What would it be like to raise them to speak English in a German-speaking environment?

My initial research revealed that children raised in bilingual or multilingual families have not been studied in numbers great enough to predict how certain conditions will or will not affect language acquisition. But despite what may seem to be an obvious assumption, I have found no research to back up the idea that “if language learning is difficult, learning more than one language must be even more difficult.” Researchers still do not know how to predict later outcome with monolingual toddlers, much less bilingual or multilingual youngsters.

The research that has been done on the subject does indicate that bilingual and biliterate children outperform their monolingual peers on standardized tests. Bilingual children also seem to possess better conceptual abilities because they are exposed to a greater number of concepts (i.e., concepts existing in one language and not in the other, or vice versa). If a child is diagnosed with a disorder such as problems processing the language, a delay in expressing speech, or a localized disorder in productive/receptive or auditory/visual areas, etc., any disorder present in one of the languages will also be present in the other(s). A language disorder that impairs the ability to acquire an initial language is very rare and most commonly associated with severe mental impairment, such as retardation or autism.

There are many different methods of raising a bilingual child. A very popular method is known as "One Parent, One Language" (OPOL) in which one parent speaks exclusively to the child in the minority language, while the other uses only the local or majority language. Another popular method is “minority language at home“—using the minority language exclusively within the family with the idea that the child will learn the majority language by living in the country. My personal advice to couples would be to decide early on what your goals for your child and your family are. Should the child be completely bilingual or just possess a passive knowledge of the minority language? A spouse who does not understand the minority language may not be too happy or supportive of the endeavor. The family should make a conscious decision to be a bilingual family, as I strongly believe consistency is the key to successfully raising bilingual children. However you choose to communicate with your child, I believe it is important that the interaction be pleasant and natural for everyone involved.

Nadine Lichtenberger does not claim to be an expert in the fields of special education, speech therapy, or linguistics. She's just a parent interested in raising bilingual children. She welcomes comments, opinions, views, advice, additional information and research results on the subject of bilingual parenting. You can contact her at: nadine_jkul@hotmail.com

Copyright © 1999-2005 Hyde Flippo. This article was originally published on www.german-way.com and was reprinted with Mr. Flippo's permission.