Being Bilingual

I was recently asked to give a talk on ‘Being Bilingual’.  I was privileged to present my talk alongside two fellow colleagues who are also bilingual and it was intriguing to hear the similarities and differences of how we used the linguistic repertoire at our disposal but within very different contexts.

I shared my own experiences of bilingualism within the family by using a grid produced by Professor Francois Grosjean to show how language use and language fluency can vary across generations.   In Professor Grosjean’s grid language use is presented along the vertical axis (from never used at the bottom all the way to daily use at the top) and language fluency is on the horizontal axis (from low fluency on the left to high fluency on the right.

I started by sharing information on the language use and fluency of my parents.  This is shown in the grid below with E= English, P =Panjabi (mother tongue), U=Urdu, which is used as a Lingua Franca in the Indian sub-continent and A= Arabic, often used for religious purposes. The use of language and fluency is, I believe, quite typical of many first generation members of the community who migrate to a new country, irrespective of actual languages and was certainly quite common amongst my parent’s generation who came to live and work in England in the 1960’s.  As you can see from the grid it also shows quite interesting differences between male and females.

Moving on to my generation and how we, meaning my siblings and I, use language is shown in the grid below.  You will see the introduction of a new language, in this case F=French as we learned French as a MFL in school but also the level of proficiency in English and its use has overtaken the use of our mother tongue, particularly within the public domain with the first languages, although still frequently used, being firmly relegated to the private domain.  What is less typical than many of our peers is the fact that we were able to main a high level of proficiency in our mother tongue Panjabi and Urdu, which in my case was because I had the very unusual and quite untypical opportunity to study both languages to a high level of proficiency at University.  This meant I was able to develop high levels of literacy skills in these languages and a deep interest in its literature too.  Sadly, many of our peers whilst maintaining high levels of spoken and listening comprehension skills in both Panjabi and Urdu more often than not,  did not have the opportunity to learn to read and write in these languages, unless there was a supplementary school nearby as it was never an activity offered as part of mainstream education. 

Personally, I feel this is a very sad state of affairs whereby, by the second generation, the demise in the use of these languages is accelerated, as English quickly overtakes all other languages in both value and importance.  Dr Dina Mehmedbogvic of the Institute of Education powerfully and poignantly articulates the start of language loss in her book entitled ‘Who wants the language of immigrants, Miss?'.  At this point, second generation bilingual children living in England, at a very young age quickly become aware that their linguistic heritage is not of the same status as English.  In many cases this can led to children and young people, instead of seeing these languages as a valuable asset for both personal and future career prospects, begin to resent and in some cases deny that the can speak these languages in public spheres of life.  At this stage some children and young people may still be able to comprehend the languages of their families but either through choice or the situation they find themselves in, are unable reproduce the languages effectively to communicate.   Therefore, by the third generation, most of the languages that should have been passed on a gift, as part of their heritage,  are almost lost and the language of the host country has overwhelmingly replaced any others in all domains of language use. Once the language of their heritage is lost it is very difficult to replace and ironically in this growing globalised world it is these very languages that are likely to become useful for economic reasons in the future. 

The lack of a languages strategy for schools has been lamented by many and recently with the introduction of the EBacc languages are being given a higher profile and gradually the numbers of pupils studying languages is increasing.  Sadly, though much of these positive moves still focus on Modern Foreign Languages and creates a false dichotomy between MFL and so called ‘Community Languages’ many of whom ironically are world languages and have many millions of speakers across the globe!  

This lack of joined up ‘Languages Strategy’ for education continues presently yet it is a missed opportunity for successive policy makers as it to fail to tap into and embrace the many positive aspects of bilingualism.  This month’s British Council Report ‘The Languages for the Future’ report identifies a range of languages [1], including many spoken by migrant communities as being essential to the UK over the next 20 years.   These languages were chosen based on economic, geopolitical, cultural and educational factors including the needs of UK businesses, the UK’s overseas trade targets, diplomatic and security priorities, and prevalence on the internet. But, according to an online YouGov poll of more than 4000 UK adults commissioned by the British Council as part of the report, three quarters (75%) are unable to speak any of these languages well enough to hold a conversation. It certainly seems time for policy makers to pay heed to the latest research and consider how it can support the learning of languages amongst its population, including the maintenance of languages already spoken within communities. 

[1] Spanish, Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish and Japanese