The problems of bi-linguality
Off the top of your head, would you consider fluency in more than one
language to have draw-backs? Any drawbacks? Before moving
from my native Sweden, I wouldn't (I did write, read or speak English
on a day-to-day basis there). After having lived for slightly more
than four years in the UK, where English is the normal language
spoken, I do think there are some drawbacks to functional
bilinguality. Or at least to have your native language being something
different from what you encounter on a day-to-day basis.
The mixing of languages
The first problem is that I don't, really, know what language I am
interacting in. Am I speaking/writing Swedish? At the moment, no, I
can see English words on the screen. When I am speaking? I haven't a
clue. All I can judge this by is by looking at those with whom I am
interacting. Do they seem to understand what I'm saying? If they do
(and they're not Swedish-speakers), I am speaking English. This can
have unintentional comedic effect, if I've been reading Swedish and
turn around to speak to one of my co-workers. It has happened, more
than once, that I start a sentence in Swedish, realise I am getting
blank looks, re-jiggering my language generation centre(s) and start
the sentence over. Sometimes, if I am lucky, I do actually hear myself
speaking Swedish, but this is fairly uncommon.
I also have a quite bizarre habit of not understanding Swedish
initially, if it just jumps out at me. If it's a film, it usually gets
brain-generated subtitles in English (this was, for example, observed
when I was watching Minority Report, where two actors are
performing a Swedish children's dance-song; I saw that whole exchange
with subtitles and even remember thinking "Cool, they actually made an
effort to sub-title and getting decent translations done"; I have,
since, been informed that it wasn't subtitled, at all, in the UK
cinematic release). This is less of a problem than it was when I first
moved to the UK (I guess my brain has adapted slightly to switching
between "parse English" and "parse Swedish" when carried by sound).
Puns... I see lots of puns other people don't see. There's a chain of
stores in the UK named "Supa-snaps" (they develop photos, but to me
they look like an off-license/bottle shop). Translated from Swedish,
it'd be something along the lines of "binge-drink
schnapps". Incredibly funny. But no one understands why I giggle.
It gets worse, some English sound-based puns just by-pass me (the only
one that comes to mind is "hard-core pawn"), because I hear enough of
a difference between the word written/said and the word that is a
(supposed) homonym. On the other hand, I get a bunch of other ones (to
me, "yew", "Jew" and "ewe" sound almost-indistinguishable, since I
have less auditory sensitivity for the Y/J sound distinction).
The feel of disconnectedness with my original language
When it comes to Swedish (spoken Swedish in particular), I have no
day-to-day feedback with Swedish-speakers in Sweden. For all I know, I
could now speak in a Swedish dialect nowhere near what I spoke when I
grew up (not that hard, I managed to switch from one regional dialect
group to a completely different when I went to uni) or what I've
previously spoken naturally in Sweden (that wouldn't surprise me, most
of the Swedes I know in the UK are from up north in Sweden, the speech
pattern is one I could mimic fairly well even before moving and I know
I adapt to what's spoken around me).
Text-based, I do write and read Swedish on a most-days basis, but this
still means I am distanced from the language. I don't watch Swedish
telly. I haven't seen a Swedish-language film since June 6th, 2003 (I
saw Monopol). Partly, this is because my wife doesn't speak
Swedish and I'd consider it torture to show her a Swedish film when
I'd be unable to do a running interpretation for her (partly because I
can't, really, switch languages that fast; partly because I'd be
giggling).
Potential spawn
Should we (unlikely by intent) end up with kid(s), I face a further
conundrum. Do I speak Swedish to the kid(s)? Do I avoid speaking
Swedish to the kid(s)? Part of me thinks it'd be good. The more
languages you have at your command, the easier it is to acquire more
languages. Part of me think it'd be bad, because it is an exclusion of
my wife. Because, see, that'd mean we could talk without her
understanding what we'd be saying. I think it's enough of a problem
when I am around other Swedish-speakers. We normally speak English if
there's English-speakers nearby-enough that they'd be possibly part of
the conversation.
On the whole...
On the whole, though, I find functional bi-linguality more of an asset
than a detraction. It has even come in handy at work, a few times. If
you get a chance to be functionally bi-lingual, even with the hassles
it'd entail (they're probably only significant if you're bi-lingual
and you're not in a "your native language"-environment on a day-to-day
basis), I say "GO FOR IT".
This is one of Ingvar's essays
By: Oisín
2008-11-04 17:06
WRT the spawn:
I wouldn't worry about exclusion. The kid will be flooded with English anyway, so a little bit of Swedish won't cause any alienation.
My girlfriend speaks two Chinese languages and English to our daughter, and I use one Chinese language (Mandarin), English and Irish. Any new Chinese words that my girlfriend teaches the baby that are new to me, I pick up as the baby does (e.g. "dian4 deng1 zai4 nar3? Where's the lightbulb?" repeatedly every day - I have an advantage of already knowing what a lightbulb is, among other things, so I'll learn it quicker than the baby will). Similarly, my girlfriend picks up Irish words by passive osmosis, since we spend a lot of time together with the baby.
I'm sure if you use both Swedish and English to speak to your future bairn, your wife will pick it up as well. Everybody wins :)