Mother Tongue

by Anna Kunnecke

A few weeks ago, I went to a workshop on raising bilingual kids.  My daughter prattles in Japanese at her lovely preschool, and at home our language of choice is English.  (Her father speaks Kiwi and I speak American, and we both like to speak quite a lot and at top volume.)  I wanted to be sure that she could hold her own in both her worlds.   

The workshop leader was funny and smart, and listening to her I was lulled into a wonderful cocoon of serenity: our daughter is fine, her foundation language is English, and then whatever Japanese she speaks in addition will be gravy.  I marveled at the parents who had complicated set-ups and multiple languages to impart to their kids: a mother who speaks Flemish and Mandarin*, for example, whose Japanese husband speaks French and English*, whose son attends an English-speaking kindergarten in Japan.  They had a plan, and it was impressive. 

Then a story caught my attention with such urgency that the vertebrae in my neck made an ominous sound as I cranked my head around to see who was talking.  A lovely woman spoke earnestly and with great concern about her five-year-old daughter, whose verbal skills seemed delayed.  The workshop leader asked a few questions, and you could feel a silent gasp of horror rising from the group as the woman laid out the situation.  The Chinese father* and Korean mother* were sending their daughter to a Japanese kindergarten.  With three languages in play, it was easy to see how it might take a kid longer than usual to absorb it all.  But here was the clincher: the mother had been speaking to her daughter since her birth only in English.  In the same English she was speaking now, which was broken and halting.  She had so wanted, you see, for her daughter to be able to attend an international school; she had done what she believed would be best for her daughter.  But what had happened was that this little girl was growing up without a native language, literally without a mother tongue. 

I went to school with kids like this, whose well-meaning parents spoke to them in a language they were themselves desperately trying to learn.  Some families even banned their own language at home in a fevered attempt to adapt to a new culture.  These kids ended up in a gray zone where they were vaguely conversant in several languages but not truly adept at any of them. 

I am sad for that little girl.  How can she learn a language when she only hears it spoken poorly?  How can she have an intimate relationship with parents who struggle to communicate even rudimentary facts and emotions?  It's a huge loss, and one that makes me angry.  This was a common story when I was growing up here twenty years ago, but I thought that it was a thing of the past.   There are masses of resources out there now for parents about this; there is no need to reinvent this particular wheel.  There are educators, seminars, specialists, and books.  There's always TELL (Tokyo English Lifeline).  But before any of that, I wanted to say to that mother, give your kids the gift of yourself, in your own language, so that they can hear you, and so that you can hear them. 

*Identifying details have been changed