Linguistic Aspects of Bilingual or Multilingual Families

Eric B. Drewry, JD, Ph.D., English

For students enamored with the idea of raising children bilingually or multilingually, there are a number of realities that are good to consider: Should each parent use both languages with children? How do children realize immediately which language is dominant and which language is minor? How do children respond to Saturday school in the minority (or heritage) language? Doesn’t the children’s communicative ability in each language lag behind the linguistic development of monolingual peers? Is it better to wait a couple of years to introduce the second (or third) language into the children’s world? These are some of the questions that scholars have found mostly clear answers to in recent decades