Mother tongue in the early years

English becoming the common language for Indians, though welcome in a way, has also led to some questions – What is the place of the mother tongue? When the father and mother have different mother tongues, is it not better to use English as the common language? Will it be easier for young children to adapt to pre-school if they are spoken to only in English at home? I have interacted closely with many multi-lingual families and firmly believe that young children can be quite comfortable with multiple languages at home. Read on.

- Meena Sivaraman

Multi-lingual families on the rise

Mixed cultural and regional marriages are much more common these days. Young parents sometimes decide to adopt either of the partner’s mother tongues. Vyom’s mother Kavita decided to speak in Marathi, her husband’s mother tongue, as she wanted one language for communication within the family. In many cases, families opt for a common language, such as Hindi. Both these sets of families, believe that using one language at home makes things simple, for both the children and adults. Many mixed cultural families, on the other hand, have chosen to use both the partners’ languages at home. The father may speak to the children in his mother tongue, and the mother in hers, or they may use both the languages with the children.

Even in the case of families where the partners share the same mother tongue, children are exposed to English at school. In most cities, we find families from different parts of the country – for them, the language spoken outside home – be it Marathi, Kannada, Hindi or Telugu - is not their mother tongue.

Is being multi-lingual hard on children? There is a common perception that in the early years, children are better off speaking one language – at home and at school. Many pre-schools suggest to parents that they speak in English so the child ‘does not struggle’ to follow instructions at school. In fact, many parents, fearing the ‘interaction process’ for admission that is followed at most schools, start speaking to their toddlers in English. This apprehension is expressed to mixed cultural families too – “Won’t your children be ‘confused’ if you speak two languages at home?”