Let's Talk Languages

Want your kids to be bilingual? You’ll have start them young and keep working at it – but it’ll be worth it

- Lindsay De Freitas

WHEN their daugh­ter Liso was a tod­dler, she spoke only isiXhosa – her mom’s mot­her tongue. But when four­year­ old Liso started playschool, where only English is spoken, she began to juggle two languages – as many South Africans do.

“For the first few years of her life we spoke to her mainly in isiXhosa,” says dad Hagen Engler, former editor of FHM magazine and author of Marrying Black Girls for Guys Who Aren’t Black.

“I was also at my best as an isiXhosa speaker then – telling my little girl to ‘Nxiba umngqwazi (put on your hat)’.

“But now that Liso’s at a playschool where English is the only language used, her isiXhosa speaking has decreased,” Hagen (44) says, adding that they speak mainly English at home.

She still understands it well and his wife, Nomfundo (36), makes an effort to converse with her in isiXhosa, “so I’m confident she’ll get back into speaking isiXhosa again”, he adds.

In a country that has 11 official languages, it’s a challenge many parents who want to raise bilingual children face – there’s usually a preferred language, often the language of instruction at school, and the one spoken by their kids’ friends. Becoming fluent in a second language tends to take a back seat simply because it’s spoken so infrequently.

But raising a bilingual (or multilingual) child is worth the effort as there are many benefits to speaking more than one language. With February having been Language Month, we look at the ad­vantages of bilingualism and how to make it easier to learn another language.

THE BENEFITS OF BILINGUALISM

There aren’t only practical and educa­tional advantages to bilingualism, but emotional and cultural benefits too.