Let's Talk Languages

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

- Lindsay De Freitas

WHEN their daughter Liso was a toddler she spoke only Xhosa – her mom’s mother tongue. But when four-year-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 Xhosa 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 Xhosa, “so I’m confident she’ll get back into speaking Xhosa 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 backseat 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.