If you are a multilingual, is your home language your most dominant language? Something that surprises me when I read about language policies in schools and elsewhere is, that it is always assumed that people – children and adults – are most proficient, i.e. most fluent, in their home language. This might be correct for […]
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Home Language Maintenance with Teenagers
[update May 2023] If you have teenagers whose school language is not one of the home languages it might be difficult to make them read, write and “immerse” into the home languages. If they don’t get any formal education in those languages it is very difficult to maintain them at home. The switching to the […]
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Multilingual Parenting Fatigue
If you have done everything you could possibly do to keep your home language alive, but your preteen or teenager doesn’t respond in your home language, or overtly states that “the home language is not cool” or “too difficult”, you may experience multilingual parenting fatigue. Yes, I gave it a name! I was the multilingual […]
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The Third Language Model
Audio The Third Language Model How do multilinguals preceive, experience their languages? How do their languages influence the way they perceive themselves, their identity and sense of belonging? We know that multilinguals are not a combination of multiple monolinguals in one, but a unique combination and sum of their languages that they have acquired and […]
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Code-switching, what to do, when should I worry?
This is one of the questions I get asked frequently: When should I worry when my children do code-switching? First of all, the term code-switching is widely used as an umbrella term for using different languages in the same sentence, alternating them to some extent. It is not to be confused with borrowing, where a […]
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