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Doc: 00000133 DB: research_t0 Date: Sun Jan 7 19:47:26 2001 WD79CGS7G0 01-07-2001 19:47:26*F BC-FEA-Switzerland-Multilingual Mix:Swiss- Copyright 2001 By The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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Swiss-based family speaks in many tongues. Lesson for learning?
By CLARE NULLIS Associated Press Writer
GENEVA (AP) _ Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa is an American with Japanese roots, married to an Ecuadorean. They live in the French part of Switzerland and send their three children to a German school.
Seems a situation ripe for confusion. But the children take it in their stride.
Eight-year-old Natalie switches effortlessly between English, Spanish, French and German. Gabriel, 5, is trying to follow suit, while 3-year-old Mateo is already a chatterbox - and doesn't mind what he chats in.
"I like the languages _ it's fun," says a grinning Natalie, who's busy planning a birthday sleep-over with five friends: a Canadian, a German, a Colombian, an Anglo-Swiss and a Canadian-German.
And the linguistic lilt of the midnight whispers? Natalie doesn't really know, although she's sure the conversation will flow.
It's proof, says her proud mother, that young children have an immense capacity to absorb different languages without being confused or overwhelmed - provided they are taught consistently.
Tokuhama-Espinosa's conviction resounds in a book she's just published to give parents straightforward advice about the many pleasures and pitfalls of "Raising Multilingual Children."
Her underlying message is that parents should start as early as possible. They should use their native tongue, not mix languages and introduce non-family languages by encouraging children to associate them with a certain situation like school or extracurricular activities like music.
Despite the global advance of English on the Internet,Tokuhama-Espinosa believes multilingualism is increasingly relevant in the era of globalization, with its swirling tides of immigration and growing numbers of people working for foreign companies.
In a world that boasts some 6,000 different dialects and languages, there's nothing novel about multilingualism. In some West African countries, it's not uncommon for people to speak five or six tongues from different language families such as Bantu, Niger-Kordofan and Indo-European.
Even so, research into the subject is still in its relative infancy, especially when it comes to the maximum number of languages that can be absorbed, says Calvin Gidney, professor of child development at Tufts University near Boston.
Most experts agree that bi-, tri- or multilingualism is easiest for the young, although there's no consensus on the best starting age or the ideal number of languages. All stress that much depends on individual children and their environments.
Tim Connell, a professor of languages at London's City University, is on the maximist side.
"I do not believe for one moment that children can be overtaxed," he says. "I think the more you can stuff into children while the brain is still malleable, the more they learn.
" Marilyn Vihman, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Wales, is more cautious. She thinks some young children can be overloaded and, if so, then its best to drop unnecessary languages.
She believes 10- to 12-year-olds are probably the most receptive to languages because they have the necessary learning skills and don't yet have anxieties to slow them down. By the late teens, language students find it hard to shake off accents, Vihman and most other experts say.
Vihman has another word of caution for enthusiastic foreign language teachers.
"In places like Japan they teach 3-year-olds English because they think it's important to start early, but the teachers are not native speakers of English. So the children pick up the accent they hear and also forget very quickly if they are not exposed," says Vihman, an American who's married to an Estonian.
"Faddish exposure of nursery school children to languages which isn't consistently carried through and has no real function in their life is utterly pointless," she argues.
There seems little risk of that in the laughter-filled Tokuhama-Espinosa house just outside Geneva.
Tokuhama-Espinosa says she learned the need for consistency from her middle son, Gabriel, who lapsed into silence when the family moved from Ecuador to Boston and she switched into Spanish to make sure he didn't forget it. It totally confused him, she says. She knows many other families who got it wrong, leaving their children tongue-tied.
Even Natalie, who has more of a natural talent for languages than Gabriel, has a smaller vocabulary in German than most of her classmates. So it's not all a bed of roses, Tokuhama-Espinosa says.
She concedes her family is lucky. They live in Switzerland, which has four official languages (German, French, Italian and Romansch), and they also are in the linguistic melting pot of Geneva with its vast diplomatic community.
Tokuhama-Espinosa, a native of California who earned her master's of education at Harvard, has taught in international schools in Japan, Ecuador and France. Her husband, Cristian, a diplomat, attended a German school as a boy in the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and received intense coaching in Japanese prior to a posting in Tokyo. She says her message that parents can bring up bilingual, even multilingual, children is as relevant for high-flying expatriates as it is for so-called disadvantaged minorities.
"Here it's a nice and privileged environment. In the United States, having a second language is a basic necessity for millions of immigrants," she says.
There are 31 million Hispanics in the United States and their numbers are expected to triple by 2050, when they will likely account for one fourth of all Americans.
"In the United States we're very poor at emphasizing the good qualities about multilingualism," Tokuhama-Espinosa says.
That sentiment is passionately shared by other language experts, who regret that non-English is such a political hot potato for Americans.
Katrien Christie, assistant professor of Italian and language pedagogy at the University of Delaware, regrets the widespread negative public views about bilingual education for non-English speakers. She says it is in contrast to the recognition among some parents of English-speaking children that it's smart to have a foreign language.
Connell of London's City University agrees. "The traditional American argument would be, `Let them all speak English,' but a lot of people see the ability to handle another language even at a social level as part of being mobile."
He's recently completed a "Multilingual Capital" project, which identified 307 different tongues in London, with 25 percent of all school children speaking another language at home.
"It's of great importance to London as a commercial center, because an increasing number of companies are relocating to London because they can draw on all the world's commercially viable languages, plus British qualifications," he says.
On the Net:
American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages: http://www.actfl.org
Other info on second languages in United States: http://www.accesseric.org:81/resources/parent/language.html
Multilingual publications: http://www.multilingual-matters.com
Tokuhama-Espinosa’s own web site: http://www.Multi-Faceta.com
EDITOR'S NOTE: "Raising Multilingual Children," by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, published by Bergin and Garvey, Westport, Conn. ISBN: 0-89789-750-1.
