The latest episode of our podcast Absolutely Intercultural includes a great deal about the experience of bilingualism. This is close to my heart as I was brought up almost bilingually with a French mother and a British father, living in Britain and our two daughters now live in yet another bilingual situation with English speaking parents at home and an otherwise Danish life.
I have been surprised at how many people (monoglots usually) express doubts that anyone can master more than one language successfully but research, such as here, seems to be bearing out my point of view. I was really taken aback some years ago when a participant in one of my English classes told me that I was not doing my children any good by using English in the home. How, I wondered (silently to myself), were they supposed to communicate with their family?
The word bilingual itself is also misused in Denmark as far as my not so good Danish can inform me. The word for bilingual in Danish is tosprogede meaning literally two-languaged and yet the word is used to describe immigrant children in school when the point the writer wants to make is that these children are a problem because they haven't mastered Danish. If they were truely tosprogede there would be no problem.
I feel a rant coming on in the next show which I will host.
Keywords: absolutely intercultural, bilingual
