Keeping the mother tongue alive in our home

Modified and adapted from various authors

In the time before I became a mother, I planned for my child to be multilingual. The moment I took my baby girl to my arms, the words that almost came out of my mouth where in Spanish. Since I married a German speaker, we have been speaking English together for many years. Spanish words were not easily coming out. Moreover, we would be raising our family in a small town Sweden. My husband spoke some Spanish but our family language was English.

I was stumped about how to make the plans a reality. I knew the most effective way, the way counseled by language acquisition experts, was for me to speak Spanish to my daughter and for my husband to speak German: the “one speaker, one language” rule.

Some people describe their language level as having stalled at the age of their immigration. My vocabulary was now being populated by a microcosm of languages, food related to my place of origin is discussable in Spanish. Mexican jokes. Insults. Family gossip. But I have scant words to discuss politics, which we rarely broached at home. Or science. Or cultural theory. Even food when is things I did not have growing up. Any number of topics that might come up in a wider social or intellectual context, do in fact preoccupy my mind in English. A few other things exists in my mind only in Swedish, such as "fika" and "foreldreledig", or in German, such as "schade".

There have been in fact moments in which my mother tongue failed me, and vice versa, I wondered: Am I even qualified to teach my daugther Spanish? Would I be passing on a fractured, stunted language that would prevent her from seeing the world in full color?

So far my oldest is 2 years old. Now she understands Spanish, German and Swedish. We also noticed that she understand a lot of English. She speaks mostly Spanish at home. Her dad and I joke that she picked Spanish first because I talk more than he does. Also at preschool she speaks now Swedish. And to her little sister, for now she decided to have an own language with her.

It might be early but I am curious as to how this will continue. For now I would like to share the strategies I follow to keep her mother tongue alive:

1.    Consistency. I speak only Spanish to my girls… all the time, regardless of what language those who were around us spoke. When I first leaved the house with my oldest as a baby, I tried to avoid speaking to her because I felt so unsure about my language skills and my place in the world. But when she became mobile and getting into everything, for her safety, I had to talk to her outside! and loud enough for her to hear me. It was weird in the beginning, but then I got used to it, and now I honestly don’t even notice.

2.    Reading. I read everything in Spanish. And when the books are in any of the other 3 languages I just come up with a story on the fly that fits the illustrations.

3.    Activities and Spanish play dates. I want them be able to communicate in Spanish about more than what we are going to eat or wear so I make an effort to meet other Spanish speaking people.

4.    Movies. I look for movies in Spanish so she would hear different vocabulary.

5.    Family skype. I try to skype with family in Mexico once or twice a week so she would also hear the language and get exposed to the culture.

As Yoojin Grace Wuertz wrote "I imagine that behind every bilingual person there is a story of separation. Of homes left behind, families divided, identities remade over and over again. A history of loss in addition to the mixed gains"

So I do want them to learn Spanish but I myself not completely versed in the language. I do not know the future, but sometimes I imagine my girls and me in the future speaking Spanish for some topics and English for other topics, maybe even German. And who knows, I might even learn Swedish good enough to talk to them as well.