All the different bilinguals in my home

There is no one way to raise bilingual kids. Every family is different, and the context where they learn language can change. Previously I wrote about bilingualism expectations (and plurilingualism) in the context of raising our kids.

If you think about bilingualism in terms of time, there are generally two categories: sequential bilingualism and simultaneous bilingualism. In the first case, one learns a first language and then later learns a second language. In the second case, one learns (two or more!) languages at the same time.

Just looking at my household, in a family of four we have THREE different kinds of linguistic backgrounds!

Why is this important? Well, like I said, raising bilingual kids depends a lot on the context of that particular learner. We need to be aware that each of our kids have a different context and thus our expectations should be adjusted accordingly. Like I wrote before expectations around bilingualism and raising kids are often out of whack. The framework of sequential-simultaneous bilingualism adds is another useful frame for aligning your expectations (and therefore effort) to reality.

Final note: the multilingual multiverse

There are many other frameworks for thinking about multilingualism. In this post looked at time of language acquisition. In my other post I wrote on heritage language learners and plurilingualism. There are also receptive bilinguals, those who can understand a language even if they cannot produce it. And then of course bimodal bilinguals who use language in at least two different modes, for example audio-oral language and visual-spatial sign language. And these are just super-categories! At a personal level there are so many other possible dimensions… fascinating!

Long form