The Loss of a Parent’s Language: A Hidden Shame and Common Phenomenon

Mithu Sanyal wrote on the website of the BBC she has “a secret so shameful that[elle l’a] hidden for decades”. Of Polish mother and Indian father, she grew up in Germany. This secret that she reveals today is the loss of her father’s language (and her mother’s language as well). She doesn’t speak Bengali at all, which she heard her father speaking on the phone, for example, without being able to do it herself, because he never taught her. Worse for the young woman, she does not know how to correctly pronounce her first name, typically Bengali. For many people like her, it comes with a sense of shame. You are asked to explain yourself, you look disappointed, you judge the children and the parents, who have not made enough efforts.

A fairly common phenomenon

According to Annick De Houwer, director of HaBilNet (Harmonious Bilingualism Network) and professor emeritus working on language acquisition and multilingualism at the University of Erfurt, Germany, has studied this phenomenon. According to the various studies she has conducted in different countries, between 12 and 44% of children who grow up hearing two or more languages ​​end up speaking only one. She attributes the responsibility for this loss to the school. On the one hand, educators often explain to parents that the child must be allowed to speak a main language, that of the institution, so that he can master it, as if bilingualism were detrimental to language skills. On the other hand, children are bullied when they express themselves in one of the family languages.

Mithu Sanyal interviewed Martha Bigelow, professor of second language teaching at the University of Minnesota, USA. She confirmed to him that there are many false beliefs about languages. For example, “[aux États-Unis]to learn English, it is always advisable to speak only English”.

Moreover, if the family language is a European language or Japanese, for example, it will be more valued than if it is Turkish (in the case of Germany). According to Mark Terkessidis, an expert on migration and racism, “when these children arrive at school, the focus is on the deficit [de connaissance de la langue allemande] and not on the resource [que constituent les autres langues connues]”. To remedy this, the school must encourage multilingualism and begin by pronouncing the children’s names correctly, insists Annick De Houwer.

And for regretful adults like Mithu Sanyal, it may not be too late. Martha Bigelow explains that you can always learn a language as an adult and that you just have to not put too much pressure on yourself regarding the fluency of reading or writing, for example. Sometimes a conversational level can be more than enough to reconnect with loved ones.