Parents and schools have a choice - do they encourage their children to be bilingual? Parents who are recent immigrants often feel that they want their children to fit in as soon as possible and they realize that learning English is the key to success and high achievement in American culture.
 Parents often begin to encourage their children to speak English exclusively, and not speak Greek. Conversely, there are other parents who immediately begin speaking to their American-born children in their native language so that the child doesn’t “forget his Greekness”.
Myth #1- Speaking Greek will harm the child’s learning of English.
This myth is based on research done with children in the early part of the 20th century. In these studies, early researchers often examined children who were behind in both languages and concluded that being bilingual led to confusion and lack of progress in English. More recent studies have examined children who are fluent in both languages, and have found that being bilingual is a cognitive strength! After all, if one language doesn’t express something well, the other language may have a better word for it. Recent studies have found that children who were strong in their bilingual abilities outperformed children who spoke only one language in problem-solving abilities and divergent thinking. Being bilingual can make children smarter when it comes to learning!
In addition to having multiple words for the same concept, bilingual children also form neural synapses in their brain that allow them to think in new patterns and develop new concepts. This mental agility can last throughout the lifetime, and has been found to be significant in delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease in which people become confused and lose memories. Having concepts remembered in different languages allows people to hold on to memories for longer.
Myth #2- Children need to speak only English to succeed in school; Parents should discourage Greek at home in order to help their child do better in school.
Isthmus of the Corinth Canal
 It is true that having a high level of English is related to having a high level of achievement; students who do well in school tend to have a strong grasp of the English language. However, recent studies have found that in order to get a strong grasp of English, children need a strong grasp of their first language. It is easier to understand English grammar if you understand Greek grammar first. My children, four- and five years old recently realized that it was easier to understand the English word “isthmus” because they knew the word “isthmos” in Greek and could relate the land form they were studying in school to the Isthmus of Corinth they saw last summer. In act, there are some studies that have found that students who are fluent in both languages outperformed their peers in achievement and thinking.
Other studies have also found that as a child’s understanding and abilities in one language grow, their understanding and abilities in another language also grow. A strong grasp of Greek can mean a strong grasp of English. However, if a child is raised in one language and then, just as they are about to mature to a stronger level, they are moved to an English-only environment, their abilities will suffer in both languages. A five-year-old who has been speaking only Greek and is then moved to speaking English only will remain at a five-year-old’s level in Greek, but have only a first-year-old’s understanding of English. By the time the child has a five-year old’s understand of English, they are ten years old and behind in both languages. If the child had been allowed to learn more in Greek, their understanding of English would have developed faster. A study of Spanish- speaking children found that the level of academic achievement in English was directly related to the amount of Spanish they were allowed to speak. The more Spanish they spoke, the faster they learned English and the better they did in school (Cummins, 1992).
Myth #3- If a young child is speaking only Greek, they should be taught to read in English as soon as possible.
Success in school has been found to be most closely linked to literacy. Literacy is most closely tied to a child’s first language. If a child is in the environment of one language just before s/he can read, then they should learn reading in that language first before they start trying to learn to read in another language. This means that a child who is four or five, and either brought to the United States or raised in an exclusively Greek-only environment, should be taught to read in Greek first, and then switch to English. Once the sound symbol relationship concept has formed, then there is a better chance of transfer. That means that if a child can read in the language they know, they can then understand how to read in English. If the child is encouraged to begin reading in English only, s/he first has to learn to speak English- a process that can take another 3-5 years. Thus, reading doesn’t begin to happen until the child is almost in middle school!
Myth #4- Schools understand the relationship between first and second language acquisition.
There is a great debate in bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs whether a child should receive instruction in their native language or in English exclusively. Schools are, essentially, cultural transmission points and the issue of people speaking a foreign language in school is a contentious topic. There is research cited on both sides. It is important to recognize that many researchers are not linguists, but are educators, examining achievement. The research in linguistics is fairly clear in terms of the strength in one language raising the ability in another language. The politics of “English-only” are less so. However, it is clear that to provide instruction in a child’s native language can be expensive and challenging. While it may be easier for some districts to find a teacher who speaks Spanish, not all districts have teachers who are fluent in Greek- or Arabic or Tagalog. Schools may not have the ability to encourage development in a child’s first language- so this task falls squarely upon the parents!
Myth #5- It is important to speak Greek to the child so that they can identify with their Greek culture.
There are some fascinating studies among Hispanic populations that the first generation families tend to speak Spanish-only in the home and use English only for limited business and social reasons. The second generation of children, born in America, understand Spanish, but do not speak it in the home and speak English fluently in the community. The third generation does not speak Spanish at all, while the fourth generation learns Spanish as a foreign language in an effort to reconnect with their cultural past. Jhumpa Lahiri, a novelist of Indian descent, states it best, perhaps, when she declared “I think that for immigrants, the challenges of exile, the loneliness, the constant sense of alienation, the knowledge of and longing for a lost world, are more explicit and distressing than for their children. On the other hand, the problem for the children of immigrants — those with strong ties to their country of origin — is that they feel neither one thing nor the other. This has been my experience, in any case. For example, I never know how to answer the question “Where are you from?”. Oftentimes, the child incorporates the feelings that the parents have about the United States and is caught between identities.
The other issue is that the child will identify with the Greece that their parents remember, not necessarily the Greece of today. Adult children of Greek immigrants from the 1960’s and 70’s have a very different version of what it is to “be Greek” than modern Greeks. Visiting Greece in the twenty-first century can be a very unsettling experience for adult children of immigrants since it is not the Greece they have been told about. Change happens in all cultures. When the cultural values, music and language forms have been frozen through an immigrant’s eyes, the “real” Greece can seem a foreign place.
Reality- A parent’s use of language and perceptions of culture shapes, but is not duplicated in the child.
Children of first generation immigrants are often caught between their parent’s perceptions of the United States and their peers’; between the expressions and idioms of Greek and the usage and achievement in English; between a dated version of Greece and the modern world. All of these can lead to issues in the eternal search for identity that all children, adolescents and adults face. However, a parent can make sure that they pass on their knowledge, their values, their understanding of Greekness and allow the child to form their own amalgam. Just as strength in one language can lead to strength in another, denying a child access to his home heritage or language can lead to a feeling of homelessness and lack of ability to communicate. Greek parents then bear a unique responsibility of teaching their child Greek, about Greece, and then allowing the child to connect with English and United States culture in a manner that makes sense to them. As Benjamin Lee Whorf, one of the first linguists to connect the idea that language and cognition are related in 1837, said “Language shapes the way we think and determines what we think about”. With two languages, how much richer is a child’s life to be able to think in such diverse and fascinating manners! Ω
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