Cross-cultural communication （31）　

31）The Path to Bilingualism
It was the summer of 2013. I came across an article on the internet written by a Japanese researcher in basic medical science living in the United States, about the difficulties of language education for their children. The parents' aim was to raise their children to be bilingual in Japanese and English without any problems. Since their children were attending a local school in America, after a year their English had certainly improved, and they were able to use English to a level that was almost sufficient for everyday life. After three years, their parents said that they spoke English that was almost as good as a native speaker's. However, when they were asked about it themselves, they said that there were frequently words and expressions in class that they couldn't understand, and that their English when they gave presentations was clearly inferior to that of other students. Their Japanese ability had also deteriorated. In order to maintain their Japanese ability, they made it compulsory for them to speak Japanese at home, and they also sent them to a Japanese supplementary school once a week. However, even when they were 12 or 13 years old, their Japanese ability was still at the level of elementary school kids. As you can see, raising bilingual children is quite difficult, even when the parents, who are highly educated doctors, make a detailed plan and raise their children in an English-speaking country.

I myself experienced a case of failed bilingual education when I was working in Paris in the mid-1990s, providing medical care for Japanese people. It was the story of a Japanese mother and her daughter living in Paris. The mother could only speak a few words of French. She enrolled her daughter, who was in kindergarten, in a local kindergarten with the aim of making her bilingual in Japanese and French. However, after many months, the daughter still could not understand French at all. This was to be expected, as her mother had no ability to follow French at all when they got home. To make matters worse, her Japanese also stopped progressing beyond baby talk. When we consulted a specialist in language development, the conclusion was that she should concentrate on learning Japanese, her native language. Her mother was quite resistant to this at first, but in the end she returned to Japan. A year after returning to Japan, it seemed that her Japanese ability was still quite behind. As you can see, if you try to force bilingual education during the language development period, you will end up hindering the development of both languages.

This is an experience I had as a resident doctor in New York in the early 1980s. There are many Chinese Americans in New York, and many of my fellow residents were of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans have a strong cultural sense of mission to preserve their native language, and almost without exception, they are obliged to use Chinese at home. So even Chinese people born in America spend more than half their lives speaking Chinese. When I asked them, the most frustrating experience they had as medical students was that the English they used when presenting cases was not as sophisticated as that of ordinary Americans. For someone like me who only started studying English in earnest as an adult, it was a completely incomprehensible area, but since most of the Chinese-Americans I asked gave the same response, it must probably be true.

From these experiences, I have come to the following conclusion. Bilingual education from an early age that ignores the child's will carries the risk of damaging their native language ability (or universal language ability). In the first place, it is impossible to confirm whether or not a young child wants to work in a job that requires bilingualism in the future. Therefore, it is best to focus on the child's native language during their early years and school years, and then, from around high school age, they can take more advanced foreign language classes if they want to. Necessity is the mother of invention. If a foreign language is absolutely necessary for what you want to do, you will definitely be able to make it work. Also, a foreign language as a means to an end does not necessarily have to be at the level of your native language.

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