or: You can’t please everyone!

Author: Dudu Sönmezçiçek, ANE editing department “Letters for Parents“ Translator: Helmut Voigt

Language creates identities and draws borders. In a globalised world as well as in societies characterised by migration and mobility, borders do not need to be erased but to be crossed. This is why everybody should be able to make himself understood in at least two languages. The European Commission has decided that EU citizens should be able to speak one or even two other European languages in addition to their mother tongue. Therefore, Article 149 of the EU treaty makes language learning one of the top priority goals of the EU.

I have been deeply involved in this matter, and I have found that parents do not ignore topical subjects and discussions, but on the contrary are highly interested in them: since long, parents have realised the importance of language and multilingualism. I remember the time when my child went to the kindergarten. At that time, there were lively discussions among the parents of kindergarten children about the importance of “early multilingualism“ and about the opportunities given to our children to make use of “the time window during which children can learn best”. Suddenly, parents began to support the idea of letting groups of 3-year old children learn English. Never again, anything else has ever been put into practice more quickly and less complicated than the “English course” in my child’s kindergarten. Now my child is 11; not only is Early English taught in the kindergarten, but there is a rapidly growing number of bilingual or even trilingual kindergartens, mostly due to the parents’ demand!

But at that time, there was another issue worrying me: my child’s bilingual reality of life. For when I became a mother, it was not easy to decide in which of the languages I’m familiar with I should talk with my child: on the one hand, we wanted our child to be able to chat with his grandparents and the rest of the family in Turkey. On the other hand, he should be granted the best starting position for his future.

In the end, I let my heart decide and talked to my child in Turkish, sang Turkish songs to him, told him Turkish stories and used Turkish pet names to express my love. For nearly all of my multilingual friends, it was quite natural that I spoke Turkish with him. My other friends and acquaintances had differing views and asked me why I didn’t talk to my child in German because they regarded my German as perfect. We were constantly oscillating between the extremes of “language dogmatists”: one view was “native language first, German afterwards”, the other view was that we were botching our child’s future because we spoke with him in Turkish… Moreover, our child would be “semi-lingual” in both languages. The interesting fact was that their views had one thing in common, namely that there were only two alternatives: either “perfect bilinguality” or “semi-linguality in two languages”. However, millions of multilingual people all over the world falsify these views.

Later on, when my child was about to go the kindergarten, I started to talk with him in both languages to prepare him for the new language used in the kindergarten for easier familiarisation. So I translated everything I told him in one language into the other and vice versa. Of course, I was unable to do this for a long time, so there came a time when I spoke to him in German only. I have to confess that this was much easier for me because I have a broader knowledge of the German language.

Disapproval in my close and less close environment became obvious. The supporters of bilinguality thought it was a pity that we deprived our child of an important chance. During our vacation in Turkey, we faced quite a different kind of accusations which we had to get along with: We were criticised of being alienated, and our child was not Turkish at all, etc. “Yes, you’re right! Our child is a Berlin child having Turkish roots!” was one of our standard answers. Looking back now into the past, I can only say, “We have made the correct decisions for all of us complying with the situations we were in.” Our child is rather eloquent in German and has an expandable capacity in Turkish, as the foundation stone has been laid, and he is in regular contact with Turkish speaking people. Today more than ever before, I am convinced that the decision of parents is legitimate, whatever it may be. The imporant thing is that a child gets support in learning languages, irrespective of whether he or she grows up with only one or several languages. You learn a language by speaking it. And this starts at home.