Meredith Heath, aunt to nephews A, B, and C, erstwhile graduate student, and coffee master extraordinaire, writes about her feelings of loss during a period of transition in the lives of her nephews. An avid aunt for nearly six years and surrogate aunt to countless (no, really) other nieces and nephews, Meredith spends much of her free time with “the babies.” When not playing with the little ones or serving a hot cup o’ Joe at the local coffee shop, Meredith can be found researching family history, reading texts from the literary canon she missed during ten years of college, and wrangling ideas about how to return to graduate school without paying for tuition.

Allow me to share with you an excerpt from a recent conversation I had with my 6-year-old nephew, as he was telling me about his snack at school that day:

Nephew A: Yeah, and it was delicioso!

Me: It was what?
 
*Insert Nephew A’s small, shy grin here.*

Me: Did your daddy teach you that? I don’t think he did…

Now allow me to explain. My nephews are part Hispanic; more than a century ago, their daddy’s great-grandparents moved initially from Spain to Mexico and later to the United States, but somewhere along the way, their descendents stopped speaking Spanish. But with his Spanish last name and heritage, my brother-in-law took it upon himself as a young adult to learn the language of his ancestral family. Now, with his kids, he communicates primarily in English, with a smattering of Spanish commands and phrases that they readily understand.

We live in a metropolitan city that reflects a significant Hispanic demographic, notably in my sister’s and brother-in-law’s neighborhood. Now that the munchkins are in school, they learn alongside many children who are native speakers of Spanish, and like the aforementioned conversation I had with my oldest nephew, some of their conversations in the classroom appear to flutter between the two languages.

My own master’s degree was in Teaching English as a Second Language (or TESL), and I also have a bachelor’s degree in Spanish, so watching the manifestation of what I learned in school fascinates me. Without getting too technical, it does help to know that linguists’ hypotheses regarding the ease of acquiring a second language revolve around the idea of a “language acquisition device” (or LAD), an as yet unidentified, entirely hypothetical part or function of the human brain. The theory indicates that the LAD operates nearly like a switch in that children can acquire language without formal instruction, while we as adults have to filter through the complexities of pronunciation, syntax, and language transfer issues (i.e., when the rules that apply in our native language do not apply in our second, acquired language.) This “switch” appears to flip around the age of adolescence, so if we as parents, guardians, or otherwise invested adults wish for the children in our lives to become bi- or multi-lingual, the prime time for language acquisition is before the teenage years.

You as the reader can easily see from the example above that mere continued exposure to a second language results in a nearly automatic acquisition of that language. It doesn’t hurt if that same language knowledge is reinforced at home, but it isn’t necessarily a requirement either. During my tenure at a second-language daycare here in our city, I observed children as young as 18 months learning Spanish, with those same children arriving at our facility from a variety of first language backgrounds. All that to say, if one is concerned about confusing a child in regards to utilizing more than one language, you may set your fears aside.

Whether acquiring a second language is part of your family’s history or merely a desire to expose your nieces and nephews to new cultures and experiences, the only real work you need to do is to find an environment in which the children are both exposed to the language and at some point required to converse in it. The handy LAD – whatever it truly is – will help do the rest of the work for you.

Published: April 2, 2013