Comments on: Translanguaging: A Very Normal Multilingual Phenomenon

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By: Soultana

Soultana — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 03:59:36 +0000

One of my professors just posted something about translanguaging on her FB page and it intrigued me, as I had never heard the term during my studies in applied linguistics almost 10 years ago.
I am a true bilingual who grew up in Greece with an English-speaking mother and a Greek-speaking father. They spoke Greek to each other, as it was the only language my dad spoke, but Mom translanguaged (is that a valid verb?) a lot, since her Greek was weak.
As a preschooler, my mixed-language utterances entertained my family and freaked others out — Mom was often warned that she should stop speaking English to me, as I would grow up a very confused individual (well, maybe they were right… ha!). One utterance that my dad liked to recount after I’d grown up, was the way I referred to money: I called it “money-yiayia”, because the 1000-drachma bill had a woman from the 1800s wearing a scarf on her head, like many “grandmas” did when I was little. Throughout my younger years, however, I remember being absolutely clear about which language “went” with which people in my environment, and by the time I went to 1st grade, I stopped mixing my languages incorrectly.
I am now married to a native Albanian speaker and we are trying to teach our 10-month-old son all three languages. Of course, we’ve gotten a lot of advice against using all three languages, or at least that each speaker should stick to their native language only; but that’s impossible for me since I TL between English and Greek all the time, and my husband between Albanian and Greek, and we are living in the US! So… we just go with our instincts. As far as comprehension goes, our son doesn’t seem to be getting confused at all. And though I know that when he starts producing, he will create his own words/terms and probably mix grammar and syntax structures, I am also confident that he will sort it all out by the time he goes to school — just like I did!!

By: Diane

Diane — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 18:44:25 +0000

I appreciate this blog’s comments with references and links. I studied SLA and don’t recall “translanguaging” either, but code switching.

By: suzanne mateus

suzanne mateus — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 15:30:35 +0000

Thank you, Heajun! I will definitely take you up as a resource in this long journey of teaching my kids multiple languages.

Good job, momma!

By: Heajun

Heajun — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 15:11:32 +0000

Dear Suzanne,
I read your posting with great interest and I wanted to share the experiences I went through with my daughter. She is six years old right now and I am very proud to say that she speaks three languages fluently!
I have met many parents who have found it extremely difficult to fight the language of the environment they are in. It is very likely that children may end up with great listening skills for a second or third language, but without the speaking abilities. And this is where I would say: “Don’t give up!”
It took me about a whole year to get my daughter to switch from “Yes” to “Si.” In fact, I went a step further by making her say the exact same sentence in two languages. At the end, she was so tired of it that she ended up speaking to me entirely in Spanish… mission accomplished!
But I must say that it doesn’t end there. As her speech and vocabulary gets more sophisticated, I have noticed that she uses English grammar for Spanish and vice-versa. A great example of that: “Quiero ir a la abuela’s casa”. My instincts tell me that it will take another year or two for her to have a full command of all languages, but needless to say that it’s all worth it!

Please feel free to send me any questions… I can share more tips with you.
By the way, I am embarking on a publishing “adventure” to get my daughter the right books to read in those three languages that she speaks: English, Spanish and Chinese.

Hasta pronto!!
un abrazo,
Heajun

By: Casey

Casey — Sat, 24 Aug 2013 21:21:01 +0000

Leslie,
Mil gracias! I was reviewing the links you posted and this one the very first page stood out to me as making so much more sense in explaining the way my husband, son and I communicate amongst ourselves and our bilingual friends and family:
The notion of code-switching assumes that the two languages of bilinguals are two separate monolingual codes that could be used without reference to each other. Instead, translanguaging posits that bilinguals have one linguistic repertoire from which they select features strategically to communicate effectively. (Garcia http://www.nysieb.ws.gc.cuny.edu/files/2013/03/Translanguaging-Guide-March-2013.pdf)
I had never heard of the term translanguaging before and always assumed that codeswitching was the only way of describing the phenomenon. I think I need to share this with my son’s teachers!