Bilingual families: keeping a heritage language alive with grandparents
Updated
Grandparents can help a heritage language survive by being a reason to use it: someone the child loves who speaks it naturally. Let them speak it on every call, whatever language the child answers in, and build the language into songs, stories, food words and games rather than lessons. Put regular, warm, low-pressure contact ahead of correct grammar.
Why are grandparents so important for a heritage language?
For many children in bilingual families, the grandparents are the people who give the language a point. It stops being something parents want them to practice and becomes the way you talk to Grandma. A language can mean more to a child when it connects them to people they love.
Grandparents also carry the parts that aren't in any textbook: the family's own words, the nicknames, the songs, the way things are said at home.
Should grandparents speak only the heritage language?
Many families find it works best when the grandparent sticks to their language and the child answers in whatever they can. Understanding can come well before speaking, so a child who answers in another language may still be listening and taking it in. Correcting every word can make a child go quiet, so let the conversation flow and gently repeat the right word back instead.
What can grandparents do on calls to keep the language alive?
- A word of the week: one word on Sunday, used in a sentence by both sides by the next call.
- Songs and rhymes from the grandparent's childhood, sung together every call until the child knows them.
- Picture books read aloud in the language, with the grandparent pointing at the pictures on camera.
- Cooking on video: the names of foods and kitchen things are easy to learn while making something.
- Counting games, colors, and naming things the child shows on camera.
Which games use the heritage language?
- I spy, played in the grandparent's language.
- 20 questions, where the grandparent answers in their language and the child asks in either.
- Simon says, with the commands in the heritage language.
- A treasure hunt where the grandparent describes the hiding place in their language and the child finds it.
- Word bingo: the parent makes a card of pictures; the grandparent calls out the words.
What if the child refuses to speak it?
Many families run into this, especially once school starts in the other language, and it doesn't have to be permanent. Keep the language around without making it a battle: the grandparent keeps speaking it, the family keeps the songs and foods, and visits or calls stay warm. A child who feels pressured may dig in; a child who feels welcomed in either language has an easier way back to it.
What can parents do between calls?
- Ask the grandparent to record short voice notes in the language for bedtime.
- Keep a few books, songs and shows in the language at home.
- Ask the child to teach you a word they learned from their grandparent. Many kids enjoy being the teacher.
- Plan visits where the language is all around them; many families find those weeks give a kind of practice that calls alone can't.