Location: United States
Parents: Dad=English & German; Mom=English
Children: English and German
Keelan is PhD linguist and father of three. He lives in New Jersey with his family and has been raising his children with German and English.
Veronika: Thanks a lot for taking the time.
Keelan: Sure.
Veronika: I think the first thing would be to get to know how you use multiple languages in your family. Who is part of your family and who uses what language?
Keelan: Sure. So I’m married and my wife and I have 3 kids. My son is 9; my middle daughter is 6; and my younger daughter is 4. My wife speaks English although she studied a few other languages in the past, but only speaks English at home. I speak English as my native language and then learned German when I lived in Germany during high school. I don’t speak it natively obviously, but my comprehension is quite high and my production is decent.
Veronika: Pretty close. That’s right.
Keelan: I still make mistakes here and there and my vocabulary knowledge especially in certain specialized areas is limited. But I can communicate quite well about those topics.
Veronika: I agree.
Keelan: Thanks. So ever since my son was born 9 years ago, I’ve being trying to introduce German to all of my kids as a way to help them have another language exposure and it has been—So first of all it’s me speaking with them. My wife isn’t involved; so it’s just me and them. I think that answers your question directly.
Veronika: Yes.
Keelan: Then you were also asking about how I use the different languages or in what context?
Veronika: Yes. Do you have a certain day or time that “is German” or do you mix the languages?
It’s hard to create the need for children to use the minority language!
Keelan: Yes. So it has been 9 years now and it has ebbed and flowed over time. Some stretches for months at a time, I have been very gung-ho and strict about it.That’s the times when I try to only speak German at home. And then other times it’s maybe we’ve been too busy or distracted or focusing on behavioral issues or things like that…
Veronika: I hear you!
Keelan: … and then German is a little bit of a distraction and falls by the wayside and it is a lot more English during those periods. So it does ebb and flow. I have tried over the years to have a German day. It used to typically be Saturday because that’s a weekend where I will spend most of the time with the kids. My wife might be doing other things. So on a weekday obviously I’m at work and I don’t see them as much. But on Saturday then, I would try to speak exclusively German, use no English at all. That worked pretty well and they got pretty comfortable with that. Over the 9 years, I haven’t had much success in getting them to respond back to me in German. It’s mostly been helping them with their comprehension, but not with their production which I think is pretty typical in a situation like mine where only one parent is doing it.
Veronika: Yup, I agree. I have the same issue with Ella. I consistently have to prompt; and I use German all the time and she would still at times respond in English. It’s hard to kind of create that use or the need to use that language because they’re smart; they know you speak English which is more convenient.
“Can I have some milk?”—Use real-life needs and use the minority language
Keelan: Exactly, exactly! Sometimes when I speak German to them, they get frustrated and say, “Come on, I’m speaking English. I know you understand English”. And I say in German, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re saying”. Obviously they know it’s a lie, but I still pretend. We kind of go back and forth and depending on how they’re feeling that day or how stubborn I am about it, they might end up continuing in German or in English. The one place where I have had the most success and consistent use of German and encouraging them to actually speak German is around food related things. So at the dinner table or at the breakfast table, if they have a request, like if they want me to get them something; like, “Can I have some milk?” or “Can I have more yogurt or whatever?”, I don’t do it unless they ask me in German.
Veronika: All right.
Keelan: So there is a clear payoff; like they want to drink this milk, they need to jump through this hoop in order to get it; and they’ve gotten pretty well trained to do that. So they’re very good at asking for things; like, “Kann ich bitte mehr Milch haben?” or anything like that. They can make that single sentence and replacing the nouns pretty fluently.
Veronika: I totally understand.
It has worked for comprehension, not for production
Keelan: That’s my one idea of success so far. And all of them can do that. In terms of comprehension, my oldest I think has the highest level, then my middle daughter has the next highest and my youngest one the lowest. I’m not sure if that’s a factor of their age and amount of exposure or a factor of which time periods I’ve ended up speaking more; like maybe in the past year or 2, I’ve been doing less; so my youngest one hasn’t had it during those critical years. I think the time when I did it the most was for my son when it was just him and there were no other children and so he got a lot of exposure when he was in like 2-4 year old.
Veronika: Was it a conscious decision for you and your wife to say, “Okay, we’re introducing that language”, or was there a reason for doing it?
It came naturally: Making a decision for bilingual living
Keelan: Well, it is kind of—I’m not sure really discussed it with my wife. She might not have been completely on board with it.
Veronika: Same for me.
Keelan: I didn’t ask her about that. So I guess it was more of a decision on my part, but I’m not sure how much of it was conscious and how much of it was more organic. I’m just feeling like this is something that I would like to do and feels natural and in some situations it just kind of comes out like that. For many conversations, it is conscious and I do have to clearly force myself to think in German because it doesn’t come completely naturally to me all the time and I struggle to paraphrase things or to—a lot of vocabulary for interaction with children; like all of the vocabulary related to construction sites and construction vehicles. Those are things that I didn’t know because I didn’t learn that when I was living in Germany. So when my son was 2 and he was interested in that, I had to go out and research those words and learn them to talk with him about that. We got a German game, a card game called Baustelle which actually had all of them on there. So he learned a lot of the words like Bagger and things like that in German before they learned it in English. I have consciously tried to get different resources to help out; like some games, some books, some other media like songs and things like that; and that definitely does help too.
Veronika: Yeah, I was surprised that your little ones read books in German. That’s really cool.
Keelan: Yeah, easy ones.
Veronika: Yeah, but still…
Literacy skills—a more challenging hurdle
Keelan: So yeah, literacy is another hurdle. I haven’t really had the time to invest in that. I know there is a German school in Princeton and some neighbors of ours are in kind of a similar situation where the mom is bilingual, English-German, the Dad doesn’t speak any German; he’s American and only speaks English. She’s been speaking German to them and their older son is in the same grade in class actually as my son; so we’ve had some German playdates with them at times; and she’s been sending her 2 sons to this German school in Princeton for a couple years and they’re developing literacy skills there. I really wanted to do that, but I haven’t been able to fit that in on Saturday mornings with baseball practice and everything. So it is hard to decide where the priority, the bilingual education fits in.
Veronika: That’s a good point. We’re actually in that German school in Morristown which is one of the three in New Jersey and I’m kind of waiting for that moment when other hobbies kick in and then we get to make that decision; like what do we push and where are her interests? Is that a particular challenge that you see?
A consistent work-in-progress: Keeping up the minority language over time
Keelan: Yeah, it is and like I mentioned earlier, I think in the last year or two, the percentage of German that I’ve been speaking has decreased. And still a lot on some given days or in a given couple weeks stretch, but overall I think the percentage has decreased in a large part because of kids doing more activities; baseball and piano and violin and dance and all those things; and sometimes it is just hard to find the time or comfort level just to do that because it does make the interactions take longer sometimes. And it requires more mental effort and if you’re rushed just to get out the door or if because they’re screaming at each other…
Veronika: Yup that takes a back seat.
Keelan: It can take the back seat.
Veronika: Yeah, I totally understand. That’s a good point.
Integrating the language into the busy day-to-day
Keelan: So I love to get some more inspirational suggestions about how to integrate it more smoothly into the routine and your blog has helped me a lot already. The Kinderlieder has been a great resource. My 2 daughters request that every night at bedtime. They request it every night and each one of them gets to pick out one song and they get to listen to it and watch it.
Veronika: That’s good.
Keelan: There are several that they have learned to sing along with. That’s really nice.
Veronika: I should share another one which is quite similar; It’s also Kinderlieder, but performed by a kindergarten teachers with actual Kindergarten children and they are doing the dances that go along with the songs. Maybe that would be something— kind of interactive.
Keelan: Yeah, the motions…
Veronika: Yeah, exactly; like their movements and stuffs. I actually posted one thing last week, tips on how you can incorporate bilingual element into a busy schedule throughout the week. So I’ll send you that link for sure.
Keelan: Yeah.
Travel to a country where the language is spoken
Veronika: Which advice would you give to other parents?
Keelan: Other parents who are trying to raise bilingual children?
Veronika: Yes.
Keelan: Well, I haven’t actually done this myself, but what seems to have been really effective for this other family that I mentioned here is they’ve taken trips to Germany and Switzerland to visit relatives every summer and that seems to have worked really well. Whenever they come back from there, the sons are speaking Germany and feel more comfortable in it. So I think if you have the resources financially and time wise to do that, then that seems to be a great thing to do. It’s not something I’ve been able to do yet, but I hope to do next summer. So getting exposure for a couple weeks in a country where that language is the primary language is really, really important—I think.
Veronika: I agree.
Look for other speakers of the minority language in your area
Keelan: Other than that, if that’s not possible or until that happens, trying to get exposure with other people who speak the language so that they see that it’s not just you.
Veronika: That’s important.
Keelan: So they see that it’s more normal than just something that your parents are trying to force upon you.
Veronika: Yeah, that’s right.
Show them: Yes, German is a real language!
Keelan: So having that friend—and we have a couple other friends in town actually who are from Germany or who speak German for some reason. Like we became friends with—also an American, but he speaks German quite well. He was a German teacher at the local high school and he has a son who’s my son’s age and they go to our pool; so I’m just randomly around town and speaking German with them while my children, there is a good way for them to see that this is a language that people actually use and it’s a mode of communicating in certain social situations.
Veronika: Right.
Keelan: So I think it’s really good for them to have that message as well.
Veronika: That’s true. All right! Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing all that.
Keelan: It’s all right.
Veronika: I think that had a lot in it and will be very interesting.
Keelan: Thank you.
Veronika: Great. Thank you.
