It always breaks my heart when I hear stories of people who could have grown up bilingual or even multilingual, but missed out on that experience and opportunity.

Why do I care?

If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you’ll know I’m a monolingual in a monolingual family. There’s a chance my great-great grandparents were either Italian or German (we’ll probably never know now) but I can’t say I feel a personal familial connection to those languages—I’m very much an English woman in an English family.

But I’ve always wanted to be able to speak another language—hence my polyglot journey—and spent many years envious of all those who were raised that way. I studied bilingualism during my linguistics module at uni, and while I disagree now with many of the things I was taught about language acquisition (that’s a whole other topic), I still have the benefit of knowing that language mixing is part of the process and doesn’t mean the children will grow up ‘confused’.

While I’m far from an expert in the subject, having no personal experience in bilingualism whatsoever, from what I’ve heard anecdotally, it seems to me that that is what scares parents into giving up trying to raise their child(ren) bilingual. It’s a myth I really, really want to help disperse.

What can be done?

That said, I have learned that bilingualism is/can be something that takes effort. Again, not an expert, but I have read and bookmarked some resources aimed at parents on that journey, partly because it’s a subject that fascinates me, partly because—well, I don’t know what kind of family I’ll have in the future; it may be useful to me one day. Personally I hope so.

Getting to what prompted me to blog about this subject today, I came across a Kickstarter campaign for a graphic novel designed to help bilingual children. It sounds absolutely amazing, and if I had bilingual kids, I would absolutely nab the biggest package for them.

As it is, I don’t have kids right now and when I do, I don’t know what languages they’ll be exposed to when. There’s less than two days on the campaign and I’m wishing this blog had a bigger audience so I could help spread the word.

The campaign is run by the creator of Library 4 Multilinguals, which I’ve taken some time to explore and it really is a great resource, so I’m sharing that too in the hope that it will help someone who needs it.

Why does it matter?

Languages are so important, even in an increasingly global world. I would argue especially in an increasingly global world. Did you know that English is spoken as a second language by far more people than for whom it’s their native tongue?* Did you know that it makes up a whopping 80% of the internet?*

I’m not the best person to articulate an argument about the role of language and culture in identity; that’s better left for those whose native and/or ancestral languages are not considered the international language. But what I know from my heart is that all languages are beautiful and precious, and it’s more important now than ever to avoid the “English and the main language of the region is all that matters” mindset.

To anyone reading this who has the opportunity to raise their child(ren) bilingual: please, don’t be put off by the myths, take the time to educate yourself on how it works and how you can impart that gift.

To anyone, like me, who isn’t bilingual and wished they were: it’s not too late to acquire another language. Second language acquisition as an adult is possible, despite what linguistics still teaches. Keep exploring my blog to find out how I’m going about it. I’m still a beginner and still learning, but I hope what I have learned can help someone else also achieve their dream of speaking another language.

*380 million native speakers out of 1.5 billion speakers. Source: “All About English” Presentation, Polyglot Gathering Online 2023