Language Loss

Language loss tends to happen a lot with children or minority languages across the world. Parents of these bilingual children fear that the children will loose their native language to the language they are learning in school.Children will sometimes be hesitant to talk in their native language when they come home from school. The parents then use their child as a spokesperson to communicate with monolingual people. Both of these techniques described in our book are called roll reversals. I think that it is wise for children to be bilingual though since it opens opportunities to them as they grow older such as communicating with others, broadening their knowledge and understanding of language culture, and possibly better job opportunities. From an outside look at it, it helps the world become more intertwined. I understand that some may fear that there will be a total language shift in these children as it does happen often. However I believe their are ways to keep both languages strong in children, such as teaching kids different languages at a very young age. It is a known fact that children learn language the best while they are young and it becomes difficult as they get older. Another way to keep both or numerous languages alive is to have adults cooperate in learning the language that their children are learning in school too, while not abandoning or speaking less of their native language. All in all I believe that we should have more bilingual children and should not let the fear of language loss prevent parents from inviting other languages in.