I and my husband are expecting our first child (in two months) and are still wondering about our language options. I am Finnish and my husband Swedish, but together we speak English. As we live in Sweden the dominant language around our baby will be Swedish.
At the moment we are planning on me speaking Finnish, my husband Swedish and of course our baby would get indirect contact with English by us speaking to each other.
I have been researching this topic and seeking advice, but everything seems to be so practical that I have not yet found discussion on the emotional and social effects of multiligualism in developing a relationship between a parent and a child.
I think it is very important to create a deep mutual understanding relationship with your children from early on and I am wondering how will this work if the child would feel inadequate at times if he or she cannot express themselves fully or cannot be understood correctly?
Furthermore I am wondering about the unity of the family in the absence of a common language in the practice of the one-language one-parent method. How will this effect the structure of the family and how can it be improved?
The majority of the children of this earth are multilingual, surrounded by two or three, often more languages. The strongest forces for learning a language is love and friendship. A child can acquire a multitude of languages, if they are emotionally important for the child, so that the child identfies himself or herself with the person(s) speaking it. A parent learns to "read" his or her child from very early on and can interpret the needs of the child, long before the child actually talks.
All children, whether they are monolingual or bilingual will experience situations where they cannot understand or be understood. A child who lives in a emotionally and socially stable environment will have no problems with this, this is how a language is learned. From what I understand from your letter, you and your husband are monolinguals, but your child will be multilingual ? Swedish, Finnish and possibly English. This is means that if you are multilingual, you have the ability to switch languages if you are not understood or cannot understand. Since your plan to speak Finnish and your husband Swedish, the child will also associate both languages with loving parents.
Since you are living in Sweden, Swedish will be the language your child will have most access to. The problem is the minority language, in this case Finnish, that the child will be less exposed to. The fact that the parents do not share a common language with the child, is no problem, unless it is made one. For a child that grows up with parents talking two different languages this is natural. In my home we have two languages, Swedish and Arabic. Our daughter is now over 20, and she is bilingual in Swedish and Arabic, and it was never a problem that her parents talked different languages. If the one parent does not have a problem with the other parent speaking a language s/he cannot understand, this will not effect family unity. Since Finnish will be the minority language, a good way to incorporate this language in your family life, is for example to let your husband try to compete with the child when eating breakfast to name what is on the table in Finnish ? bread, butter, milk, cheese etc. He will be the loser in a very short time, and the child will feel that Daddy is proud of the fact that his child also can talk Finnish.
From what I understand, you do not talk or read Swedish yet, but there are books by Gunilla Ladberg that I think would be just what you are looking for, since they stress the importance of a secure and loving environment in both languages so to speak, for the child who is to develop more than one language. Perhaps your husband could read them and then relate and discuss them with you. The books are:
Gunilla Ladberg: Barn med flera språk. Tvåspråkighet och flerspråkighet i familj, förskola, skola och samhälle. Liber förlag 2003
Gunilla Ladberg & Ola Nyberg: Barnen och språken. Tvåspråkighet och flerspråkighet i familj och förskola. Studentlitteratur 1996 (This is a book written in easy Swedish, directly for immigrant parents).