Translation below of the interview in French of Christine Deprez, linguist, University Professor at Paris Descartes.

This is a question that comes up extremely often. It’s a very frequent one!

It’s an extremely frequent situation which, of course, questions parents and worries them, sometimes a little bit.

So we’re going to try to see how things go, because it’s according to the age of the child that we’re going to address this question.

When the child is 0 or 3 years old, he lives in his family with his parents who speak his language, a little bit of French as well, and it’s the language of affectivity, feelings, pleasure, etc. Things are going to get more complicated from the moment the child leaves the family to integrate into the surrounding society. Then it’s the school, it’s the people who are going to look after the child, and he’s going to realise little by little that the dominant language of the environment is, of course, French. (Here in our context)

So what’s going to happen?

Well, sensitive to the dominant aspect of the language of the environment, he will gradually prefer to speak French in the family (or the language of the country) and in a way “unplug” the other language. Because the child knows very well that his parents speak their language and also French (or the language of the country). He is not in a monolingual situation, like at school or like when he goes with his parents, when he is obliged to speak the language of others. There he has, in a way, a choice.

So he will generally choose a solution, which annoys the parents a lot, which is to understand the language of the parents and to answer in French (or in the language of the country). This is quite normal. It’s a mode of communication like any other, which should be favoured, and above all, it’s very important to understand that understanding is a formidable skill. I would like to understand Arabic and Russian for example! So it’s a very important skill.

Another element that I was about to forget: the presence of brothers and sisters. The more children there are in the family, the more French (or the language of the country) will tend to take up space and in general the children among them speak French (or the language of the country).

That too is normal.

Thanks to Christine Deprez, linguiste, professeur d’Université à Paris Descartes