Minority Language at Home

There are a few different methods available to use when raising a bilingual child. They might all be effective depending on your family situation. One of the most popular is OPOL, which I have written about in a previous post. Another is Minority Language at Home or MLAH. This approach is exactly how it sounds. Using the main language (or majority language) in the community, and the minority language at home.

Is the Minority Language at Home Approach effective?

This method can be effective if both parents can speak the minority language. The MLAH is generally the method migrants and ex-pats parents use when moving to a new country. Families who have moved abroad to a country where the community language is different from their native language. Other parents, however, might decide to use the Minority Language at home in order to improve the minority language.

MLAH and OPOL Method

The MLAH may not be as popular as the OPOL approach in the past. Nevertheless, today it has the support of several experts. For instance, Professor Annick De Houwer found in her research that 96% of children growing up in a family that uses MLAH become bilingual. This makes it the strategy with the highest overall success rate.

Professor Barbara Pearson Zurer finds that with MLAH “parents are carving out a domain for the minority language where it doesn’t have to compete for the child’s time and attention”, thus giving the minority language a solid base.

Professor Francois Grosjean, one of the most famous specialists in bilingualism, supports that using the minority language at home is the best method for helping children become bilingual. Based on his research: “the strategy has a clear advantage, in that the weaker language (the home language) will receive much more input than if only one parent uses it as in the OPOL – One Parent One Language strategy”

Is MLAH the best approach?

Statistically, the answer might be ‘yes’, but in real life, this is not entirely true. The problem is that not all families are in a situation where this approach might work. As mentioned, both parents need to be able to speak the minority language and be comfortable using it consistently.

But when both parents speak the same language, the children become consecutive bilinguals, as they learn the minority language first and the community language later from other sources, normally when starting daycare or school. In an OPOL family, the children are normally simultaneous bilinguals, which means that they learn both/all their languages at the same time.) The OPOL has worked perfectly well in many families like in mine and may well do for you, too!

How to make the MLAH work?

Sometimes multilingual children prefer the community (majority/dominant) language over the minority language.  This challenge is common when a child is attending school in the dominant language. However, there are ways you can encourage a child to love and speak the minority language.

Emphasize the usefulness of the minority language

In the year my son turned 6, we talked about what it means to be bilingual. I wanted to help him understand the reasons why learning Spanish was important for him. First of all, being able to communicate with his Grandmother (my Mom), who only speaks Spanish. The ability to read a larger number of books, having an additional skill against his monolingual friends from school, etc. 

Despite the fact that he showed interest in these benefits, what really sparked his curiosity was that he could have a “secret language” with his younger brother and me. No one else would understand, for example, telling his brother what secret fun thing they could do at the playground. He also loved the idea that he could help me “teach” his younger brother the language.

Usually working on the older siblings might bring positive results as well. Those with more than one child, work on the older/oldest child first. Have him/her getting interested to use the minority language with you, and your ‘battle’ is half-won.  The foundation of this strategy is that the siblings have a strong relationship with each other.  Younger siblings who absolutely adore and look up to their older siblings are extra cooperative as well.

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