What do you expect from immigrants?

The parents are keeping them sheltered to an unusual degree, or this situation is not as you understand it to be. If they are keeping them that sheltered, it won't last unless they move.

 

It's more complicated than you know.

 

People want to believe things about language because it is very personal, but the pattern of assimilation is just as I've described it. If some 3rd or 4th generation offspring dedicate themselves to learning the family heritage language that's great, but it is not the norm.

All of this is to say nothing of out-marrying.

 

It's very common to see young kids of the second or third generation out with their grandparents (who frequently appear quite at a loss) translating for them, sometimes impatiently, and only able to respond in simple terms as they can sort of work out what they hear more than they can produce the language themselves. Nothing 'bad' about it, just the normal progression of things.

 

During parent-teacher nights, the turnout among my students' parents is pretty spotty. Most of the parents are (sometimes very) new arrivals and work two or more jobs. They are often also anxious about putting themselves in a public space where they can expect English to be predominant. Some of us teachers can speak various languages enough to communicate well with the parents, which puts them quite at ease. For those who cannot, the students often accompany their parents (or uncles, cousins, whatever it may be) and translate, or if all else fails there is a contingent of kids in the JrRotc who are assigned to help families find their way around the (rather large) school and translate where needed.

Sometimes the relative has been in the US longer, and it is remarkable how much more confident they are. Some few of the mothers are married (or remarried) to American citizens and it is pretty much like meeting with the parents of the kids born here.

These are the kids at the public school where I teach during the day. My private tutoring students are another (long) story.

 

Are you a part of an immigrant community? I am. I have also lived in several non-English speaking nations. I currently have a nephew living in Asia (married to an English speaking local) whose 3 year old son still doesn't speak anything but English. Their child is not even a tiny bit sheltered. He will of course, eventually learn the local language, but he will ALWAYS be able to speak English, because he will hear nothing else in the family home as long as he lives in it. It's the same for the friends mentioned in earlier post. It's not a factor of isolation, it's a factor of being young. School changes things, but the new language doesn't 'remove' the mother tongue, it joins the mother tongue.

The only circumstances where it might be 'removed' is if the parents are not speaking the mother tongue in the home. Not sure why you think a couple who share a language would not use it 99% of the time. That would be incredibly rare. Unless you're talking about couples in which only ONE speaks the specific tongue. That very often fails, even when the parent tries really hard to teach the his/her language to the kids. Also, a completely different scenario, and not the subject of this dialog.

 

In other words, more complicated than you had at first posited. There's even more to it than you can likely appreciate.

 

I also notice a bit of confusion over the primary language used in the home for 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants, and what one or more of the members of the family can speak - to whatever degree.

 

That's not a variable, it's a very different scenario.

Children will learn whichever language mom and dad speak. If an Italian and a Korean marry, and live in America, they'll almost certainly speak English in the home. It would be a rare couple who would be able to keep up 99% of daily conversation in one or the other.

 

I'm talking about 10th generation and over. No loss of language, at all. You literally cannot AVOID learning it, when you hear virtually nothing else in childhood, and it continues to be the primary language spoken at home as long as you live there.

 

Children will retain, and then speak in their own adult homes, the dominant language of wherever they live. Some make the effort to keep the heritage language of their family active, and that's admirable, but by the 2nd or certainly 3rd generation most immigrants speak English only in their own homes here in America.

 

That is not correct, unless that generation is living in a country where the heritage language is the dominant language. Sorry, but it is what it is.

 

A lot of people have inaccurate perceptions about language because it is so personal and so closely tied to identity.

 

I LIVE in a such a community. Ancestors migrated out of the mother land hundreds of years ago. Language in the home remains almost entirely the mother tongue. Go ask a Chinese kid (of any generation) who was raised by Chinese speaking parents (of any generation) if he/she can speak Chinese. Your examples are not such kids. Your examples are the children of mixed language marriages, or from families who deliberately stopped speaking the mother tongue for some reason - neither are what I'm talking about.

 

Reality will back me up on this, so inaccuracy may be your issue.

 

Not if they have been in America all that time.

 

You've set the wrong parameters. The operational condition is if the kid was born in the US or born in China and raised there for 12 or 13 years before coming here. It is as I've told you, and before you ask any other leading questions, I have been working very closely with hundreds of Chinese families (and many others) for 25 years, professionally and personally, in China and in the US. I also hold a Masters Degree in Linguistics and have conducted a great deal of research into first and second language acquisition. I'm not making this stuff up.

 

I'm sorry, but it will not.

 

Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that. I think we're talking about second generation immigrants there.

You'd have to be naive and ignorant to think all those values they carried with them all go away by the second generation.

 

How is it that you think a child can avoid learning a language, when it's the primary language he/she is exposed to from birth?

 

You realize the second generation would be one born in the US, right?

 

Since I never said anything about avoiding learning a language, that's up to you to work out.

 

You realize that most of those people in Joshua tree with RVs probably are?

Are you familiar with that region of the country?

 

You have implied that such situations are 'complex', and that they don't all result in bi-lingual children. I dispute that vociferously. You yourself as a native English speaker - are living proof of how difficult it is to avoid learning the language you were born to and continue to hear until emancipation (and usually beyond).

We are talking ONLY of families (of any generation) in which both parents are fluent in a language other than the local one. I submit that it would be incredibly unusual if such parents did not speak that language in the home, most of the time.

 

If you have questions, feel free to ask. But yes, they are complex and do not always result in fully bi-lingual children.