Factors affecting parental decisions on passing a heritage language to New Zealand-born children Una Cunningham, University of Canterbury Jeanette King, University of Canterbury

Overview Intergenerational Transmission of Minority Languages (ITML) project http://www.nzilbb.canterbury.ac.nz/ITML.html Census data Interview data – ‘bilingual teen’ project Future directions

Motivation Office of Ethnic Affairs report (2013) Encouragement to speak English to children Long term personal and societal benefits (Cunningham 2011) Our aim – to produce information and disseminate to parents and professionals One of the initial motivations for the current project was a report from the Office of Ethnic Affairs where it was suggested that migrant families should consider speaking English to their children to improve their level of English (2013: 16). This report leans heavily on work by Esser which claims that “school performance is not enhanced by proficiency in the language of the country of origin in addition to that of the host country” (2006: 72). Our concern is that advice such as this may encourage migrant families to abandon intergenerational language transmission without considering the long-term personal and societal benefits of competence in the heritage language (Cunningham 2011). It is also worth noting that in comparison with other jurisdictions there is a dearth of public understanding and knowledge about multilingualism in New Zealand and a lack of information for professionals working with parents and children.

Census data Language question from 2013 census in which language(s) could you have a conversation about a lot of everyday things? Commissioned dataset looking at households where a child might have the opportunity to be raised as a speaker of a minority language 23 languages The 2013 census reveals that there are speakers of over 190 languages in New Zealand and that there are at least 168 languages spoken by children. In order to provide a more manageable dataset this paper contains information on 23 minority languages in New Zealand commonly spoken by children. The languages for the dataset were selected as the 20 languages other than English, Māori and NZ Sign Language which are reported to have more than 1,000 child speakers in New Zealand in the 2013 Census. Cook Islands Māori, Niuean and Tokelauan were also included as they are languages for which New Zealand arguably has a special protective relationship, thus bringing the total number of languages analysed here to 23.

Languages Half of the languages are from countries in the Asian continent: Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Northern Chinese, Panjabi, Persian, Russian, Tagalog, Urdu and Yue. Five Polynesian languages: Cook Islands Māori, Niuean, Samoan, Tokelauan and Tongan, Five European, or European derived languages: Afrikaans, Dutch, French, German and Spanish. Arabic is the only language from the Middle East and North Africa. If any family member speaks the language, the family was included as part of the reference population. The commissioned dataset therefore includes families where no adult speaks the subject language but where it is reportedly spoken by at least one child in the household. This meant that languages taught in secondary school, such as French, German, Japanese and Spanish showed 1,000 to 2,000 more speakers in the 12-18 year old age group compared to those in younger age groups. Since we are interested in the success of intergenerational transmission these speakers have been excluded in the data presented here. Also note that children and families can be counted more than once if they are reported as speaking more than one language and will appear in the dataset for each language.

Role of community There is a great range amongst the populations of child speakers for the 23 languages in the dataset. As shown in Figure 1, there is only one language with over 20,000 child speakers (Samoan, 23,052), and only another two languages with around 10,000 child speakers (Hindi, 10,338 and Tongan 9,834). The language with the median number of child speakers in the dataset is Spanish (2,655) and the overall mean amongst the languages is 4,295 child speakers, reflecting the fact that there are several larger languages, but a majority of languages with smaller numbers of child speakers. Scatterplot of 23 minority languages in New Zealand by numbers of child speakers (horizontal axis) and rates of intergenerational transmission (vertical axis). We can see in Figure 1 that Samoan is in quite an exceptional position having over double the number of child speakers than the next highest language (Hindi). The four languages with the most speakers (Samoan, Hindi, Tongan and Northern Chinese) also have good rates of intergenerational transmission with over 50% of their children being raised as speakers. For languages with fewer than 7,000 speakers, the rates of intergenerational transmission vary widely, but, in general if your language has fewer than 7,000 child speakers then the rate of intergenerational transmission is likely to be less than 40%. The Korean community is the exception here. With 5,724 child speakers it has the highest rate (83%) of intergenerational transmission of any of the 23 minority languages analysed here. Most of the languages shown in Figure 1 which have transmission rates of 50% or greater are spoken by groups who also have high levels of within group marriage, namely, the Korean, Tongan, Samoan, Indian and Chinese ethnic groups.

Role of location within NZ Auckland is a superdiverse city, and it is a place where increasing numbers of children (currently 29%) speak more than one language. Over New Zealand as a whole, 53% of multilingual children reside in Auckland. We therefore considered whether rates of intergenerational transmission may be higher in Auckland where there are likely to be larger language communities. However, as shown in this figure, this is not the case for most languages. For just under half of the languages, children living in Auckland speak their community languages at about the same rate as children living elsewhere in New Zealand. For about a third of the languages children living in Auckland have a much higher chance of being a speaker of their minority language compared with children living in other areas of the country. These languages are: Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Northern Chinese, Russian, Samoan, and Yue. On the other hand there are two languages which are much more likely to be spoken by children living outside Auckland: Afrikaans, and Khmer.

Role of birthplace As shown in this figure, and as expected, children born overseas are much likely to be speakers of the minority home language than children born in New Zealand. Note that ‘born overseas’ here means being born in any other country other than New Zealand, and does not automatically mean being born in the country where the heritage language is spoken by a majority. These results appear to confirm that the situation in New Zealand is not conducive for intergenerational transmission or maintenance of minority languages.

Role of mothers It is often stated that mothers have an important role in transmitting language/s to their children (Caneva and Pozzi 2014). However, De Houwer (2007 417-418) contends that parents’ gender does not have an effect on transmission as her data shows no difference between mothers and fathers in this respect. Figure 5 shows the likelihood of a child being a speaker of a minority language in New Zealand when either the father or mother also speaks the minority language. It appears to confirm de Houwer’s results claim since for most languages the likelihood of intergenerational transmission is about the same regardless of the parent’s gender. Tagalog is the only language where having a father who speaks the language gives a far greater likelihood of the child also being a speaker.

Role of mothers However, it is important to note that a large proportion of children who speak a language live in households where both parents are speakers. So the gender differences in the previous figure are somewhat masked since child speakers whose parents both speak the language will be counted in both the male and female parent data. This slide shows that when households where both parents speak the language are removed the gender differences become more marked. The groupings for the mother (but not father) settings include couples where the mother, but not the father speaks the language, as well as households where there is more than one mother, or a solo mother. The parameters for the ‘father only’ data are the same. In all cases, except Tagalog, children being raised in a situation where only one parent speaks the language are much more likely to speak that language if it is their mother who speaks the language rather than their father. However, it is worth pointing out that the numbers of child speakers involved here are much more numerous in mother (not father) settings than the reverse, by a factor of two to ten times. However, while, in most cases, mothers have a stronger role in intergenerational transmission in situations where there is no father who speaks the language (rather than the reverse), these rates of transmission are still much less for children in situations where both parents are speakers of the minority language. Indeed, this is the most optimal circumstance which increases the likelihood of transmission.

Both parents as speakers This slide shows that the effect of having both parents as speaker of the minority language in the household greatly increases the rate of intergenerational transmission. In fact, for most languages this well over doubles the likelihood of the child also being a speaker. The differences are particularly high for Afrikaans, Dutch, French, German and Spanish - the only European languages in the dataset, where having both parents in the household as speakers the language increases the rate of intergenerational transmission by at least five times when compared to having just one adult speaker in the home.   While this slide shows the likelihood of intergeneration transmission when both parents speak the language, the results are largely similar if there are two or more adults (whatever their relationship) in the household who speak the minority language.

Interview data Funding from NZILBB 6 languages: Korean, Chinese, Dutch, German, French, Spanish 6 native speaking interviewers (thesis student and RAs) Each interview 5 sets of parent/s and 16-18 year old children Asked about their beliefs, attitudes and practice in raising/being raised as a speaker of a minority language in Christchurch Interviews transcribed and translated To complement the analysis of the census data the ‘bilingual teen’ ITML sub-project is carrying out a selection of interviews with minority language speaking families in Christchurch. The aim of the interviews is to gather data about the experiences of families who have successfully raised children as speakers of minority languages. Accordingly, both parents and/or caregivers and their teenage children are being interviewed. The interviews with the parents and young adult are semi-structured and largely involve the same material. Both covered the participants’ language background and experiences of being a speaker of a minority language in New Zealand. Parents were asked details of the decision to raise the child as speaker of a community language in New Zealand, including factors and reasons in the decision. Both parents and the child were asked for information about experiences with this decision over the child's life, as well as how well they think the child has achieved in English as a school subject and whether they think that being raised as a speaker of their community language has affected the child's schooling. These questions were asked in order to provide a perspective on suggestions that speaking a minority language may negatively affect the teenager’s acquisition of English. Both parents and child were asked for advice for new parents.

Preliminary results Factors affecting parental decisions to transmit their language On the next few slides we present some of the reasons parents in the interviews reported

“It’s natural” “I’ve never made decisions on that” - Korean mother “When she was born, the natural language for me was French” “We always spoke French at home. Why? It never occurred to us to do otherwise.” “We had not really thought about it. We just spoke Dutch at home” “For me it is very important to pass on Dutch. You might say it is a family tradition” Many parents from most of the languages reported that, at least initially, the decision to speak their language to their babies and toddlers was a natural decision, made without too much thought.

Bilingual advantage “What a good chance to let my child learn two languages” – Chinese mother “I think that being bilingual has enriched their lives. They have double opportunities to access culture, movies, music, literature, as well as humour“ – Spanish mother “We had both suffered [from not being bilingual] … when one is not bilingual at birth, it is harder” - French father Some parents regarded bilingualism as being advantageous.

Culture & Heritage “Firstly, they are Chinese, which is an unchangeable fact. Secondly, whether they can speak Chinese or not, they are Chinese. Thirdly, if they cannot speak Chinese, they will feel ashamed in the future” – Chinese mother “If they cannot speak Chinese, the people in English world would consider them as ‘bananas’” – Chinese mother “Them getting to know their culture a bit better, their roots” – French father

Communicating with wider family “For them to be able to communicate with their family on holidays (in Spain). By speaking the language they can have much more fun. Because they can be part of what we are doing and be perfectly integrated.” “[With regards to] communicating with their grandparents, cousins, and all of that. I am conscious of the fact that they have to speak a minimum amount of French in order for that to happen naturally ” – French father “I still have a lot of family living in The Netherlands and I want them [the kids] to be able to talk with uncles … my brothers and sisters, with their uncles and aunts.”

Communicating emotions “I was determined to teach my child to speak Chinese partly for my benefit, as it would facilitate our emotional communication and daily life communication” – Chinese mother “[Re professional advice on arrival in NZ] to continue to speak Dutch at home, day to day, as much as you can, because it takes ten years to transfer the emotional side of a language to a child”

Summer scholars Working on NVIVO analysis of the interview data Website with information for parents and professionals Facebook page: Growing up with Two Languages

Where to from here? Symposium Friday 11 December More projects Live streamed – http://www.education.canterbury.ac.nz/itml/ More projects Experiences of families with newborns Role of digital technology in bilingual children transitioning from preschool to primary Others

References Office Of Ethnic Affairs. (2013). Language and integration in New Zealand. Retrieved from http://ethniccommunities.govt.nz/sites/default/files/files/Lan guageandIntegrationinNZ.pdf Cunningham, U. (2011). Growing up with two languages. London: Routledge.