How do you prepare your family to move abroad?

It goes without saying that speaking the local language will help your integration. I was fortunate to have acquired Spanish well before my move to Spain, which made a lot of things easier for me. However, how do you accommodate language learning if you have a busy job or if you are a stay-at-home parent with little children?  

Depending on your constellation as a family, you will have several options to choose from. If you’re moving for your job, your employer might sponsor your language learning. Likewise, you can join a language course independently of your work and if you’re home with a baby, there are plenty of private tutors and online courses that will fit your circumstances. Again, it’s important to focus on the opportunities that you’re creating by learning a new language rather than the obstacles that stop you from doing it. 

After our move to France, I could no longer afford private lessons but I found public language courses instead which were free of charge. They were general and open to all, so the groups were big, but at least I continued making some progress in addition to making new friends, some of whom I had to communicate in French with, which was advantageous in terms of practising what I’d learnt. 

With the above in mind, explore your options and have realistic expectations. What’s your main objective? Do you want to be fluent as you’ll need the language for work? Or is some conversational level just enough to get by? 

Another question to address is how you learn best. What is the most effective language learning method for you? Some opt for the app-based lessons, like Duolingo. Others prefer interesting conversations and new friendships and thus choose the Tandem community.

Whatever your situation, learning a new language can only be beneficial for you, so immerse yourself in it. Listen to the radio, watch movies with subtitles, change your mobile and computer language to the target one, read short articles, surround yourself with it.

The more input you have, the more you’ll be able to output. Send short texts or short audio notes, write your to-do and shopping lists in the foreign language. Challenge yourself, as every little helps but don’t forget to make it fun! Stay curious – a new language is a door to a new world, to new possibilities, to a new you!

How about your children though? It’s common knowledge that children pick up languages easier. ’They are like sponges’, I’ve heard many say. If your child attends a nursery or school in your new home country, they will no doubt acquire the local language. It’ll take some time, more or less, depending on your child’s capabilities. Adults tend to acquire language more passively and take longer before they feel ready to speak the foreign language. Children, on the other hand, have fewer inhibitions and start to turn the passive knowledge into active language usage to communicate their needs, make friends and discover the world.

In terms of your home language, note that you have many alternatives here, too. If you both speak different mother tongues, you have a choice to adopt the ’one parent, one language rule’, but you don’t have to. You can choose one language as the ’family language’ that you speak at home. Pick whatever suits you best. What is most convenient and comfortable for your family? I spoke Polish and my husband French to Lyan, and we spoke English among each other when living in Barcelona. 

Adding Spanish and Catalan, Lyan was growing up exposed to 5 languages. Is it too many? ’He must be confused’, I heard some of my friends say. Indeed, he might be disoriented at times, but definitely not overwhelmed. He finds it intriguing that there is more than one way to call one thing. 

We play a game of finding the equivalents of one word in the other languages, for instance coffee, café, kawa if we want an easy win or toy, jouet, zabawka when we want a bit of a challenge. The more he practises, the easier it gets for him to do the so-called code switching, that is to switch between the languages. Sometimes he might get a bit frustrated when looking for the right word in one of the languages but is extremely proud and happy having found it.

Language acquisition is fluid and there will be times when one language becomes more prominent than others, which is only normal. If you want to leverage the multilingualism in your family, contextualise the language acquisition and choose a different language for a given activity. To give you an example, when in France Lyan was exposed to a lot of French, so to balance it out, we would play games, read books and watch cartoons in English. 

Whereas now since the language of instruction in his school is English, we try to do more in French. We subscribed to a French magazine, Pomme d’Api, which is delivered to our doorstep every month and has us read, do activities and learn in French. However, when Lyan is with his grandmother or cousins, he will use Polish. His spiderman magazines are all in Polish too, but when we play Superheroes, it’ll always be in English. 

Lyan’s bookshelf is home to books and bedtime stories in all three languages which we also like to sing in. However, when Lyan is in distress or is sad and needs comforting, Polish will work best. Also when he misbehaves I’ll be best able to reach him and meet him where he’s at in Polish. So we’ve found that our language to address emotions is my mother tongue which he has heard me speak since he was in my womb. 

To sum up, what’s beneficial about having different contexts for different languages is that the language acquisition comes naturally and it is not forced. The structure helps to stay disciplined; otherwise, it’s easy for one language to take over the others and push them to the background, especially if your child, let’s say, spends most of their day at school exposed to one language.