Happy International Day of Multilingualism!

27th March is the International Day of Multilingualism.

I came from a bilingual family but grew up in a monolingual country. My first language was Cantonese which I solely spoke until the age of 3. English was not introduced to me until our family immigrated to Australia and I started kindergarten. Back in the 80s and 90s, it was not cool for kids to be speaking their mother tongue at school. I often gave my mum attitude and refused to speak Cantonese at home. My mum maintained a strong stance and was adamant that my sister and I should keep our mother tongue. She claimed she couldn't understand English at home, even though she was an English teacher at school. This forced us to communicate to my mum in Cantonese, which I thank her every day now.

My parents took us back to visit Hong Kong every summer holidays. When we were in Hong Kong, I would be motivated to practice my Cantonese with my cousin, aunties and grandparents. The annual trips were also cultural lessons for me to understand more about my heritage.

Now that I'm a parent, I would like to give my son the opportunity to be multilingual and to learn about his heritage from both sides of the family. My husband and I are adopting a OPOL (One Parent, One Language) approach. He speaks to our son in Italian and I speak Cantonese. Although we speak English to each other, we have agreed to not speak English to our son. We started this approach from the day our son was born. It is never too early to start adopting languages. Research shows that babies have an amazing capability to be able to distinguish between languages.

We plan to encourage his learning by taking him to Italy, Hong Kong and Australia to visit family and relatives. Full immersion is the best way to learn a language even if it is for a short period of time.

This journey will take a tremendous amount of effort from everyone in the family. Our aim is to raise a global citizen who will want to learn more about other cultures.

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