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The Biggest Myth About Bilingualism: Are Bilingual Children Confused?

You know the drill. You’re sitting contentedly at the playground, sipping that cold coffee you finally got around to, while your three-year-old bilingual child plays in the sandbox. Suddenly, he turns to you and, with a completely straight face, announces: “Mami, look jaký velký worm!”

You smile to yourself because you know he’s just proudly announced finding an earthworm. However, the lady on the next bench perks up, shoots you a disapproving look, and you can practically feel her thinking: “Poor kid, he’s totally confused. His parents are messing with his head by using two languages, and now he can’t speak either one properly.”

Sound familiar?

Language mixing—professionally known as code-switching, code-mixing, or language mixing—is probably the most popular target for snide remarks and unsolicited advice from bystanders, and unfortunately, a frequent source of secret anxiety for parents themselves. When a child jumps from one language to another mid-sentence, it looks like clear evidence of confusion.

But science and modern research show something that wouldn't please the lady on the next bench, but will definitely please you. It is the exact opposite of confusion. It is a purposeful use of all available linguistic resources to express a thought. Brilliant, isn’t it?

The Biggest Myth About Bilingualism: Are Bilingual Children Confused?

What is happening in that little bilingual brain at that moment?

A child surrounded by more than one language naturally builds two separate language systems. One for Czech, and another for English, for example. However, since most bilingual children do not have an equal input of both languages (for instance, they might hear Czech for eight hours a day, but English for only two), it makes perfect sense that the languages won't develop at the same pace.

While the child is still speaking in one-word utterances, you might notice they have a larger vocabulary in one language than the other. As soon as they start combining words, it can happen (more so with some children, less with others) that they begin to combine words from all the languages they know. And that is the exact moment the concerned lady at the playground assumes the poor child is living in total chaos.

But the child isn't lost. On the contrary, they are using all available resources at their disposal very efficiently and creatively. They know what they want to say, and they find the fastest way to say it. Furthermore, mixing languages is a natural developmental phase for bilingual children, not a pathology. It often appears around the second and third year of life, when the child begins to form their first (more or less) grammatical sentences.

Children’s vocabulary experiences a massive boom, but not necessarily at the exact same rate in both languages. When children lack a specific word in one language, they simply borrow it from the other. Moreover, mixing sometimes happens even when the child knows both translation equivalents, but simply recalls one of them faster.

Where a monolingual child would stay silent because they don't know the word, a bilingual child borrows it from their second language. In linguistics, this behavior is called "pooling resources."

Every child is unique

There are huge differences among children in terms of how much they mix languages. Professional literature states that the rate of mixed utterances most frequently ranges between 0 and 30%. This means that while some children mix languages only on very rare occasions, others combine them quite often.

However, mixing isn't black and white. It is a dynamic process that evolves over time. If your two-and-a-half-year-old mixes languages in almost every other sentence, there’s no need to panic. And you definitely shouldn't drop one of the languages thinking that the child needs to "sort it out" in their head first. You would needlessly deprive them of the opportunity to keep developing the weaker language.

It can be assumed that if the child continues to have quality access to both languages, expands their vocabulary, and develops their grammatical skills, the volume of mixed utterances will naturally decrease over time.

Three quick tips on how to respond to language mixing:

So, what should you do right now when your child constantly wants water but has no jacket?

  1. Don't panic and be gentle: When a child says, "Já chci agua," don’t punish them or say, "No, you say voda." Likewise, don't insist that the child correct themselves immediately and repeat the whole sentence perfectly. Overly strict parenting can make the child anxious and reluctant to use the language at all.

  2. Use the mirroring technique: Focus more on the content of the message than its form. Respond to the child naturally and repeat the sentence correctly in the language you are speaking to them. For example: "Ano, tady máš vodu." (Yes, here is your water.) This way, the child hears the correct model without experiencing a sense of failure.

  3. Be consistent yourself: Do not mix languages within your own sentences. If you are speaking Czech at that moment, try to use only Czech words. If you switch to English, don’t insert Czech into it. While the child won't acquire the language "wrongly" if you mix too, providing clear and clean language models is essential if you want them to stop mixing eventually.

So next time your child creates a cute linguistic hybrid, don't view it as a failure. View it as proof that their brain is working at full blast, building an incredible mental flexibility that they will benefit from for the rest of their life.

What's coming up next? We’ve successfully set the record straight on language mixing. But what if the fear of bilingualism goes even further? In the next article, we’ll look at the boogeyman that causes parents (and unfortunately, even some doctors) the most sleepless nights: Does bilingualism cause speech delay?

Want to make sure you don't miss the next article, and curious about what other myths science debunked a long time ago? Sign up for my newsletter, and I’ll let you know as soon as the sequel is out!

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