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1. Becoming bilingual – a personal experience I was born and raised in Italy in a monolingual family environment. I started learning foreign languages as part of my secondary education: English from age 11 and Spanish from age 13. I read English at university for a degree in English and American studies. I also continued studying Spanish for two years at university. I acquired the Spanish language fairly easily as it is related to Italian by its Latin origin and because I had several opportunities of spending holidays in Spain. My ambition however was to become an English teacher and it soon became apparent that due to the competitiveness of the Italian education system I needed to become highly proficient in order to succeed. Having won a place on a one-year exchange programme with an English University (Hull University) I came to England eighteen years ago. This is where I really learned English – not by attending classes, but by mixing with anglophone people and using English everyday. I kept away from Italian people and I met who was to become my husband several years later. He introduced me to his friends and Scottish family and I evolved within these circles. At the end of that year I decided not to go back to Italy. I did various odd jobs for one year that help improve my English. I spent the following year in Spain where working in a bilingual English/Spanish environment helped maintain my English. Socialising with and befriending Spanish people meant that I became very fluent in Spanish. Back in Hull the following year I studied by distance learning and completed my degree. By then I had become very proficient and had acquired a strong cultural knowledge of British life and I passed all exams with ease. English had quickly become my dominant language as I never spoke Italian except for telephone conversations with my family. In the early years of my living here I often confused people by my Scottish phrases (passed on by my husband!) and my use of idiomatic English phrases and was often asked where I came from. This was very satisfying until I gradually realised that I had lost touch with Italy and distanced myself from my Italian roots. Starting work as a teacher of Italian as a foreign language afforded me the opportunity to get back in touch with the Italian side of my identity. However this did not come easily – when I first started work I bitterly realised to what extent I had uprooted myself. I found it difficult to interact with my fellow teachers comfortably in Italian. I had forgotten how to speak it and felt really rusty; I did not understand new words and phrases. I felt inadequate when my adult students asked me questions to which I did not know the answers. I had not lived in an Italian linguistic and cultural environment for many years and this meant that I did not know what had been happening in Italy and was not always aware of the social, political or educational changes that had occurred. I began to socialise with other teachers and to read Italian newspapers and magazines and gradually became more comfortable speaking Italian and in my position of teacher. Having children has also been a strong factor in redressing the linguistic and cultural imbalance that had established itself over the years. I have two daughters (Shauna aged 7 who is deaf, and Karina aged 4 who is hearing). Karina is growing up with Italian as her first language. This however has not been a straightforward process. I made the decision for her to attend (at great financial expense!) an Italian speaking play school partly because we live in an English/Scottish environment (my friends, neighbours and in-laws are all English speakers and I only use Italian when the both of us are alone together). Also Italian is not really part of our family life as Karina’s sister is deaf and BSL is her first language. So I felt it important for Karina to be exposed to Italian as much as possible when she was young. This has proved very successful for her and she has grown into a happy and confident little girl. Karina speaking Italian and attending Italian play group has also affected my own bilingualism. It has given me the opportunity to speak Italian on a daily basis, to meet Italian people and to rediscover aspects of the language and culture that I had forgotten. As a result my English proficiency has decreased: I make more grammatical and idiomatic mistakes and I speak English with an unmistakable Italian accent. On the social level our particular situation of having a deaf daughter has prevented me from finding real affinities with the other Italian parents. They do not have the same bilingual experiences as us; we tend to be less involved in the social events that are organised by the Italian group because they are not suited to Shauna. I have also learned BSL but it has not happened in the same way as with my spoken languages. I have found BSL a much harder language to learn. It is in part due to the visual modality that it uses. Other reasons that prevented me from becoming highly proficient in BSL will become apparent in the following notes. They are mainly the lack of adequate BSL classes for parents and the lack of contact with Deaf people. Today my dominant language is English as I have lived in England for 18 years and have been studying for several years so I do most of my thinking in English. I am fairly comfortable in spoken Italian although not so much in formal situations; I find writing it difficult. The same applies to Spanish. To this day, BSL remains my weaker language although I use it everyday with my daughter. I speak English with my husband. I speak Italian with Karina when we are alone and usually converse with her in English with her when English people are present. I sign with Shauna when we are alone, I often sign and speak simultaneously when my husband or Karina are present, I use BSL less in these situations. I regret that since knowing that Shauna is deaf I have stopped speaking Italian with her because it felt very unnatural. She is now interested in learning it and I have started teaching it to her. Karina always addresses her father in English. He sometimes tries his Italian with her which affords her the opportunity to laugh at his mistakes and correct him. The girls converse in a mixture of spoken English, simultaneous spoken English and signs, or BSL. So I would describe our home linguistic environment as rich, interesting, but confusing and frustrating at times. I believe it is a wonderful environment for my children. |
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