Languages my family speak
I grew up in a mono-lingual Anglophone family in a solidly Anglophone Canadian province. But in adulthood, it turns out that my extended family is markedly polyglot, or multi-lingual. Of course, my siblings and I took the mandatory French classes in middle and high school, which produced no noticeable bilingual achievements among us. Latin classes in high school had a similarly negligible effect. (I think the Latin classes contributed to our understanding of and facility with English more than they did to motivate us to learn a second language.)
But in adulthood, things changed. First, my mother’s cousin (my first cousin, once removed), pursued his career in Montreal with a Quebecoise wife, and acquired French. He raised three English-French bilingual children there (my second cousins, because we share a great-grandparent), one of whom became a professional linguist and acquired Spanish as a third language while he works at a university in Puerto Rico.
In my immediate family, I have one sibling who married a German citizen (who has spent her entire life living in Canada, but has sole German citizenship nonetheless), and German is not unknown around their table. I have a nephew who has chosen to live in Montreal, as my mother’s cousin did before him, and so French features in his life. I have another nephew who married a Portuguese-Canadian and has enthusiastically studied and adopted Portuguese while blending into her family. And I, of course, married a Japanese and live in Japan where I habitually speak Japanese (not extremely well, but well enough). And, my children are Japanese-speakers who only use English grudgingly.
So, that’s my extended family. Growing from a mono-lingual Anglophone beginning we now speak and use French, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese. We are modern Canadians. That kind of language diversity tells us about the times we’re living in.
Speaking, or at least understanding more than one language is historically normal among human beings. It seems that only in modern times have large populations flourished with only one tongue. Globalization and communication technologies are slowly changing that and re-establishing the historically common practice of speaking more than one language.
Bilingualism is certainly measurably beneficial. Facility with a second language boosts one’s employment prospects, slows the brain’s natural aging process and even retards the onset of dementia. Bilingualism changes neurological processes and structures - I mean, it re-wires your brain, especially among the young, whose brains are still developing. One becomes a better human being with enhanced comprehension and social skills, and enhanced empathy. We become smarter, because a second language enables us to better process information in the environment, leading to a clearer signal for learning.
I wonder what the extended family will sound like in the next generation?
Canada has two official languages (English and French), and more than 200 unofficial languages. The top spoken languages in Canada, in order, are English, French, Chinese, Punjabi, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch. Approximately 56.9% of the population speaks English as a first language, while 21.3% speak French as a first language. Of Canada’s 1.8 million indigenous folk only 183,000 (0.6% of the total population) regularly use an indigenous language at home. (Inuktitut, and languages from the broad Cree group are the main indigenous languages spoken in Canada.)