Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) - Mercator ...

languages they are learning. Also, both within BFLA and within ESLA there is usually uneven
development, which means that bilingual children's languages are not used and known at
the very same level. Even Yann, who speaks both Breton and French fluently and without
noticeable influence from one language on the other, speaks about school subjects more
easily in French, but when he's talking about his little herb garden he can discuss it much
better in Breton. Again, such differences have to do with input conditions: Yann goes to
school in French, and his father dug out and planted the herb garden with Yann while
speaking Breton.
The importance of communicative need
Yann's father does not only speak Breton to Yann, but also French. When father and son
discuss the position of the stars or how a car works, it's in French. Talking about the herb
garden and relatives and friends takes place in Breton. From the beginning, there has been a
sort of topic specialization in the family. Certain topics are discussed in Breton, others in
French. It was just seen as natural that as he started to speak, Yann would respond in the
same language that he was spoken to. If as a toddler Yann spoke Breton when his parents
were talking French, they would sometimes genuinely not understand and would ask Yann
what he meant. Or when Yann clearly didn't know the required word in the right language,
they would tell him what it was and then expect him to use it. In other words, from the
beginning Yann's parents were alert to the language Yann was speaking, and were insisting
that he speaks the language they were speaking. They were thus creating a communicative
need for Yann to speak both languages. Since Yann was two years old, he has been
responding in the language spoken to.
This has been different for Pelle. His mother tends to speak Frisian to Pelle mainly when his
father is not present. This is a fairly clear communicative situation, and within it, Pelle's
mother could have insisted that Pelle respond in Frisian. He did respond in Frisian a little at
the beginning, but this soon stopped and his mother was never particularly focused on
which language Pelle was responding in. If he responded in Dutch she just continued the
conversation in Frisian. As such, there was no real communicative need for Pelle to speak
Frisian. This, combined with the fact that Pelle heard Frisian far less frequently than Dutch,
lead him to restrict himself to Dutch so that he is not speaking the minority language.
In Bronwyn's bilingual preschool there are teachers who use only Welsh as a medium of
instruction and others who use only English. When the English-speaking teacher interacts
with the children, either she does not respond to Welsh or she asks children to say what
they mean in English. Some second-language children like Bronwyn often lack the necessary
vocabulary in English, so teachers provide the missing English word, and then ask children to
repeat what they wanted to say in English. Children at this school soon learn to try to speak
only English to the English-speaking teacher, and Welsh only to the Welsh-speaking teacher.
At the bilingual school, then, just like in Yann's bilingual family, there are little "unilingual"
islands, that is, interactional settings that require the use of just a single language for
everybody involved.
Such unilingual interactional settings in each language require children to actually speak two
languages. This offers them the advantage of practicing. If you want to learn to play the
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