1 - Immigration and local language

2009 The online newspaper Time.com follows the story of a young, undocumented mother in the US whose baby was taken away, allegedly because her lack of English placed her baby in danger. She was, quote unquote, unable to call for assistance for transportation to the hospital. The Department of Human Services insisted that there were other factors that led to the child's removal.

Okay, I'll admit that's a pretty extreme example. But still, this story raises some questions. What makes it so difficult for some of the migrants to learn the local language? And can they really be blamed? Welcome to the Polyglotcast. This is a podcast meant to be a safe haven for all language lovers. Are you looking for some cool techniques to learn foreign languages? Wonder how foreign languages impact our daily lives?

How do globalization and technology impact language learning? Well, these are just some of the questions that we're trying to seek answers for, both scientifically and through personal anecdotes. A small note up front. Me and some of my guests are not native English speakers, so please bear with us. Okay, note number two: the first episodes are in English. However, we are planning to record some of the episodes in other languages, such as Spanish.

If we see interest from you. From now on in each episode, I'm discussing a different topic with some experts, self-made polyglots, or just some cool people who have some stories to tell. But that's enough for an intro. Let's get to it! This week we're talking about immigration and language learning.

Immigration, migrants, refugees, These are some of the words that dominated the newspaper headlines in the past decades, whether you are in the US or in Europe. In fact, the Gallup study conducted in twenty ten showed that seven hundred million adults worldwide would prefer to migrate to another country. Seven hundred million The highest percentage of potential migrants are located in sub Saharan Africa.

Surprise surprise The US is the number one desired destination. Well at least back then in twenty ten. To discuss this topic, this week I've invited my friend Umer to the studio. Hello, hello Umer, how are you? Good thanks here. I'm good. In a way, me and Umer are both immigrants. A couple of years ago we met in Istanbul, where he was born.

Since then he's moved to Hungary for a master's degree and is currently doing a PhD in economics in the UK at Surrey University. Together we looked at the list of countries with the highest proportion of foreign citizens. Well, ignoring some of the MIDI-states like Vatican City, the first place is occupied by the United Arab Emirates. If this name doesn't ring the bell, that's the home country of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

In this country, no less than eighty eight percent of the population are immigrants. So that's that's an interesting scenario because imagine you're living in a country where let's say nine out of ten the people you see in the streets actually are not from your country and a a really huge number or a proportion of them do not even speak your language.

First of all I don't think these natives see these people on the street because I think there's a there's a separate life for the workers. I think well in that setting for that country It should be okay, huh? Because they need these people. Here's a statement. No matter which country you are in as an immigrant, getting familiar with the local language will make your everyday life much more manageable. Therefore, it is necessary to some extent.

Well, if you're listening to this podcast, there's a good chance that you agree with me. But would most immigrants agree with us? The University of Oxford in twenty nineteen found that out of those people who were born in West Europe and Scandinavia but moved to the UK, seventy percent were speaking English at home as their first language.

That's pretty impressive considering that English is only a native language for the Irish from this region. Now guess the percentage of Eastern Europeans in the UK speaking English as their first language. It's twenty two percent. So I think that is really, really, really correlated with the nationality and the nationalism that you have obtained, the patriotism you got.

at home, right? I think the percentage then would be ten when we think about Turkish families. Yeah, it could be. So it could be nationalism, but could it also be how different your level So my native language being Hungarian. was a pain in the neck to learn. It's so different. And I think that's the same for for Polish speakers or maybe Bulgarian speakers.

And also perhaps like the community that you get into in in this new country. Yeah. The question is when you move abroad, do you seek your competitive like as friends or do you want locals? There's a homophily bias in which people want to see sameness, similarness. Otherness is not good for us. Homophily bias is the tendency of people to interact with similar others. It's present along many dimensions of similarity, such as ethnicity, gender, and religious views.

In everyday language we could say that speaking your native language is a comfort zone. But as the saying goes, life happens beyond your comfort zone. Well, not everyone sticks motivational notes in their role like me.

So I wondered what the top reasons for immigrants were to get out there and learn a local language. Well number one, back to a point that I mentioned in my talk with Umer, a study by Isferding shows that greater linguistic distance between the native language and the host country language increases the difficulty and cost of language acquisition. Let's take your native Spanish speaker.

You're going to be more likely to pick up the local language in France or in Italy than in the Netherlands or Poland. Both me and Omer had first hand experiences regarding what drives us to learn a language. My experiences in Hungary of course is far different than the UK. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a huge difference, isn't it?'Cause you did learn English even before going to Hungary.

But I don't think I don't think you learned Hungarian to the level that you could speak, right? No. No. And yeah, I mean if I wanted to if I had a plan to stay in Hungary longer than two years, I would definitely learn it. I think it's really about how you initially planned. I had a similar experience in Denmark. I did my bachelor's degree there, and I spent a year learning the local language, Danish.

I was totally motivated in the beginning, and I spent an hour each day practicing, but then once I realized that I'd like to continue my studies in another country, I lost all motivation. So, first note on the whiteboard, motivation and plan. Then Omer mentioned another good point. H.

When I was in Poland, which was long before I moved to Hungary, five years c five years before I moved to uh Hungary, I think I was younger and had more energy and more I was more open minded I guess. Or Maybe I was more open to new languages and

I would say I learned I picked up pretty much a lot of Polish when I was in Poland. So I didn't have much problems to be honest. And it was two thousand thirteen. I even actually had three Polish lectures but I didn't need to go because I was already at that level. When I moved to Hungary, I think the older you get the more life problems you have, so language Starts to be a really really difficult process. And when I moved to Hungary, my initial goal was always to go to the West.

for phd so from day one it was obvious that i'm not gonna say that i'm not gonna say that And Eastern European people on you y you need time. They need time, you need time so that you both understand each other. After one and a half long years I start to understand Hungarians and Hungarians start to understand me, but it was too late because COVID started. Yeah. And when COVID started to be honest,

Just like everyone I had a small depression as well. Writing my thesis, having lectures online actually. So I start to give up actually all the Hungarians, I start to pick up. Okay. Because I had a sort of a notebook in which I would write down every day a new word or something and I put my I mean I would say I put much Memorize more than three hundred uh vocabulary. Linguists and neurobiologists often cite the so-called critical period hypothesis.

This refers to a structural break in the ability to acquire new language in early adolescence around the age of eleven. Older learners rarely achieve a near-native accent and have it harder and harder to even learn new words and grammatical structures. That's also why I have in mind to speak five foreign languages before I turn 30.

Now, good that we started with a little introspection, but what about external factors? I think it really is about the country. if a country is integrating or not. US in that sense, of course. Because of how it is established in the beginning. is a good example. And also some other countries, for example the Netherlands is a good example as well. The Migrant Integration Policy Index measures policies to integrate migrants in countries across all six continents.

Some of the criteria are education, health, access to nationality, and anti discrimination. The highest scores are given to Scandinavian countries, Sweden getting eighty six out of a hundred points. The US scores pretty well too, with a favorable 73 points. Asian countries, on the other hand, seem to be the less integrating according to this index. Of course, language integration is a whole different story. In most European countries, so called adult education centres offer a large variety

of language courses to give people the opportunity to learn a new lingo. So that could be the immigrants learning the local language or the locals learning foreign languages. Either of these two ways facilitates integration. The best thing is it's free in most countries.

This is not without controversy in some of the countries though. It's unfortunately very dependent on the current political views in the country. Denmark, for example, had a free language school system set up and available for all expats. until it was abolished in twenty eighteen. Then, after two years of charging fees, the left wing parties agreed to bring back the free system.

Either way, if the country you live in doesn't provide a free language class, you could also resort to paid classes, self study combined with talking to locals in the street, or you could join a language exchange group. Umer had some doubts about how this could play out in the

What about the people? This is really really important. What about the people? If you try to learn Turkish, I think everyone would be so willing to help you in Turkey. Yeah. Would it be the case in Denmark? This is the question. I think how many Danish people out there would just like to meet you for tea and then to teach you some vocab. Yeah, I I guess in some countries you would see a lot of volunteers. Uh in Denmark there were quite a few volunteers too, so it was a pleasant surprise.

But um yeah, maybe you shouldn't imagine this as like we we s sit down for a tea and um that person teaches me vocabulary. That's not how it goes. No no that's not gonna how it goes. It's more like um I think the other person also is there to make friendships. Yeah. And and also to to help to to provide some sort of a service to the country and if you do get a partnership or like a friendship like this, it's not a one way road. You should not just take advantage of that because that person is

there for something as well. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's make a small summary. We asked ourselves what determines the language integration of immigrants? We've got the following factors, most importantly motivation and plans in the country. Then age, direct environment such as the community we spend our time in, and the integration policies in the host country.

Okay, back to Amer. I asked him what was the biggest disadvantage of him not knowing Hungarian when he lived in Hungary. He believes it's that you don't understand it. Yeah. And no one understands you. Is isn't that also an advantage? Yeah, that tower is gonna come. Sometimes Not understanding is good. You relax because I remember my time in Hungary. I do not understand people. If even they make jokes about me or something, I don't care because I don't understand anyone. Yes.

In the UK, I literally understand everything and sometimes understanding everything is not good. Again, there's a huge disadvantage in the sense that

Well you cannot really integrate with the society. What happens is you are in a bubble of internationals or you only get to know people who can speak in English. Maybe this is also a good advantage in a disadvantage because you mostly likely get to know people who are actually like you in a way that they are educated and they can speak in English so maybe this is an advantage.

Coming from a disadvantage. A further advantage of local language acquisition is money. It has been showed in various studies that having better language skills has a positive effect on wages. So the more languages you speak, the more money in your pocket. Well at least on average.

Now, we talked a lot about adult immigrants. Mas o que são os filhos? The recently updated American Community Survey reveals that the number of children of immigrants, so the children with at least one immigrant parent. has increased from 16 million in 2006 to more than 18 million in recent years. Now, 55% of the children are bilingual compared to the only 5% of those with US born parents.

To the audience in the US with US born parents, sorry, this can't be your excuse not to learn another language. Anyway, I was a bit surprised with the forty five percent of children of immigrants in the US who are not bilingual. As it appears, most of these children, around two thirds, speak only English and not the native language of their parents. Umer is specialized in education and human capital, which is a fancy way of saying the knowledge and skills of a population.

Languages included. Bilinguality is so much related to the age you move to the country. If you are born into parents who are Who move there when you are like two or three? You're definitely bilingual. People move to US, right? How many of them would be already in their fifties and have kids that are well above fifth puberty age? I don't think someone at the age of 50 with kids would be very willing to or super ready to move to another country children under the age 5 6

These children will perfectly speak any languages you inject into them. They will not have any problem. If a child is four or three or two actually Teach three languages. He or she will speak. Bilinguality shouldn't really be an issue if for example, if we talk about an intellectual family

educated, they already speak a few languages. The child will already learn. But the other example is a parent who actually wouldn't even teach other things because they don't have the capacity of information capacity or other things or they don't have the way, the method, the uh the tools to teach the things they know. then this is not a matter of language but a matter of any other information. If the family doesn't know how to transmit their knowledge to their children, which probably is

uh very much correlated with the education level. So what Omer's saying is highly educated parents may know better how to teach their language. But are they actually more likely to pass on their native language? All related to uh the initial goal of migration. I heard that there was a guy who went for PhD to US with the goal of coming back. to think to take things that he has learned in the US to Turkey and teach it there. Of course he met a Turkish girl there, also doing PhD, married.

And it was certain that they would come back. But of course the situation in Turkey is very dire right now and they're like, oh okay, we are not coming back. And the and the you know what the guy said? I'm not coming back. Because of me. Because I'm having good life here. No. So he says I am sacrificing myself for my child. Instead of he or she being the first generation, I am being the first generation of migrants so that he or she has a g has a good life.

The child this ch this child in this family I think will speak broken Turkish if they ever teach it. Maybe I'm I'm definitely they'll teach it, but this child will be different different than A grocery shop owner's child It's been proved in various studies that bilingual people are better at multitasking, are more empathic and can have a higher income during their lifetime. Speaking a foreign language can even make you more sexy in the eyes of others.

In a survey of two thousand people, the British Council found that almost half of the Brits would find the ability to speak another language attractive in a prospective romantic partner. Okay, that was a bit of a detour there, so back to the immigrant children. I was wondering, considering all these advantages.

Why wouldn't every single immigrant parent try to pass on their native language to their children? One reason is, unfortunately, that some of the teachers of these children tell parents not to do so. For example, in 2006, a secondary school in Berlin, Germany, implemented a ban on Turkish and other foreign languages on its premises. Students were instructed not to speak any foreign languages, even in the break.

The policy was introduced to enable their students to take part in German society through speaking and understanding the language properly. This is not a new phenomenon though. Before 1917, bilingual education was common in many US states that were home to German immigrants. After the First World War, that changed. And German speakers were treated with suspicion, many states prohibiting German as a language of instruction.

Research shows that such a drastic prohibition can backlash, leading the immigrant families to hold on even stronger to their ethnic identity. Having heard these two examples, is language based integration a genuine effort for integration? Or can it open a door to use it as an excuse and carry out a total ban of foreign languages?

Well either way, having an extra language in the pocket is always an advantage for children. Maybe immigrant parents should not be that worried about their children and maybe speak to them in their native language rather than the local one. the first thing that we need to consider that they don't speak the best English at at all. Even if they try to speak in English, this is gonna be a broken English the the children learn.

And the child is gonna go to an American primary school, an American high school. So the child will learn English perfectly.

Right? Okay, lots of food for thought. But before you start tormenting yourself as an immigrant while you still haven't learned the local language perfectly, here's some relief. The American Community Survey shows that the probability of learning the local language can climb from around 50% one year after migration up to over 80% 25 years after migration. So it will come with time

This was the very first episode of Polyglotcast. I hope you enjoyed. Before you go, I'd like to ask you for your feedback. Please write a mail to polyglotcast at gmail.com with your suggestions or ideas. Would you like to feature in some future episode and talk about, let's say, the language diversity in India or how you learned Greek in a year? Well, hit us up and let's make it happen.

Final note, you'll find the references to the scientific papers that I've quoted in the show notes. Well, see you later.