By Alice Lapuerta
Originally appeared in April 2006 on the Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network.
Photo Credit: gazzaPax
As if parenthood doesn’t give us enough to worry about as it is, with bilingual children we worry just a tad bit more. One particular pet-worry is our children’s speech development.
Counting and analyzing our children’s words as they come out of their mouths becomes our favorite past-time. This brings some interesting problems. Your toddler development book says that by 18 months your child should be able to produce ten words. The thing is, your child just said “wattadingdi” and you have no idea what it means. Was that German? Spanish? Both? Do you even count it as a word, or not? And what about “huttagadafi,” “diga-diga-tu-tu,” “vidapu” or “hutautabitadu,” or interesting conglomerations like “pofavowurt?”
An optimistic parent gifted with a lot of fantasy will claim that her child just produced five perfectly acceptable words, and one complete sentence (in Germspanish: “Por favor, Wurst!” – sausage, please). Isn’t she a prodigy, speaking so early!
A more pessimistic parent (of which I am the type) will claim that the number of real word production is still at a sad zero. So no, she is not speaking yet, in any of our three languages. Is it time to panic, now?
Yet there are benefits to gibberish as well. The advantage of an expression like “diga-diga-tu-tu” is that outsiders think she just spoke the other language. “Oh, she must’ve said something in Spanish just now!” they say, with admiration.
Let them think what they will. I am not going to tell them that it was just gibberish. But secretly I worry a bit whether this isn’t a sign that she is confused. After all, my daughter’s friend is already talking fluently….
If there is one thing that we shouldn’t be doing, it is to compare our children’s speech development to that of monolingual children. We all know this.
Yet we do it anyway.
How many of us have been in a similar situation: you drop off Junior at kindergarten. As you pull off his boots and help him get out of his jacket, you overhear the (monolingual) kid next to you produce this wonderfully complex sentence in past conditional, in clearly enunciated English. You turn to the kid’s parent in admiration, and say: “He speaks so beautifully! How old is he?” He must surely be at least a year older than Junior.
“He is turning 3 in two months.”
“Oh.” So the other kid is younger than Junior, who already had his third birthday some weeks ago. And now (admit it!): just for one second you feel this unease, this ever so slight panicky feeling, this conviction that everyone else’s child will learn to speak properly – except yours. Your child will run around either completely mute, or he will produce “diga-diga-tu-tu” for the rest of his life. You know this for a fact.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Count me in with the pessimistic parents on the vocabulary-counting front. Just because it sounds like a (nonsense) word doesn’t mean it is a (real) word – unless the child uses it with consistent meaning. Which mine didn’t for quite a while.
I like “diga diga” as a filler. Much more funny than the a/uh that my little one uses at the moment. Diga diga tu tu tu!
I remember going to a children’s activity when my daughter was between 1.5 and 2, not making two-word sentences yet. I heard a little girl probably a full three inches shorter than mine (but older…surely a lot older??) say, “Look, Mummy, I’ve got a sticker!” The only word in that complete, grammatically correct sentence including an auxiliary verb and indefinite article that my daughter could say was “Mummy”… *grin* Hard not to wonder if your child will be the exception that does, in fact, never learn to talk….
Thanks for this!
Haha, “diga diga tu tu” is adorable!
I have to say, when I first thought about how my son’s language skills would develop, I was scared with all the talk about bilingual kids taking longer than normal to get the languages down. And then all my worries went out the window when, at 18 months, he began saying a new word (or two or three!) a day – in English and Spanish alike. 
Now he’s 19 months old, and I can’t keep track of all the words in his vocabulary anymore. In fact, I think he even understands Spanish better than I do! I can imagine in a few years from now he and my husband will be having lengthy conversations en Español, and I won’t be able to keep up with them. 
I think it really boils down to the fact that they’ll all do it on their own time in their own way – much like every other aspect of growing up. Ah, but it’s so easy to forget that from one moment to the next. Parenting can be such a stressful trip!
Q´s last [type] ..that’s what she said
Ah, sweet memories
My brother still remembers fondly when Isabella would tell him: “Gory gory house?” He definitely thought it was german
You were lucky to get the speech therapist you did– the cases I’ve heard of have been different, with the therapist convincing the parents to abandon the minority language with the child.
Kimberly, you are right, we were really lucky. Our ST is gold, and my daughter adored her! We did not find her easily, though. We also had our share of negative experience with STs and other professionals who were not very informed about multilingualism. It is important to be informed yourself as a parent, and then to just keep looking until you find the right person. They really are out there, one only needs to find them …
I know all about parent paranoia and over-analyzing our children. But every time I over-analyzed the language skills of my bilingual kids I reminded myself of my own language aquisition: I grew up monolingual German, but did not speak until age 3! I would still say “Ei” for Eisenbahn for example. In spite of that, I went on to learn three more languages, consider myself on the language-gifted side, have a university degree in history and now live a happy bilingual life in the US. By the way, Einstein didn’t talk until he was three either…
Love it!!! Thank you for sharing!!
Alice, thank you so much for your post. That’s exactly what I needed to read now.
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My daughter has similar problem. She is a bilingual English-Russian 2-year old, and currently her speech is mostly jibberish with some “real” words in between (often out of context). Childcare workers don’t know this and think that “she must be speaking Russian”. I’ll let them think this way
I kind of expected delays with speech, and I wasn’t worried until when my daughter turned 2 and still had under 10 words vocabulary and specialists raised concerns over her speech.
I remember shortly after doing this assessment, I took my daughter to playground to meet friends where I’ve heard my friend’s 2 year old said to her mummy: “Mummy, I love you so much!” and that was the first time I got really jealous.
I remember crying all the way home in my car. I new my daughter would say that too if she could. But she can only say “mama” and give me some hugs and smiles. I remember getting really angry with myself: how did I dare to think of raising my daughter bilingually? But I new I had no choice really. My native language is a part of me – how can I not speak it to my child?
Now, 2 months later she made progress to around 25-30 words and started put together 2 words … I’t is very slow and I’m still waiting for the moment she “starts and never stops” speaking. Perhaps, instead of worrying I should really be taking notes of those cute little jargon words she’s using to substitute “real” words. It is hard to think “big picture” when you are so worried about present moment.
Tanya, big hugs! I completely feel with you and am sorry that you felt so sad. I wish you could hear my daughter now (she just turned 9): she is a terrible chatterbox and won’t stop talking – in all 3 languages! She is a straight-A student and there is absolutely no indication of her diga-diga symptom now. And I used to be absolutely convinced that she’d never grow out of it. 2 years is still so young … your daughter will get there, just let her walk to her own drummer!
Until then, like you said, keep track of her speech development by writing down her “unique” words. One day, you will read over them with a smile (and a slight feeling of nostalgy). 
Oh my god, this column was just what I needed. My sons are raised trilingual in Russian, Dutch and German. We live in Germany. I am a Dutch native speaker. Just recently my eldest son started Kindergarten and what you describe is what I experienced. Although my son can produce enough words in both Dutch and Russian, he doesn’t seem to get a grip on German. Either he refuses or says only short things, like ‘need to pee’, ‘want to drink wasser’ but he still cannot produce any fluent sentences in German. And it really bothers me, because all those monolingual kids are speaking like crazy. I wonder if he’ll ever understand and start talking! Thanks for your column, it’s nice to find recognition and understanding.
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