In essence, my work is to share knowledge about multilingual language acquisition. And to connect organisations and initiatives, which deal with multilingualism in society from a positive vision.
I like it best when the penny drops in people I work with. When I see that they suddenly realise that they need to look at their work or their surroundings differently. Fortunately, this happens very often.
Languages are important in so many ways. For people individually but also for society as a whole. Not only for communicating with each other, but also for thinking, learning, and discovering yourself and each other. Languages are bearers of cultures and identities. And being multilingual belongs to people like swimming belongs to fish. We always have been and we always will be.
Language acquisition in young children is a natural process and almost all children learn the language of their environment without having it explained to them. Talk, play, read to, enjoy. But don't turn them into language lessons!
If those languages mean something to you and your child, then yes. I still see far too often that parents do not consider their own mother tongues important for their children because they think that Dutch or English will suffer if the children learn other languages at home. But if you do it the right way, this is not the case at all. And all the languages your child learns from an early age are a wonderful gift for the rest of their lives.
There is a lot of information online about multilingual parenting. Immerse yourself in it and then think carefully about why you want it and how you want to go about it. Then be flexible in implementing your plans!
The future is multilingual!
I am Maaike Verrips, I advise and support organisations and people in the field of multilingualism.
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