As a bilingual you have to...I always say: “A bilingual is awake for as many hours as a monolingual”
So in principle, you get the same amount of language input, but this is divided across two different languages.
So you basically just get less language input in one language than monolingual children.
And then the question I often hear from parents is: “Okay, but how much input is enough to make sure they learn the language well?”
There’s been a lot of research published on this topic recently. What we see is that it’s not the case that:
‘The more, the better. The more, the better. The more, the better.’ And that if a child hears Dutch for, let’s say, 70% of time...
this child will be twice as good as a child that only hears Dutch 35% of time.
So to a certain extent, we see that more language input has a positive effect on language development.
And by that, I mean that the child will learn it faster. So it does not necessarily mean that you will not learn a language if you get less language input.
But it will be a bit slower. But only to a certain extent.
So, for example, there are studies that show that in order to understand as many words as your monolingual peers...
you should hear a language about 40% of the time.
But in order to produce as many words, you must hear more of that language. And that makes sense, right?
Because talking is more difficult than understanding. There are also several studies that show something similar, it depends a bit on what we are investigating...
but somewhere between the 40% and 60% or 70%. But that shows it’s always a balancing act.
So the idea that you’re only succesful bilingual if you can speak both languages equally well, balanced...
the same in those two language, then things are going well. That is a misunderstanding, because that simply doesn't happen.
You will see that one language is more dominant or stronger than the other one. That’s just the way it is. That is not a big problem.
But it’s just the way it is. Often it’s the language of the school that’s dominant.
What we do know is that more input from native speakers...
is apparently more supportive of language development than input from non-native speakers...
But we also know that in many cases, there are non-native speakers who also speak their second language with their child.
They do that, as I said, to boost their child’s language input. That is what we do at home, for example.
My husband is Dutch, but he speaks English with our children because we want them to get as much English input as possible.
And he decided to do this himself. He had the opportunity to make that decision.
I can imagine that this isn’t an option as a hearing parent of a deaf child. So it’s a matter of:
Am I going to learn sign language and offer that as a language? Or am I going to continue with spoken language...
without knowing exactly how much of this my child understands? Then I can imagine, because sign language is more accessible to the child...
that it would certainly be worth starting to use sign language. But then I would also look for other possible sources of sign language.