When Iris Tsui decided to relocate her family to Melbourne in 2018, she didn’t expect her daughter Layla to quickly adapt to the Western world.
So worried that a Chinese-rich community would hinder Layla’s ability to integrate into the wider Australian society, Ms Tsui chose to settle in Richmond – an inner-city gentrified suburb with its chic bars, brunch spots and, most importantly, locals to mix with.
To her parents’ surprise, it took just three months for the then three-and-a-half-year-old Layla to pick up English.
There is only one problem: Layla now struggles to speak in Chinese.
Video calls to her grandparents in Shanghai are spent nodding or shaking her head as Layla, now six, dodges questions that require long answers.
“I never thought she’d lose her Chinese so quickly,” Ms Tsui says, “[Kids ...] they’re like sponges, whatever you give them, they just absorb.”
The mother tongue struggle
shows three in 10 Australians speak a language other than English, or English and another language, at home.
In a among 281 multilingual families, many parents involved felt hesitant to speak multiple languages at home, or felt their efforts were not being supported at school.
“The peer pressure, the teacher’s pressure and the lack of language schools are main factors,” one surveyed parent said.
In Layla’s experience, Ms Tsui says there is a lot of peer pressure to be the same and therefore her daughter prefers to speak in English.
Kids 'are like sponges', they absorb everything Source: Abbotsford Primary School
“Layla just wants to be like the others. Whatever others have, she wants also. Whatever other kids don’t want to do, she also doesn’t want to do.”
Linguistic expert Susanne Döpke, who has been studying bilingualism for four decades, says a high proportion of families have other language backgrounds but very often do not receive the sort of support they need to successfully pass on the language to their children.
She says she finds it shocking that learning a second language at school is not a general requirement in Australia.
"In Germany they consider language on par with mathematics as far as cognitive learning is concerned," Dr Döpke says.
The bilingual school
In Layla’s case, the school curriculum is delivered half of the time in Chinese by native speaking teachers. This is because she attends Abbotsford Primary School, in Melbourne’s inner suburbs and one of the state’s bilingual schools.
It attracts families willing to travel up to 45 minutes to an hour to get to school, according to its Taiwan-born principal Stanley Wang. 
As a migrant bilingual school principal, Stanley Wang says he has a passion for languages. Source: Abbotsford Primary School
Mr Wang says these families are highly aware of the difficulty in mastering Chinese so there’s a feeling that an early start is better than a late one.
“And the more time and the more authentic environment they are able to provide their children for Chinese learning, the more likely they are going to be able to reach intermediate or, later on, an advanced level,” he adds.
Despite the school having a high ratio of native Chinese teachers and Mandarin being the only language taught at home, Ms Tsui says it’s evident English is now her daughter’s dominant language.
“Her train of thought has completely become English,” she says.
“Layla knew how to speak ‘very good’ Chinese from one-and-a-half years old ... Her Chinese back then was better than it is now."
Mr Wang, a linguistics graduate, says it can be hard when families migrate to a new country before children master their first language.
“I would say the golden age of bilingualism is grades three to five,” he says, as someone who pleaded with his parents to migrate and resume schooling in Melbourne as a 10-year-old. 
At Abbotsford Primary School, students are taught in Chinese for half of all curriculum hours. Source: Abbotsford Primary School
“Kids don't reject Chinese. They only do when they come across mainstream society, a different culture and bigger school scope … and realise there's a difference between school and home,” Mr Wang says.
Dr Döpke says bilingual school education can help preserve the home language, “but it really comes down to what the parents are doing”.
‘Half an hour of quality time’
Ms Tsui says she’s resorted to using many incentives to get Layla to respond in Mandarin.
"The most useful [method] is playing games. I use finger puppets with her and explain that the puppet can only speak Chinese.”
She and her husband Jason also tell jokes and talk about “fun stuff”, which works with Layla.
“For adults, it's so tiring," Ms Tsui admits.
In consultation with multilingual families, Dr Döpke stresses the importance of parenting practices and spending quality time with children.
Quality time with children is important Source: AP
"There has to be a lot of repetition.”
Dr Döpke also suggests putting words into easy sentences and providing the sort of language the child is trying to convey.
“If you talk too fast, too much, talk about things that your child isn't interested in, it is much harder for the child to learn your language,” she says.
Choosing between dialects
Often in Chinese families, more than one dialect is spoken at home and choosing which to use with the child is sometimes a difficult choice.
“People who came from Italy [to Australia] had the same problem … when they came from Sicily,” Dr Döpke says.
In Ms Tsui’s case, Shanghainese and Cantonese are additional dialects spoken at home, but only Mandarin is used in conversations with Layla. 
Iris Tsui says she's shocked Layla has forgotten her Chinese so quickly. Source: Iris Tsui
“A lot of these dialects, they aren't actually dialects, they are different languages, so they are not mutually comprehensible,” Dr Döpke says.
“If the parent has a good emotional relationship to Mandarin, then I suppose Mandarin is the language that has the most written support as well, in terms of books, then that may be a very good choice," she adds.
It may prove difficult for families trying to introduce more than one dialect to the child.
“One person cannot single-handedly pass on more than one language. Time-wise it's too complicated and complicated in terms of establishing a relationship,” Dr Döpke explains.
Interracial marriages
In 2018, ABS statistics revealed 32 per cent of registered marriages were of partners born in different countries. What does that mean for their language choice if they have offspring?
Dr Döpke says studies show that from about two years of age, children understand the difference between ‘mum’ words and ‘dad’ words; the child learns their parents are using different languages. 
Parents of children of mixed heritage need to stick with their language choice. Source: AAP
For multilingual households, she recommends parents stick to their language program.
“So ideally mother always speaks one language. The father always speaks the other language. Now the question becomes what do they speak between each other as parents?”
In many families, the only common language is English. However, Dr Döpke suggests where the English-speaking parent does have some amount of knowledge in his or her partner's language and has an interest in learning it, it would help if the family language was the minority language.
Therefore, the mother always speaks one language, the father always speaks the other to the child, but when they're all together, they speak the minority language.
When primary school ‘takes over’
Ideally, when the child goes to school, they have language skills that are age-appropriate in the parent's language, Dr Döpke says.
“The child may have a little more difficulty initially when adapting to an all-English environment when everything the child learns is new.” 
Bilingual children are encouraged to speak their native tongue at home. Source: Abbotsford Primary School
Dr Döpke also says another way that parents can support the child’s development at home is to provide age-appropriate words and structures in their own language.
“So, if they learn about space at school, as a parent, you need to talk about space to the child in your own language," she says.
Brain space
At Abbotsford Primary School, Mr Wang says there’s a growing misconception among families that if their children were to grow up in two languages, it will take up half of their brain space.
This is especially evident among migrant families from less educated backgrounds who often worry about their children’s English level and so they drop their home language, he says.
"This is a sad reality," Mr Wang says.
"Often the parent's English isn't all that good and that's not in the interest of the child either,” Dr Döpke adds.
When language acquisition isn’t working, Dr Döpke reminds worried parents to observe others.
"If you see children who interact a lot with their parents, it's worthwhile looking at what the parents are doing and then try that with your own child," she says.
Language recovery
For many migrant families, dealing with the loss of culture and language can be felt strongly.
"I think after Layla's generation, whatever's left of Chinese language and culture won't be much … This is real shame," Ms Tsui says.
The pandemic has also been preventing many families from visiting their homeland to fast-track their children’s language skills.
Despite low possibilities of returning to Hong Kong for good, Ms Tsui has hopes of one day recovering some of Layla’s lost language.
"Our roots are in China, so we really want her to have Chinese capabilities," she says.
"When we communicate with Layla, we still prefer to use Chinese. Our family's affection is wrapped up in the language.”
Dr Döpke's tips:
- Spend half an hour of quality time playing with your child in the mother tongue
- Avoid talking too much, too fast or about things your child isn’t interested in
- After reading books in English, discuss the contents in your own language
- Stick to your language choice, avoid mixing or trying to pass on more than one language or dialect as one parent
- Observe and learn from other children who interact a lot with their parents
