Survey

In order to better understand the experiences of Indian children in the U.S., a survey was conducted on 41 anonymous people from ages 14-22 years old. 25 (61%) were multilingual and 16 (39%) were monolingual. There was a wide range of backgrounds and mother tongues. 78.3% spoke Hindi, Gujarati, and/or Telugu, but other languages spoken included Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Maithili, Urdu, and Tamil.

At the start of the survey, background information was collected to identify any factors influencing whether or not they learned the language. For other questions, the respondents were asked to answer on a numerical scale of 1-5. 1 was the lowest and 5 was the highest.

Reasons Behind Immigration

One factor was the language education of immigrants, and most people within the first generation came to America for education and/or a job.

Possible External Factors

The factors that are positively associated with children being multilingual are both parents identifying as Indian, grandparents living with them, and being second generation. However, being second or third generation cannot be properly evaluated because only 5 out of the 41 respondents were third generation.

Multilingual

Learning and Proficiency

84% of multilingual children started learning their parents’ native tongue between the ages of 0-6 years old, demonstrating the importance and frequency of learning young. Also, the language is maintained through family members because all children learned the language through their family members. Only 32% of children used other teaching methods, including schooling and self-teaching.

In regards to proficiency, 72% of multilingual children evaluate their speaking proficiency between a level of 3-4 and 72% also evaluate their reading/writing skills at a level of 1-2, highlighting the value of being able to speak over reading and writing because people are focusing on communicating with family members and peers. Reading and writing is not as important in a foreign country.

Identity/Relationships

For most children, learning their parents’ or grandparents’ native tongue has helped them with their communication and relationships with their family members, along with their cultural identity. Unlike familial relationships and identity, language affects intragenerational relationships among Indian children at a less significant degree. The average or mean of the data for this question is 2.92, highlighting a moderate impact on intragenerational relationships. One possible reason could be the variety of languages and cultures among Indian children.

“I think as a South Indian, not many people I know spoke the same language as me. And most of “Indian American” culture hinges on being North Indian. So it didn’t make me feel very connected to other Indian kids I knew from school." - Anonymous

Monolingual

Not Learning the Language

There was a wide range of responses as to why monolingual Indians did not learn their parents or grandparents’ native tongue(s). However, half say that they did not start early enough. All except one respondent said that they would consider learning the language, demonstrating a willingness to still connect to the language and culture more.

Identity/Relationships

Being monolingual with multilingual family members does have a negative impact on intergenerational relationships for respondents, as 43.8% reported some negative impact. Though multilingual children reported a strong association with knowing the language and feeling stronger in their cultural identity, the reverse was not true as monolingual children did not report a strong association between not knowing the language and being negatively impacted in their cultural identity. 50% reported no or little negative impact. Therefore, language is not the most important factor in connecting with one’s culture but it is still proven to be beneficial. Lastly, not knowing the language has a weakly moderate negative impact on intragenerational relationships with other Indian children, as the average value was 2.75.

Conclusion

There is a strong positive association between being multilingual and having better familial relationships and a stronger cultural identity, but being monolingual does not have an immense negative impact on children in regards to identity and intragenerational and intergenerational relationships.

(souce used below to help format the types of questions asked in the survey)

Works Cited

Alba, Richard, and Jacob Stowell. "Linguistic Assimilation across the Generations: An Analysis of Home Language among Second-and-Third Generation Children from Contemporary Immigrant Groups." Population Association, paa2007.populationassociation.org/papers/7138. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.

Page updated

Report abuse