Majority, mixed or minority-language home?

The Bilingual Edge sorts families into three profiles: majority-language, mixed-language and minority-language. Your profile depends on which language each parent speaks natively and which language is spoken around you. Each profile gets its own advice, so naming yours first keeps you from following guidance written for a different home.

The three profiles

• Majority-language family. Neither parent speaks the language natively, and you are introducing it on purpose. The book's example is an English-speaking couple introducing Japanese and Spanish.
• Mixed-language family. You each have a different first language, or one of you learned the language to a high level. The book's example is Sarah's German-speaking father and English-speaking mother.
• Minority-language family. Both parents speak the language natively, and a different language is spoken around you. The book's example is Korean-speaking parents in Philadelphia.

Which one is your home?

If both of you are fluent because it is your first language, and the street, the school and the shops use another language, you are a minority-language family. If only one of you is fluent, and the other does not share that language, you are a mixed-language family. If neither of you grew up speaking it, you are a majority-language family, however much effort you put in.

The profile is about language, not about who is home. A mixed-language family can have both parents at home or only one on most days, and the same is true of a minority-language family. Kinlingua keeps the two questions separate, and it lets you skip the profile if none of the three fits neatly.

In the plan form, each profile is worded the way a family would say it, not as the book's label: "Neither parent natively speaks the language, and we're introducing it deliberately"; "We each speak a different first language, or one of us learned the language to a high level"; "Both parents natively speak the language, and the community language is what's spoken around us". Pick the sentence that sounds like your kitchen table.

What to do this week

• Majority-language home: do not wait to speak it perfectly. King & Mackey say early, meaningful exposure matters more than a native accent. Pick one routine you already have, such as a bath-time song or counting the stairs, and do it in the language, as a routine and not as a lesson. Even parents who know only a little can do this.
• Mixed-language home: check where the time goes. The authors suggest that children who end up with roughly equal skill in both languages generally need roughly equal exposure to both, in quantity and in quality: songs, books and play in each. The family audit counts hours per week by caregiver and language, so you see the real split and not the intended one.
• Minority-language home: make the language the everyday one between at least one parent and your child. King & Mackey say not to worry that this will hold back the community language. The community language seeps in from everywhere else, so at home it rarely needs the protection the heritage language does.

If you are a mixed-language family with one parent per language, read the article on passive bilingual children too. Sarah's case sits in this profile, and the authors suggest extra support at home for the weaker language.

What is still unknown

No source read for this site says how common each profile is, so this article gives no figures. The three profiles are the authors' own lens. We found no source showing that a profile predicts how a child's languages turn out, and your home may sit between two of them.

The claim that a strong first language supports the second language comes from studies that King & Mackey describe, namely Skutnabb-Kangas and Toukomaa on Finnish immigrants in Sweden and Dolson (1985) on Latino children in the US. We read the book's account of them, not the original papers.