When your partner does not speak the heritage language

The app is built so that a partner who does not speak the heritage language still has a part, and King and Mackey's advice depends on your family's profile. In The Bilingual Edge they describe three profiles: majority, mixed and minority. No source read for this site tests what a non-speaking partner does for the child, so the practical ideas below are marked as untested.

Which profile is your family?

The plan generator asks you to pick one, in the app's own words. If neither of you natively speaks the heritage language and you are introducing it on purpose, that is the majority-language profile. If you have different first languages, or one of you learned the language to a high level, that is the mixed-language profile. If both of you natively speak it and the community speaks another language, that is the minority-language profile.

A couple in which one partner speaks the heritage language and the other does not fits the mixed profile as the app words it. It does not fit the minority profile. For that profile King and Mackey advise using the heritage language as the everyday language between at least one parent and the child, without worrying that this will hold back the community language, but that advice is written for families where both parents speak it natively. You can also skip the question in the plan generator if your family does not fit neatly.

What King and Mackey advise for a mixed-language family

Their summary for mixed-language families, as the app states it, is that children generally need roughly equal exposure to both languages to end up with roughly equal competence in both. They ask for quality as well as quantity: songs, books and play in each language, not in one only.

The same chapter has a second passage. Because the majority language is never on equal footing outside the home, parents in mixed families should consider extra support at home for the weaker, minority language, and the authors suggest a goal of 80% of the child's interaction in that language and 20% in the majority one. Here "minority language" means the weaker language where you live, not the minority profile. Both passages are King and Mackey's own. The sources read for this site do not say how the authors fit "roughly equal" and 80% together, and we do not settle it for you.

They also describe Sarah, whose father spoke German and whose mother spoke English. She understood German well but insisted on speaking English, which they call a passive bilingual, and they note that many children in one-parent-one-language families become passive rather than active bilinguals. It is one family's case, not a forecast for yours. The audit shows a note about this pattern only when the plan you saved says the parents have different first languages, the rows show a heritage-only adult next to a community-only adult, the heritage share is under 80% and no added language is tracked. Without that profile, a separate note may describe the hours alone.

If neither of you speaks it

For the majority-language profile, King and Mackey advise not worrying about native-level accuracy and weaving the language into routines already happening, such as a bath-time song or counting the stairs. That advice is written for families where neither parent speaks the language natively. If your partner is learning a little alongside a fluent parent, it is related to your situation, not a test of it.

What a partner can do: ideas no source has tested

• Agree on the goal together first. In chapter 12, King and Mackey say language choice is emotional and tends to intensify tension a family already has. They advise sharing your original goals and not letting language stand in for a different disagreement. That scenario covers parents pulling in different directions.
• Protect the heritage-speaking parent's time with the child. The audit counts heritage-language hours in full, and a caregiver who speaks only the community language counts as zero for the heritage language. King and Mackey's example is a father with only 3 to 4 hours a week alone with his child, under 5% of waking hours, which they present as fully explaining why the child was not speaking his language. A partner who takes over a bath, a meal or an errand can free time for that parent. This is our idea, not theirs.
• Learn three phrases for one routine. Practice moments gives the less-fluent parent three moments to own, bath, breakfast and shoes at the door, with three phrases each and a rough sound guide. The job is consistency, not perfection. For languages outside the app's seven, the phrase fields start blank and you fill them in with help from a fluent person.

None of these ideas is tested in the sources read for this site. They follow from how the app counts time and from its practice mode, and we offer them as ideas, not findings.

What is still unknown

• Whether a partner who does not speak the language changes the child's outcome. No source read for this site tests it. UNVERIFIED.
• Whether the "roughly equal" and 80% figures fit a particular family. The book gives guidance by profile, not a test you can pass or fail.
• Whether the three profiles are the best way to sort families. We have read them in King and Mackey and have not compared them with other frameworks.

In short: pick the profile that fits, read the advice written for it, agree on the goal with your partner, and use the audit to see what the week actually holds.