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LEARNING DANISH

How to raise bilingual children in Denmark: 7 language tips and tricks

Raising a child in more than one language also raises a lot of questions, from which language to use when, to what to do if the child refuses to respond. The Local spoke to an expert to get advice on how to do it.

Published: 18 March 2024 15:14 CET
How to raise bilingual children in Denmark: 7 language tips and tricks
Illustration photo. What are the best strategies for encouraging bilingualism in children? Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash

Denmark’s multilingual families take many forms. There are the new arrivals whose children need to learn Danish to integrate. There are other parents whose children were born in Denmark, but who want them to grow up speaking their own native language(s) as well. 

Fortunately, Denmark is a great place to grow up multilingual but that doesn’t mean it will be easy.

The Local spoke to Elisa Sievers, Cultural Consultant and Founder of Happy Children Denmark. A bilinguist herself, now raising bilingual children, she has observed bilingual schools and studied evidence on teaching multilingual children, through the Minority of Education at University College South Denmark. 

Here are her pointers for anyone considering raising multilingual children in Denmark.

1.School support

“Many Danish public schools (which are free), called folkeskoler, have ‘modtageklasser‘, which means ‘receiving classes’ to welcome pupils who don’t speak Danish.

You can find which schools have these classes through your local municipality, which will assess the level of Danish needed. In these classes, Danish is taught as a second language and the classes are designed to get the pupils learning the school language as quickly as possible. 

There are also private bilingual schools, which are subsidised by the government. For example, Copenhagen has Danish-German, Danish-English and Danish-French schools.”

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: How does the school system work in Denmark?

2. Stay authentic 

“It’s really important to be authentic as parents and speak your mother tongue. So English parents coming to Denmark, should keep speaking English at home. A child can juggle languages so don’t force yourself to speak another, in order for your child to understand another language.

My husband speaks German, I speak Danish even though I grew up bilingual (Danish and German) myself. It’s important to be obvious that’s the choice your family is making. In our case, my husband speaks German, I speak Danish and that’s how we speak to each other and the kids.

If the mother and father both speak different languages to the country they live in, each parent should speak in their mother tongue and stay authentic. But they should also be aware it’s important to know a basic Danish to support their kids through school.”

3. Don’t worry about your child’s language development

“There is research that shows it’s quite common that bilingual kids don’t speak or speak very little until the age of 3 because they’ve got all these extra words in their heads to process. So it’s important to see your kid as going through a different way of learning languages to you, so give them space and don’t despair.

Don’t always correct their mistakes but instead repeat what the child said in the way it’s supposed to be said, so it doesn’t seem like a correction.

I have a four-year-old and when she starts speaking German to her German aunt, she doesn’t realise she has a Danish accent and her aunt doesn’t always understand her. We don’t correct her, we just say ‘ah you mean….’ and say it in German and help out the conversation with the aunt. But don’t give up on it, just guide them along.”

READ ALSO: What benefits are you entitled to if you have children in Denmark?

4. Your child may refuse to speak a language

“It’s really typical that the kid will have these phases of refusing to speak one of the languages. Look at the surroundings of the kid as to what is causing it.

Our oldest son refused to speak German for a while, which had a lot to do with how other people reacted when he spoke German to his Dad. 

German as a language has been unpopular in Denmark and when parents would start speaking to my son in German, it was with bad school grammar and a bit of irony and kids recognise that. My son didn’t want to speak German at all and said his Dad wasn’t cool; English was the cool language. 

Languages involve history and identity, so whatever your kid feels when they speak the language, will colour their experience.

When a child refuses to speak a language it can also be about power struggles with the parent that speaks that language. These power struggles are normal and healthy and they go on in general when raising kids.”

READ ALSO: Why you shouldn’t be surprised to hear Danish children say the F word

5. Children over the age of 7 will learn new languages differently

“At around the age of 7, children start categorising languages. Before this age, they see everything as one big language and they don’t think in boxes of different languages.

For children brought up as bilingual or trilingual, they’ve learnt all the languages at once so their categorisation comes around the age of 7. This is when they will start to learn the way a monolingual child does. So they’ll have clearer borders and build on one language at a time, which is a good tool for translating word for word but slower progress.

Under the age of 7, they just absorb the language really quickly, it’s more intuitive. If they move away from the language, they are able to access the accent easier when they return to it.”

6. Don’t force yourself to speak Danish at home

“Your child will learn Danish way faster so they’ll be a weird power balance if you force yourself to speak Danish at home. Stay authentic and speak your mother tongue.

You can sprinkle in Danish words but the best use of the language is to help out with subjects at school, being able to say something Danish at parents’ meetings, so that you’re there as a support system to the child in Danish.”

READ ALSO: The best Danish TV shows to watch to understand Denmark

7. Don’t give up

“One tool you can use is called ‘Making Language Bridges’. If you see your kid struggling with a specific word, you can make a bridge to explain the word to that kid. So if your kid likes dinosaurs, you can incorporate that, to explain and help them remember the word. It’s how we all remember words, we build language bridges. 

It’s not easy to raise bilingual children, it doesn’t just happen, you work at it every single day. It’s about making the decision and sticking to it.”

Elisa Sievers has a monthly newsletter, with tips for teachers and parents of bilingual and trilingual children.

Member comments

  1. stating that bilingual children may have a language delay because of that, is simply wrong. if a child has signs of a speech/language delay at 3 years old, please consult with a speech and language therapist.

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SCHOOLS

‘A superpower’: How being bilingual can help kids thrive in Danish schools

Being bilingual can help children to prosper academically when they are encouraged at school and at home, an expert told The Local.

Published: 14 June 2024 16:13 CEST
'A superpower': How being bilingual can help kids thrive in Danish schools

A recent report in Denmark linked a lack of Danish spoken at home and lower economic status with poorer performance at school, but bilingualism in isolation is an advantage under the right conditions, a specialist in the area told The Local on Friday.

Around 40 percent of school students with immigrant backgrounds were considered to be underperforming in mathematics, reading and science. That compares to 16 percent of students with non-immigrant backgrounds, according to the report “PISA Etnisk 2022”, published this week by research and analysis institute VIVE (National Research and Analysis Center for Welfare).

For all students, regardless of heritage, socioeconomic status was a factor in school performance. In other words, students from strong socioeconomic positions achieve better PISA results on average than those from weaker socioeconomic positions.

The report states that the language spoken at home may also have an effect on school results, with students who speak some Danish at home more likely to achieve better results – although this effect is reduced when socioeconomic status is taken into account.

READ ALSO: Kids who don’t speak Danish at home ‘may find school harder’

However, the report may not identify the difference individual situations can make for parents, an expert in raising bilingual children told The Local.

Bilingual kids given the right encouragement and support at home and school are in fact likely to thrive, said Elisa Sievers, a cultural consultant and founder of Happy Children Denmark. 

Sievers, who noted she had not read the VIVE report specifically, has observed bilingual schools and studied evidence on teaching multilingual children, at the Institute for Minority Education at University College South Denmark. 

Larger studies don’t always look at “the kids’ class or socioeconomics, where they actually come from, how long they’ve been in Denmark or what kind of resources the family has,” she said, adding that a number of different factors, like the languages spoken and whether the parents speak Danish, can create different circumstances contributing to results.

Being bilingual “doesn’t take the academic level of a child down, quite the opposite,” Sievers said. “It’s really about creating a space where children feel seen and feel that all parts of their identity and their language skills are embraced, then the child’s full potential can get out and they can thrive and have better academic results.”

“If a child is not thriving then they won’t perform super well academically either.”

READ ALSO:

Difficulties can arise if bilingualism is framed negatively by educators, parents or others, such as “questioning whether [the child] speaks any language perfectly,” Sievers said.

“That will affect the way the child is behaving and the way the child wants to perform and experiment with learning languages in general.”

“If there’s a positive, embracing space where the child can develop and use their language skills in a positive way”, they will be able to thrive, she said.

To create an “embracing” environment for bilingual children, Sievers advocates parents “staying authentic”, meaning each parent being consistent about speaking in their own mother tongue.

“It’s important that while the children are small and learning to speak that parents stick to that, and then they can be more loose later when the child knows the two languages,” she said.

At school, teachers can “make a point of the child having a special skill” by encouraging use of the second language.

An example of this could be asking the child to explain something about their language or background to the rest of the class.

“Seeing the language background, talk about it as something positive and something that is a superpower for the child instead of being a problem,” she said.

Elisa Sievers has a monthly newsletter, with tips for teachers and parents of bilingual and trilingual children.

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