Did you grow up in a multilingual family?

We want to interview adults who grew up in a multilingual/bilingual situation for a unique new book collecting together these experiences to share them with new parents just starting out to raise their children bilingually today.

It doesn’t matter whether you ended up as a fully balanced bilingual or not as we want a range of experiences for the book. You do need to have a good recollection of the details of your childhood and be prepared to share them with us and for us to publish them (anonymously if preferred).

We have already completed around 30 interviews to date – we are now particularly keen to include people who had the following experiences in their bilingual childhood so that we get a rounded picture:

• Anyone growing up multilingually who had a positive experience attending a Saturday language school or evening language school as a child
• Anyone growing up multilingually whose parents separated or divorced while they were a child, or whose childhood involved joint custody
• Anyone being raised multilingually by a single parent
• Anyone growing up speaking a language which was banned or repressed.
• Anyone who felt that their parents pushed them hard to become bilingual and who (at times) resisted this pressure or felt that it became counter productive or interfered with their relationship with their parents
• Anyone who, although raised bilingually has since lost one or more languages or who chooses not to speak it as an adult
• Any siblings whose experiences of growing up bilingually differ significantly or who now speak significantly different amounts of the different languages that they were raised speaking (where we can interview both siblings).

Generally we have had a lot of very positive examples of those raised speaking several European languages and, apart from those specific groups listed above we are now more interested in interviewing those who were raised bilingually in other parts of the world or speaking African or Asian languages and those who had more mixed experiences growing up bilingually.

If you might be interested in taking part, call me (Claire) on 020 8531 6448 for a preliminary chat or send me an email at Claire_thomas2000@yahoo.co.uk