Non-Native early bilingualism in Brazil: A Case Study on the phenomenon of child bilingualism in Brazilian families

Abstract Summary

Abstract :

Non-native bilingualism (henceforth NNB) – the raising of a child in a foreign language by parents who are not native speakers of that language in a monolingual environment – despite very controversial, may be a successful process. And this kind of practice has become fashionable in monolingual countries of Central and Eastern Europe, according to Romanowski (2016) and has also been increasingly noticed in Brazil in the last years. Thus, this case study presents, evaluates and discusses the effectiveness of early bilingual upbringing of children in Brazil – a monolingual country – by Brazilian parents, who are non-native speakers of the language they are passing on to their children. 15 families, who have adopted the NNB practice, participated in this research by answering an online questionnaire. Each case is analyzed against the background of bilingualism theories. The discussion involves the parents’ role in the child’s language acquisition, the communication strategies used by the parents in the bilingual upbringing, and the problems encountered in the process.

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