Page 96 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

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L. Krahula Dolezı́, K. Mullerova: Plurilingual Competence in a Child: A Case Study
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“vandela”forwhich wehavenot foundan explanationfromthe language contact perspective
nor any evidence of its existence in other languages so that translation could be possible.
This word appeared in a dialogue accompanying playing with magnetic blocks. The child
discussed with the babysitter a picture of a castle.

Summary and conclusion
In this paper we could not cover a full analysis of the child’s linguistic development but we
wanted to offer an insight into a small and probably transitory part of her linguistic trajec-
tory involving ive languages – Hebrew, Russian, Czech, English, Spanish and French. We
tried to map the linguistic pro ile of the child and her caregivers at a certain point of time
and to understand the family language policy. It is apparent, nevertheless, that the child’s
pro ile is transitory and might not be true anymore (the research took place in 2021) as it
is closely connected to age and the cognitive characteristics of particular phases of devel-
opment and to the environment and people surrounding the child at a given time. This is
one of the key aspects of understanding multiple language acquisition and maintenance – it
is not static, it is fragile and highly individual depending on each individual trajectory (Pic-
cardo, 2022, p. 2). On one hand all the languages seem to pro it from the uniqueness of the
preschool age and grow into the child effortlessly and as far as the parents can judge in a nat-
ural and undisturbed way. On the other hand, the child creates a unique system building on
all the resources or languages available when she needs to do so. As a result, we can observe
an amazing interplay between ive languages which however never leads to miscommuni-
cation. Examples of code-switching might be considered as indicators of multi-competence
and “can have positive and long-term effects on the multilingual language users’ well-being”
(Wei, 2016, p. 175)⁴.
One of the key questions that bothers parents and caretakers is how to keep all the lan-
guages and prevent them from decay and attrition that is so quick and easy in children
as opposed to adults (Schmid, 2011). Kopeliovich (2013, pp. 250–251) suggests that we
should have “…unbiased attitude to diverse languages that enter the household and respect
to the language preferences of the children”. The author introduces a “Happylingual” ap-
proach (2013, p. 273) which is described as a delicate balance between caregivers’ efforts
to protect and cultivate vulnerable languages and avoiding futile ights against natural so-
ciolinguistic forces that drive the children towards the stronger language. To gain more
insight it would be great to analyze the language development from the longitudinal per-
spective and to observe the sibling interaction and acquisition of literacy too.
Bibliography

B , D. (2013). Mı́senı́ kodu, interference a role materskeho jazyka pri osvojovanı́ jazyka cizı́ho. In L. Dolezı́ ̌
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(Ed.), Začínáme učit češtinu pro děti cizince – předškolní věk. Asociace ucitelu cestiny jako cizı́ho jazyka.
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[Code-switching, Interference and the Role of Mother Tongue in Foreign Language Acquisition. In
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4. Mertins (2020) also points out the bene its of using more languages in everyday communication and in par-
ticular code-switching.
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