Romanian came in top of foreign languages spoken in London, followed by Spanish, Polish and Bengali, data shows.
One in five Londoners (20.81%) do not speak English as their main language, according to Census 2021 figures.
There are lots of reasons for speaking a foreign language at home, and they will differ not just from family to family, but from individual members within the same family.
University of Reading associate professor of language and migration Dr Tony Capstick said: “It’s how families make decisions about what languages to use for certain purposes.”
Dr Capstick stressed the role of the family’s migration trajectory.
He said: “That can influence decision making.
“If you’re a first-generation migrant, you probably have quite strong views about either maintaining your home language or, and these are more kind of assimilationist integration patterns, you might completely want your family to not use the language of your cultural inheritance and use the dominant language.”
Jean-Christophe, a French Londoner and his Italian wife decided they would speak their own native language to their two daughters, from birth.
Their main motivation was cultural transmission and bond with their roots.
The human resources manager said: “We’re a Franco-Italian family, we regularly go on holiday to both countries, those are our origins.
“The girls need to be able to relate to those origins and be clear about where they are coming from.”
Speaking their parents’ native language also enables them to create close bonds to grandparents, whose English is limited, in France and Italy.
As a result, both girls, now 12 and 10, thrive in English, Italian and French.
Multilingualism was also in Jean-Christophe and Paola’s mind, as they thought it would benefit them later on in their education and make it easier for them to juggle with different cultural concepts.
Dr Capstick said: “Bilingualism has all sorts of cognitive benefits, as well as social and cultural benefits.
“Parents, depending on how they view some of these assumptions about language use, will frame their family language policy.
“It’s not always about levels of education, but you can imagine if you’re a fairly well educated middle class family, you’re more likely nowadays to see the benefits of bilingualism.”
The professor added some languages are more sustained across different generations.
He said: “Young third, fourth generations of British Pakististanis are still using Urdu and Panjabi at home.
“I’ve worked with a lot of families from Mirpur in northern Pakistan.
“In those families, it would be very unusual for Urdu and Panjabi to not be used at home, alongside English.”
As in multilingual households, languages aren’t separate.
He said: “In one sentence, people can move from English to Urdu, or English to Italian or English to French.”
However, maintaining a language of origin can be quite demanding.
As his eldest daughter was attending nursery school, Jean-Christophe had to repeat each sentence, first in French then in English to make sure she could understand and learn French words.
He said: “It’s not very spontaneous.
“Sometimes you feel you’d better switch to English, but it’s worth it.”
For their second child, the couple opted for a bilingual French-English nursery.
The girls are now both attending a French school in London, where the eldest one is also learning Italian.
And with the family relocating to Denmark, another language is soon to be added to their repetoir.
Feature image: Moritz Kindler / Unsplash
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