Email: What are your thoughts on raising your kid with regard to language and religion?

I got a question from a friend of mine and thought I'd share my answer here too. Here's his email.

Hey I was curious. Please don't take offense I'm just curious because you have an interesting family life that is very distinct and multicultural. Are you raising your kid multilingual? And if so, English and Japanese? It may seem like a dumb question. But here is an even weirder follow up. And please again I don't mean this in a jerky way it's just been on my mind. What are your opinions on raising your kid religiously? My wife to be is Jewish and I'm a dirty pagan. We are both learning Swedish (and obviously we speak English), but I was wondering about your strategy to incorporate your ethno/religious background in your situation. Me and Demi have talked loosely about how we would do it with our kids, but I'm really curious about your opinions. Sorry if this seems weird lol. I [just] finally got the courage to ask someone who is kinda in our situation but theoretically lol.

No problem at all man. I wouldn't be any kind of friend if I took offense to you asking my advice and opinions. Those are some really challenging questions so I hope you don't mind me taking some time and space to answer them.

Beginning with language, yes definitely the goal is for our daughter to be bilingual. There are a couple reasons for that. First and foremost is because my family doesn't speak Japanese and my wife's family doesn't speak English. To be a part of everyone's life she needs to be able to communicate. There is also the professional benefit of having native level skills in two languages. I've been studying Japanese for nearly a decade and even though I can do business there is still a clear distinction between myself and a native-speaker. I don't know if I can ever bridge that gap completely. I'd like to give my daughter every advantage I can. And I also think knowing/studying more than one language is valuable to a healthy and satisfying intellectual life.

I am not, however, teaching her Hebrew. I also don't speak either Hebrew or Yiddish. I don't see a need for Julie to learn those because while it is part of our cultural history, we have no living relatives with whom we need to communicate that way. We'd do as well to learn any other language we have historical ties to in my opinion (like Gaelic or Latin, for example).

As far as religion goes, I am not at all religiously Jewish and Japanese religion isn't much like what we're used to in the US. There is a lot of tradition and there are many rituals involved, but it's just something they do, not something they live their whole lives by. There are exceptions of course, because there are certainly monks who dedicate themselves to their spirituality. I'm of the opinion that I'm Jewish no matter what I believe in because any of Hitler's followers would have beaten me to death and shot my kid in the street. I feel it is important to understand things about your own history if for nothing else than to know that people who hate you out of ignorance won't see the difference between a religious Jew and a cultural one.

I can't honestly say what I want to tell her is true about spiritual matters. I may just not bring it up and just teach her morality based on the old "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" axiom. Then if she has questions I'll talk to her about it when she asks. Maybe I'll point her towards what she needs to study in order for her to find a doctrine that she finds satisfying. Essentially, I feel that religion is incredibly personal. It's main role in my own life at least is to cope with the indescribable and majestic mysteries of life and the universe. Sorry to get a little more philosophical there than I'd like, but that's roughly how I'd put my feelings into words on that matter. I want her to figure out what's right for her without me having to overexpose her to my own particular system first.

I honestly can't say if I really think those are all the right ways to go about things. Some people take to their parents' religions very easily. Others rebel against them. But if your kid grows up to be a nice person with a healthy appetite for knowledge and the ability to communicate with the people that matter to them--that's pretty much the best I'd ever hope for.

In any case these are just my opinions and I'm not an expert of any kind. But this is what I came up with when asked to put an answer into words long before I'm ready to put it into practice.

The Wrong Kawasaki: Unlocking Google Barriers with Second Language

There is a lot that can only be learned by reading materials in the original language. You might find plenty on Japanese history or anime in English, but if you want to know what it is like to grow up in Kawasaki and if you want to know why people consider that area dangerous, you have to search in Japanese.

That wasn’t a conclusion that I came to easily. For years I avoided using the net in Japanese where I could. There is so much information in English that it’s not necessary in many (if not most) cases. The wall that I hit was Kawasaki. Apparently I hit it as hard as if I had ridden a Kawasaki motorcycle into it, because bikes were the *only* thing I could get Google to bring up. Well, I'm thankful for it because it got me to step out of my comfort zone and I learned some things that I doubt I'd have found anywhere in English.

Something I am likely to return to many times when I talk about translation and language learning on this blog, is that for a number of reasons elitism and insecurity mingle freely within students of Japanese. Judgmental attitudes are everywhere on the net, in university, on the street, in the bars, cafes and workplaces. Discussing why that is would probably be interesting (and here's a blog post that does so, though I do disagree with her on a number of points), but for now I'm more interested in trying to free myself from it. For my own part, it is relieving to admit that I had a mental block against even trying to use the net in my second language.

I know for some people, making active use of their second language is first nature. But I also know that, like myself, it isn’t natural or automatic for many others. When I taught English as a second language, I found it very difficult to get students using Google in English. I knew it would be a huge benefit to them because of the sheer volume of information available on the internet in English. These days I feel foreign language teachers ought to be able to do, or at the least ought to be learning to do, anything they preach to their students as indispensable. I should have taken my own advice long ago, but sometimes (read, usually) I find that I have to be forced into taking the necessary steps forward.

If you are studying a second language and aren't already doing this, I encourage you to learn new things in your second language. Don't just study the language, but seek out topics that you can learn about for the first time and do so with the vocabulary and grammar you have available to you. Learn the words and structures you need to grasp what you're reading, but focus on the information and what you need to know from it, rather than on the language itself. I think one of the effects of this practice is to learn and be conversant about things you might not be able discuss in your primary language. That was something I encountered for the first time working with transparent circuits, and it is something I'm still studying in English so I can catch up again.

And if you try it and it doesn’t help much, or even if it is just boring, no sweat! Unlike expensive textbooks, finding materials on the net is free!

If you’ve had some experience with this, or even if you think it is total rubbish, let me know in the comments!