How childhood languages shape future language use and cultural orientation

In this paper, we investigate the effect that parents' language use (English, Spanish-English or Spanish) had on self-perceived proficiency, frequency of use, language anxiety, code-switching and cultural orientation of 206 Spanish-English bilinguals and multilinguals who were students in Texas where there is a strong presence of Spanish, the minority language. Our results showed that languages that parents had used with their children had a privileged status: bilinguals and multilinguals reported higher levels of proficiency, more frequent use, less anxiety (except for English) and a stronger cultural orientation. The effect was strongest for parents with Spanish-speaking parents. The scores of the simultaneous bilinguals were generally situated between the scores of the sequential Spanish-English and English-Spanish bilinguals from monolingual families. We conclude that relatively more or less use of a particular language in a family home will lead to significant differences in the grown-up children's future language use and cultural orientation.