I’ve been thinking about bilingualism a fair amount these days. Like so many families I know, my family is a mix of monolinguals and bilinguals. In these parts, most of us are familiar with Spanglish – that mix of Spanish and English that is used all over Albuquerque, but especially in communities like Barelas, Los Griegos, and the South Valley.

But in addition to Spanglish, other varieties of code-switching exist in Albuquerque – at least they do in my little world of Barelas. There’s Franglais, a combination of French and English spoken at my daughter’s best friend’s house. I won’t even pretend to understand this, but my daughter has picked up more than a few phrases just by hanging out where this is spoken. There’s also (take your pick) Germish, Engleutch or Denglish, the combination of German and English that comes up every so often when I visit my German-speaking friends down the street.

I suppose there are people in Burque speaking Tewglish, Tiwglish, Towglish, Navalish, Kereslish, Hoplish, and even Zunglish. I’ll concede that my neologisms are pretty lame, but I think you get my point. With Tewa, Tiwa, Towa, Navajo, Keres, and Zuni spoken in this city, there are bound to be code-switching variants of these languages, que no?

Bilingualism is an odd bird. Some people insist on defining bilinguals as having equally sophisticated mastery of both languages. And for true bilinguals as determined by scholars who work with languages, this is a proper definition.

Those of us who live and work in bilingual communities know that the reality of bilingualism is much messier. Some of us are receptive bilinguals. We can follow a conversation in Spanish, but struggle to put our thoughts out in Spanish – we flail around for the right word or conjugation. For us, Spanglish is our spoken lingua franca.

There are others, like the poll worker I met recently while observing a recent election – he could string together sentences in Spanish without much effort, but willingly confessed that he lacked a native speaker’s polish and fluency. Many folks in this town who divide their lives between languages, using one language in the home and another at work, do not consider their skills equal in both languages.

Here’s the crux of my recent thoughts on bilingualism.

You see, like many parents today who are bilingual, I had every intention of raising my kids up to converse in more than one language. But like so many families where one parent is bilingual and the other parent is not (or only shares one language with the other parent), this is harder to do than one thinks.

Raising bilingual children when you are the only bilingual parent requires persistence and perseverance. Conversing with family members in one language is not easy, especially when by doing so you are aware that you are leaving the other parent out. So, Spanish turns into Spanglish, and American Sign Language morphs into signed English or simultaneous communication (signing in English word order while speaking English). This task becomes even more challenging when children constantly respond to any language in English, no matter what language they are addressed with.

My kids (by virtue of being my kids) are way more comfortable than your average Albuquerquean in an environment where American Sign Language is being used; they have survival signing skills and can get their point across using a combination of signs, fingerspelling, and gestures. Had I been more diligent about using American Sign Language in the home, they would probably be bilingual. This did not happen for a variety of reasons.

In my grandparents’ time, bilingualism was not seen in the positive light it is today. My grandfathers both used Spanish (not their first language) on the job site, spoke their first language of Arabic or German to their parents, and used English at school and at work. Bilingual education was not desirable - assimilation was.

Yet whether by conscious decision or by marriage to monolingual English-speakers, they bought into the idea that children born in the United States should speak English. And so my parents became English speakers, taking up the formal study of Spanish and German in school, despite having heard these languages spoken by their fathers. (I can’t tell you how many times I lamented this in graduate school as I studied my heritage languages of Arabic and German.)

I think of the number of stories that I’ve seen recently about parents enrolling their children in dual language immersion programs so that their children can learn Chinese or Pashto or Swahili. In most of these cases, the parents do not speak these languages at all, but they place their children in these programs hoping to give them a leg up on the competition.

And then I think of my bilingual friends with monolingual partners and spouses who struggle to speak Hebrew, French, Spanish, or Portuguese on a regular basis to their children in hopes of passing on a heritage language. We are all busy parents with full fledged careers outside the home, and we often wonder if the pace of our lives mitigates against our ability to pass our cherished languages to our children.

In trying to reconcile these two seemingly opposing trends, I come up with this: creating a bilingual speaker can be done in an environment with just one language model, but this task is much more difficult than developing bilingualism in an environment where one is immersed in a community of language users.

In doing so, I come back to what started my thoughts on bilingualism – a spate of summer invites from Evite. The invitations (to my entire family) are to events where American Sign Language will be the dominant language. And I wonder just how to handle this.

Sure, I can drag everyone to these events and watch them initially struggle to converse in a language that is not their native tongue. (Gee, spoken language idioms don’t apply so well to signed languages, do they? Would native, umm, HAND, be more appropriate?)

I will watch the inevitable happen. After an hour or so, segregation occurs. English speakers sniff each other out and migrate to one part of the house while American Sign Language speakers move to a different area. And some of us (usually those of us with the monolingual family members) will spend the hours bouncing between groups and languages.

Or, I could just go alone. Convincing teens with active social calendars to hang out with mom and her friends (hearing or deaf) is a challenge akin to picking one’s battles.

Ultimately I decide to compromise. Their experience as CODAs is as much a part of their heritage as matanzas or feast days are for many of their friends. I’ll insist on attendance at some functions and give them a pass on others.

In the meantime, I’ll revert back to using American Sign Language exclusively at dinner a few times each week. It won't bring about bilingualism, but it sends a message about culture and heritage worth preserving.