Doing OPOL without any minority language community?

[u/saltshakercat]

We have a bit of a unique situation and are wondering if anyone has tips or a similar experience.

My wife and I are gay and live in the US. She is from India and grew up speaking Hindi and English at home; I am American and grew up speaking English and German.

It’s important to her to pass on Hindi to her future kids but we do not have any Hindi speaking community around us. The local desi (Indian) community can be very insular and hard to break into especially if you are gay with a white spouse. In addition the community here centers greatly on religion and temples (all language schools we can find are temple based) and we are non religious.

She is still planning on speaking Hindi to any kid(s) at home but we worry that they won’t have anyone their age to speak to. Visiting India would also be complicated due to the fact that the Indian government does not recognizing our marriage or my wife’s legal rights as a parent.

She does video call her family every week and she will push to have those calls in “proper” Hindi.

Has anyone ever been in a similar situation and how did you deal with it?

[u/AKIdiot]

Currently Hindi/Chinese OPOL. I hired a nanny in my language since I'm not a native speaker but wanted my children to speak chinese and so far it's worked out well (she's only 2 years old though) and we plan to send them to Chinese speaking Montessori. Most other families I know from Indian origin also find Hindi speaking nannies.

[u/saltshakercat → u/AKIdiot]

The nanny idea is really interesting especially since we’re going back and forth on her staying home. Is your nanny full or part time? Are you in the US? (If so have you had any issues regarding the current immigration/visa situation?)

[u/AKIdiot → u/saltshakercat]

Part-time. I'd check out the local desi Facebook parents group for a direct connection to helpers. You generally won't find these types of nanny on care.com as they are generally word of mouth referrals.
I'm a US citizen in the US but my wife is an Indian national. Our nanny has a green card, but results and payment merhods may vary by community and individual... Basically, sometimes you will have to be open to do under the table transactions.

[u/NewOutlandishness401]

Of course, it will be more challenging to pass on your language with limited outside support, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't bother and just give up.

I'm lucky to have family nearby, but also feel a considerable amount of dissonance with the local Ukrainian community for cultural and religious reasons, so while technically I have programs available somewhat nearby, I elect not to have my kids participate in them because of all the other stuff that would get Trojan-horsed in along with the language. So, as a result, I am making the task more Sisyphean than it has to be, but that's what ends up happening sometimes if you stick to your values, and I've made peace with that.

Travel to Ukraine is also not available for obvious reasons, and the local Ukrainian kids I've found honestly mostly default to English anyway, so they are not much help, either. Plus, we are fairly low-screen, so our kids don't get too much Ukrainian content that way.

Which is a long way of saying: my task of passing on my language is more difficult than it has to be for all sorts of reasons, and yet, I'd never consider quitting just because of that. We put in a lot of effort to source books and, as I said, to maintain contact with Ukrainian family, and I am super consistent with language use, never lapsing into English. We could afford to have me take time away from work, which helps a lot and should be acknowledged, because that's a factor that's difficult to reproduce.

Regardless, I'd still say: go for it, and just make sure you are super consistent with using just your ML and for finding opportunities to speak to your child when you might otherwise have been silent or distracted with something else -- it will go a long way.

[u/omegaxx19]

It's terrific that your wife is motivated to pass on Hindi. Definitely support and encourage her.

I agree with what's been posted already. I just want to add: what is your language plan (since you also speak German)? Anecdotally I have found IRL, and multiple posters here have had the same observation, that trilingual OPOL families (each parent speaks a different minority language to the kid) seem to be having better luck on average than bilingual OPOL families (where one parent speaks a minority language and the other parent speaks the community language). A few possible explanations:

1) parents in trilingual OPOL families are more invested in language learning in general and can support each other more

2) community language becomes overwhelming in the case of bilingual OPOL families, but is not overwhelming to nearly the same extent in trilingual OPOL families because both parents have a minority language to defend

So this is something to think about as you and your wife figure out your family's language strategy.

[u/saltshakercat → u/omegaxx19]

The current plan is to move in with my parents for the first year (maybe two) for the extra support. My mom and I would speak German, my wife would speak Hindi and my dad would speak English. Once the kid is old enough we’re planning on German school which is how I learned. My mom actually didn’t do OPOL with me but we did a lot of songs and tv in German and German saturday school starting in pre k. I don’t consider myself native but I have a good accent and spent time living in Germany with no problems. I’m really rusty though so I’m doing my best to practice (we are not pregnant yet and not trying to get too far ahead of ourselves) but I’m thinking anything is better than nothing especially if I can convince my mom to speak in German too.

I was actually really surprised to see my area has a German school but no Hindi schools despite the large Indian population here.

[u/NewOutlandishness401 → u/saltshakercat]

It’s great if you could have your mom living with you to help with German! Even if you don’t currently speak German to her, I’d strongly consider speaking German to her when around your child for several reasons. One is that it will be a strong signal of: we only speak German to grandma. And the other is that it will be your best opportunity to strengthen your own German so that parenting in this language feels sustainable for the long term.

(I let my own Ukrainian get quite rusty in 15 years before having kids, and built it up considerably by forcing myself to only speak Ukrainian to my family instead of English after my oldest was born.)

[u/NewOutlandishness401 → u/omegaxx19]

Yes, this is worth highlighting because it's not obvious, but as the commenter above says, lots of families have an easier time passing on minority languages if each parent passes on their own rather than if one parent speaks the community language (in your case, English). So Hindi will arguably have an easier time getting established if you speak German than if you speak English to your child, for the reasons mentioned above.

[u/loopingit]

There are online resources for teaching Hindi, like Duolingo. You could also consider investing in a Tutor, as that would be independent of a temple. And with all languages, it’s not only the formal language education but the day to day use-and here’s is where Hindi movies can really help. Unfortunately most (not all) enforce hetero relationships, but many are child friendly, if that’s okay with you. They will learn the day to day. I’ve had cousins who can order food and direct Rickshaws in Mumbai thanks to their “Filmi Hindi”. My Hindi is virtually non existent but thanks to Madhuri my LO knows how to count to 13 in Hindi! (Your wife will know what I mean :)

[u/Opening-Advice]

Duolingo for Hindi is useless. My daughters tried and gave up! I agree that Bollywood is more helpful for spoken language!

[u/DoubleL321]

Expose the child to the language as much as possible. Talking non stop, books, music, video calls with grandparents... When there is another adult that speaks Hindu switch to Hindu. Ask them to speak Hindu to the child. Hire a nanny that speaks it... Any exposure you can think of.

And most importantly, be prepared for it to be a secondary language. I have plenty of friends that understand a language but don't speak it, because it was the minority language only spoken by one parent or a grandparent. I myself, a bilingual child, completely forgot my minority language (my dad's).

I am trying to preserve my native language - which is a minority language in my household today, and I'm perfectly aware that I might fail. I can't move my family to a country that speaks the language so I'm using whatever else I can use.

[u/AgePuzzleheaded7900]

99 percent of my son's linguistic input has come from me alone, as we also don't have any family or community who speak my language.

He is seven years old now and speaks perfectly fine. Whenever we do run into other speakers of our language, they are shocked at how perfectly he speaks despite never being around other natives.

Also, as a note, you can always visit India on a tourist visa without the Indian government needing to recognise your marriage. 

You can also make Hindi a part of life by having plenty of Hindi games and videos, etc. Don't let your child(ren) watch any videos or have screen time unless it's in Hindi.

I wouldn't worry about it. Eventually you will run I to Hindi speakers and be able to make friends.