Aline Carrara and Ritodhi Chakraborty share the highs and lows of raising bilingual kids in New Zealand. Video / Rafaella Melo
Sign language, English, Portuguese and Urdu: four languages are part of every day for 2-year-old New Zealand-born Ayla.
She’s the daughter of Pakistani Faryal Rosa and Brazilian Silas Rosa. One of the many small faces of our country’s growing ethnic diversity.
“We are from different cultures and bring different values to this relationship,” Faryal said. “We try to bring the good things from both sides, and we really hope we don’t mess up.”
Pregnant with her second child, Faryal told the Herald she mostly speaks Urdu with Ayla but sometimes repeats sentences in both English and Portuguese.
“Our kids have to speak both Portuguese and Urdu to connect with both sides of our families,” she said.
“I am the older daughter, and she is the first granddaughter. My parents call every day, so she must be able to connect with them.”
Faryal says Ayla is coping well with the multilingual environment.
They also introduced her to sign language when she was 3 months old so she could communicate basic needs – like “more”, “all done”’ and “help”’ – while she learned to speak.
New Zealand Sign is one of the three official languages of Aotearoa, alongside te reo Māori and English.
New Zealand’s largest longitudinal study of child health, Growing Up in New Zealand, has found that 40% of 2-year-olds here understand two or more languages, while 7% understand three or more.
“It has been a learning process for us,” said Ayla’s dad Silas.
He recalled a morning when Ayla woke up saying the word “bhok” repeatedly.
“I thought she wanted to read a book early in the morning, but Faryal explained she was saying ‘bhok,’ which means ‘hunger’ in Urdu,” he said with a laugh.
This mix of languages is also part of Aline Carrara and Ritodhi Chakraborty’s lives. Born in Brazil and raised in Iraq, Carrara met her partner, Chakraborty – who is from India – in the US, where they had their first child, Theo, now 8.
Born in Brazil and raised in Iraq, Aline Carrara is married to Ritodhi Chakraborty from India. The diverse family reads books and plays games in English, Portuguese, and Bengali. Photo / Rafaella Melo
In 2019, they moved to New Zealand, where Chakraborty took up a position as a lecturer at Lincoln University. Their youngest child Manu was born here in 2021.
All the household members speak English, Portuguese and Bengali.
“It’s a fusion of all the three languages. Sometimes, in the same sentence,” said Carrara. “They can be talking using the Portuguese structure, but including Bengali and English words.”
She says their cultures are very different: “Music, literature, traditions, food, everything!”
And that raising their kids while navigating cultural differences is a hard job.
“This is the biggest challenge and responsibility of our lives,” said Carrara.
For Chakraborty, these challenges grow as their children become more conscious of fitting in.
When Theo was younger he was always keen to wear his traditional Indian clothes.
“I think he’s a lot less open to do that these days. And part of it has to do with his friends and where he is and how he doesn’t want to stand out and feel weird.”
Dealing with cultural stereotypes is another fact that impacts their experiences.
“We cook Brazilian and Indian food at home, and Theo takes it to school. He loves the food from both places,” Carrara says.
But when other kids mocked him, reacting negatively to his family food at school, Theo started to ask for pizza and nuggets .
Ritodhi Chakraborty cooking with his youngest Manu, 2. “I want him to be able to eat certain kinds of foods from my part of India. So, when he grows up, he knows what Bengali food is like,” Chakraborty said. Photo / Rafaella Melo
Carrara said they addressed the issue with the school, which responded well by promoting multicultural awareness.
For Chakraborty, the situation was “heartbreaking”.
“A lot of this is behaviour reinforced at home. If their parents say certain things about certain kinds of food, those children will reproduce those ideas.”
Chakraborty hopes that the values reinforced at home will empower his children to push back against any prejudice they may face. Photo / Rafaella Melo
“I’ve seen it in hotels in New Zealand where it says, ‘no cooking food with strong flavours, especially Indian food.’ It is printed on the wall. It doesn’t make you feel completely accepted by the community.”
