Recently, a monolingual speaker asked me "how good" my Polish was. I did not feel the need to get into my insecurities about losing fluency in my heritage language, so I responded with a truth that dodged the question. I said, "well, it's my native language, so..."
And even though what followed made me feel insecure (unbeknownst to him), it did force me to consider what my language goals are for my children, as well as accepting my own languge competence. He talked about bilingual immigrants whose native languages plateaued at a 12- to 14-year old's level. I believe he was referring to the limited vocabulary of an adolescent versus an adult.
The moral of his story was that employers do not want someone with "12-year-old Spanish" or "14- year-old Vietnamese." The nerve he touched without knowing or meaning to was what I've long been aware of. I cannot move back to Poland and pick up where I left off when I migrated at age 8, in part, because I do not have the vocabulary necessary to land a job. I have often wondered what the point of knowing Polish was if I couldn't become a translator with my current level of the language. I've wondered the same thing about my third language, Spanish, but at least there isn't the emotional association to that language.
But having reflected on it, I have to disagree with this person's assessment of the uselessness of knowing a language less than fluently. Even without perfect fluency, another language allows me to listen to (or read!) news from a different perspective. English monolingual speakers could accomplish the same thing by watching not only American news but also British, Canadian, Australian, etc. Imagine the additional perspective though of being able to learn first hand what non-English speakers have to say about world events.
Knowing another language less than fluently also allows one to enjoy cultural experiences more than when depending on translations. Music, theater, foreign films all lose something in the translation. One doesn't need a college-level proficiency in a language to experience these cultural expressions.
Travel also becomes more meaningful (not to mention easier!) when one can read the menus, signs, directions, etc. in the language of the country one is visiting. Starting even a basic conversation with the locals allows a dimension unattainable by mere eye contact and smiling.
So what's the point of knowing a language if you don't know it fluently? Employment is not the singular goal of language aquisition! Income, wealth, status, none of these are the reasons I'm raising my kids multilingual. My reasons are much more nuanced. I want my kids to have an additional lens through which to experience the world. And that's not even mentioning the benefits to brain chemistry of knowing multiple languages!
Perfection - in language aquisition, overall academics, or life in general - is not the goal. If my kids can enjoy the various benefits of experiencing the languages they know, who's to say they won't catch the polyglotal bug and embark on a lifetime of langauge learning for the sheer pleasure of it?
Regardless, one of the most important benefits of multilingualism is the understanding that there is more than one way of seeing anything. This is a skill that easily transfers to all areas of life, and it simply cannot be measured in dollars and cents!
