One Person-One Language (OPOL)

The one person-one language (OPOL) strategy for helping develop bilingualism in families is also known as one parent-one language. It refers to a language strategy in which two parents who speak two different native languages use each of their native languages to converse with their children. The goal of OPOL is to raise the child to be a balanced bilingual or a native speaker of both languages by providing a highly structured bilingual environment for the child. The theory behind OPOL is that by strictly separating the two family languages, the child will acquire them in a balanced and fluent way, without much confusion from mixed language use.

According to Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert, the term was first used by French linguist Maurice Grammont in 1902 as une personnel une langue in French, literally translated as “one person: one language.” In this approach, Grammont advised parents to simply speak to their children in their own languages consistently and not reverse the roles. By so doing, the child would unconsciously speak the languages without special effort. About a decade later, French linguist Jules Ronjat followed Grammont's formula and applied it to a study with his own son Louis, speaking to him in French, the language of the mainstream society, while his wife spoke to the child in German. Ronjat and his wife spoke German to each other. Ronjat was very strict in keeping the two languages separate. In this case, in addition to a parent, there were other people who spoke the minority language to the child. They had several German servants, and they also often visited relatives on the mother's side in Germany. Both parents spent a lot of time with Louis. As a result, Louis Ronjat grew up to be a very-well-balanced bilingual adult.

Later, in the 1930s, German linguist Werner Leopold conducted an extensive study of the same type by raising his daughter Hildegard bilingually using OPOL. After earning his doctorate degree in English literature in Germany and a 3-year stay in Costa Rica, Leopold came to the United States and married a third-generation German American. When they had a baby, they wanted to raise their daughter bilingually from birth, and they decided to speak their own native languages after their daughter's birth. Leopold spoke German to their daughter; his wife spoke English to her; and they spoke English to each other in front of her. Leopold started, as a descriptive linguist, to keep a detailed diary of his daughter's language development, which was published in four volumes. The first three volumes described Hildegard's language development during her first 2 years: vocabulary development in Volume 1, sound system in Volume 2, and word combination and sentence formations in Volume 3. The fourth volume included his observations of other periods in the girl's life and that of her younger sister Karla. At that time, child language acquisition was an area not much studied by linguists, and thus Leopold's study was a pioneering work, later emulated by other researchers.

For the first 2 years, Hildegard appeared to confuse the two languages and seemed to mix them indiscriminately. She could not associate a specific language with specific people. However, at about age 3, she no longer mixed the languages and could use the correct language for the right person. When Hildegard was about 5 years old, they visited Germany, and she did not have any problem communicating in German with families and friends there. Although Leopold tried to keep the OPOL rules, he was not as strict as Ronjat in keeping the two languages separate. He often used English when they were speaking with English mono-linguals. Hildegard's bilingual proficiency could not be considered balanced. Her dominant language had [Page 636]always been English, and, at the age of 15, German became her weaker language.

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