Conclusion:
Analyzing the interviews of the four people who have lived and grown up in a bilingual or multilingual home, really helped us get a better understanding of what it means to live in a multilingual family. The purpose of our interviews was to discover what the advantages and disadvantages of multilingual homes were, and we were able to gain information about how people would interact in their homes across languages, how the multiple languages influenced their home lives and their social life, and the struggles they faced growing up either speaking or understanding multiple languages. The interviews were really interesting for us because each interviewer shared a different perspective from the next. For Max's family, speaking in multiple languages came easily because they all learned and practiced together. For Shivanii and Kelvin, learning multiple languages was difficult because they could not fully develop their fluency. All four interviewers discuss how learning a new language always meant engaging in a new culture, whether it was Russian and French for Max, becoming "americanized" for Kelvin, or learning how to connect back with her parent's Indian culture for Shivanii. In each interview, we saw that no matter how what level of fluency was achieved, speaking another language even minimally did change familial relationships. For Max, his ability to speak across multiple languages fosters a closer bond with each of his parents. For Kelvin, speaking Spanish keeps him connected to his parents but learning English did hinder his relationship with his mother. For Shivanii, even making the attempt at Sindhi was good enough to bring her closer to her dad and understand his perspective. While learning multiple languages could be seen as a challenge or very simply, overall we learned from our four interviewees that being multilingual has both its benefits and its drawbacks within a family dynamic but our interviewees did shed light on how they were able to overcome those drawbacks.
Analyzing the interviews of the four people who have lived and grown up in a bilingual or multilingual home, really helped us get a better understanding of what it means to live in a multilingual family. The purpose of our interviews was to discover what the advantages and disadvantages of multilingual homes were, and we were able to gain information about how people would interact in their homes across languages, how the multiple languages influenced their home lives and their social life, and the struggles they faced growing up either speaking or understanding multiple languages. The interviews were really interesting for us because each interviewer shared a different perspective from the next. For Max's family, speaking in multiple languages came easily because they all learned and practiced together. For Shivanii and Kelvin, learning multiple languages was difficult because they could not fully develop their fluency. All four interviewers discuss how learning a new language always meant engaging in a new culture, whether it was Russian and French for Max, becoming "americanized" for Kelvin, or learning how to connect back with her parent's Indian culture for Shivanii. In each interview, we saw that no matter how what level of fluency was achieved, speaking another language even minimally did change familial relationships. For Max, his ability to speak across multiple languages fosters a closer bond with each of his parents. For Kelvin, speaking Spanish keeps him connected to his parents but learning English did hinder his relationship with his mother. For Shivanii, even making the attempt at Sindhi was good enough to bring her closer to her dad and understand his perspective. While learning multiple languages could be seen as a challenge or very simply, overall we learned from our four interviewees that being multilingual has both its benefits and its drawbacks within a family dynamic but our interviewees did shed light on how they were able to overcome those drawbacks.