By Jane Sonnenschein · May 18, 2026

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Recently, I noticed something interesting. My daughter sometimes hears a very colloquial German word when she is out and later comes home eager to tell me about it. When I ask what the word means, she tries hard to explain it to me in Chinese. Halfway through, however, she often gets stuck. She struggles to find the right words, and I struggle to understand what she is trying to say, so I sometimes tell her, “You can explain it in German if that is easier. You can use English too.”

In theory, that should make things simpler. Many of these words come directly from the German-speaking world around her, so explaining them in German might even be more accurate. Yet she does not want to do that. She insists on speaking Chinese. When she cannot express herself clearly, she becomes frustrated, and if I ask a few more questions, her frustration grows until she finally says, “I don’t want to tell you anymore. You’re annoying.”

I used to think she was simply being difficult. I had already told her that German or English would be fine, so why did she insist on explaining everything in Chinese when she could not make herself understood? The harder she tried, the fewer words she seemed able to find, and in the end we would both become impatient. What had begun as an ordinary conversation would end unhappily.

Over time, however, I began to realise that this was probably not just stubbornness. For my daughter, Chinese is the language she uses with her mother. This connection seems to have become firmly established in her mind. She speaks German at school and when she plays with her classmates. Most of the rules, jokes, conflicts and small everyday events she encounters in Germany also happen in German. But when she comes back to me, she naturally switches to Chinese.

Even when she is trying to explain a German word, and even when she knows that using German would be much easier, her instinct is still to tell me about it in Chinese. This small detail made me realise that languages in a multilingual family cannot be understood simply by asking which one is stronger or weaker. Each language often occupies its own place in a person’s life.

Some languages belong to school and friends, while others belong to a father or a mother. Some are connected to games, the internet and online videos, while others live in the small, ordinary family interactions that outsiders rarely see. They may appear to be nothing more than different tools for communication, but over time they become closely tied to particular people, situations and relationships.

This has always been the pattern in our family. My daughter and I mainly speak Chinese, while my husband and I mainly speak English. He speaks German with his German friends and uses English when he plays online games with people from different countries. Our daughter spends her school day in a German-speaking environment, but when she talks to me, she almost never switches naturally into German.

This pattern did not appear overnight. It developed gradually through years of everyday family life. That is why I have come to understand that, for a child, knowing a language is not simply a question of whether she can speak it. A language can also become attached to a particular person, a particular setting and a particular kind of relationship.

For my daughter, Chinese is not merely something found in a classroom or a collection of words printed in a textbook. It is the language she uses to call for me, ask me questions, complain to me and seek comfort from me. It is also the language she uses when she tries to bring the outside world home and share it with me.

This matters because conversations about multilingual children often turn immediately into comparisons. Which language is the child’s strongest? Which one does she speak most fluently? In which language does she have the largest vocabulary? Which language should be regarded as her “real” mother tongue?

These questions are not meaningless. The language in which a child can express herself most precisely, and the language that dominates most of her daily life, do tell us something about the reality of her language development. But when we judge languages only in terms of strength and weakness, we risk overlooking something equally important: language is not only a tool for communication. It is also a relationship.

When my daughter speaks German with her classmates, German is the language through which she enters the world of school and her peers. When she uses English to understand games, videos or online content, English connects her to another part of the world. When she speaks Chinese with me, Chinese is the way she maintains her connection with her mother.

These languages are not necessarily running in the same race, nor do they have to compete with or replace one another. Most of the time, they simply perform different functions in different parts of her life.

A multilingual family is a little like a house with several rooms. The kitchen is not the bedroom, and the bedroom is not the study. We would not say that one room has no value simply because a child spends most of her time in the living room. As long as another room is still being used and real life is still taking place inside it, that room is not empty.

I used to feel anxious when my daughter could not express herself precisely in Chinese. Whenever she clearly understood an idea but could not find the right Chinese words, I would instinctively wonder whether her Chinese simply was not good enough.

She might hear a colloquial German expression and try to explain it to me in Chinese, only to find that she could not quite manage it. She understood how the word felt in German and knew the kinds of situations in which it might be used, but once she tried to transfer that meaning into Chinese, she became stuck.

Gradually, I began to understand that speaking two languages does not automatically mean that a child can build a bridge between them. She may know a word in German and also know several related expressions in Chinese, but the two language systems do not necessarily connect on their own. She needs time to search for the connection, and sometimes she needs someone to search with her.

When I simply press her by asking, “But what exactly does it mean in Chinese?” she quickly becomes nervous, because the conversation no longer feels like an ordinary exchange. It begins to feel like a test.

If I approach it differently and say, “Tell me about a situation where people would use it, and I’ll try to guess what we might say in Chinese,” everything becomes easier. She no longer has to produce a perfect answer immediately. She only needs to explain the setting and the tone: whether the word is used as a joke or with a hint of criticism, whether children mainly say it to one another, or whether adults use it as well. Once she has described the situation, I can help her find a Chinese expression with a similar meaning.

In this way, language stops being a burden she has to carry alone and becomes a bridge we build together. I have come to think that this may be one of the most genuine forms of language education in a multilingual family. It does not necessarily mean sitting down every day to memorise vocabulary, nor does it mean constantly correcting every mistake a child makes. Instead, it means being willing to work together whenever we encounter a word, a situation or a feeling that is difficult to express.

Sometimes the Chinese word appears first, while at other times an idea enters her life through German. Some jokes are funny in English but lose their humour when translated into German. Some Chinese expressions sound strange when they are forced into German. These small mismatches gradually teach a child that languages do not correspond to one another word for word.

Every language has its own habits, images and tone, as well as its own cultural background. Understanding these differences is not easy even for adults, let alone for a child whose languages are still developing.

For this reason, I no longer want to describe one of my daughter’s languages simply as strong and another as weak. What matters more to me is whether she is still willing to communicate with me genuinely in a particular language. If she is forced to speak Chinese only to complete assignments or satisfy adults, the language will eventually begin to feel heavy.

But if she still wants to explain a German word to me in Chinese during an ordinary conversation, even when her explanation is hesitant and she has to stop to search for words, there is something precious in that effort. She is not choosing Chinese because it is the easiest language available. She is choosing it because the person standing in front of her is her mother.

This language habit runs deeper than I once realised. Of course, I should not romanticise it or pretend that she has no difficulties with Chinese. She still gets stuck, struggles to explain herself and fails to find the right words. Some concepts are more familiar to her in German, while some of her Chinese expressions remain imprecise. These are all real aspects of her multilingual development.

Yet I increasingly feel that these realities do not necessarily represent failure. They simply show that a multilingual child’s language system is naturally layered. Not every word is stored in the same drawer, not every situation can be transferred smoothly from one language to another, and not every language needs to perform exactly the same function.

Our task is not to make sure that every drawer contains precisely the same things. Instead, we can help our children gradually build more paths between them. When my daughter knows a word in German, we can help her find a similar expression in Chinese. When she knows a Chinese phrase, we can look together to see whether German has a comparable expression. When she hears a joke in English, we can discuss why it is no longer as funny after being translated into German.

These may seem like small things, but they are gradually helping her create connections between her languages. Language in a multilingual family should not be treated simply as a competition between stronger and weaker forms of expression. It is more like a map of relationships: one language connects a child to school, another to friends, another to her father or mother, and still another to her games, interests and future world.

When I began to see language in this way, much of my anxiety slowly faded. I stopped focusing only on whether my daughter’s Chinese would always be as strong as her German. Instead, I began to care more about whether Chinese still held a real place in her life.

That place may not be very large, and Chinese may never cover her school and social life as completely as German does. But as long as it is still used between the two of us, and as long as it can continue to carry our closeness, disagreements, jokes and everyday conversations, it is not a language that has lost its life.

The next time my daughter struggles to explain a German word to me in Chinese, I hope I can be a little less impatient. It does not matter if her explanation is not entirely accurate, or if she stops halfway because she cannot find the right word. Even when frustration begins to take over, I can slow down.

What truly matters in that moment may not be whether she immediately finds the most accurate Chinese translation. What matters is that she is still willing to bring the outside world back to me in Chinese.

For a multilingual family, that is already something difficult, precious and worth protecting.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 在多语家庭里，语言不是比赛，而是位置

German version: In einer mehrsprachigen Familie stehen Sprachen nicht im Wettbewerb – jede hat ihren eigenen Platz