Which Language Should My Child Learn First?

"The cat sat on the mat." Her pronunciation was lovely.

"Very good. And what does mat mean?"

Ineza looked up, blank.

Then the phone buzzed. It was Ineza's grandmother, calling from Nyanza. Ineza wanted to tell her about the science lesson: how a bean drinks water and sends a little root into the soil. She began in Kinyarwanda, then hit a gap. She had learned that word at school, in English.

"It's a... root," she said.

Her grandmother laughed warmly. "Ongera umbwire mwana wanjye, ntabwo mbyumvise neza. (Say it again, my child. I didn't catch it.)" 

Ineza pushed the phone across the table. "Mama, you tell her. I don't know how."

Claudine translated without thinking. Halfway through, she realized she was translating her daughter's day for her own mother.

All week she had asked herself the same question: English or French, which first, which more? Only now did she notice she had never asked it with a third language in the sentence. The language that is supposedly her daughter’s first, her mother tongue. Ikinyarwanda!

If you are a parent in Kigali, Huye or Musanze, you probably know Claudine's question. Which school? Is French too early? Is English too late? Will Kinyarwanda get in the way? These are loving questions, from parents who know what a language can open: a scholarship, a job, a voice in rooms where decisions are made. Notice, though, that the child's first language usually enters as a footnote, if at all.

In much of Africa, the link between a European language and intelligence was built in classrooms. Colonial schools rewarded children who mastered the administrator's language and often punished those who used their own. Independence changed the flags, but not the classroom: most systems still teach in those European languages. And it makes sense to a certain extent: they teach in the language of administration and of formal employment.

Many of us absorbed an equation without deciding to: fluent English means smart, hesitant English means slow. A child who explains how a bean grows beautifully in Kinyarwanda but stumbles in English may be judged on the stumble. The yardstick measures the language, not the mind. It is a wide problem: the UN says 40 percent of people worldwide lack access to education in a language they speak or understand.

What keeps changing in Rwanda is the language of teaching. A trilingual policy arrived in 1996. In 2008 English replaced French as the main language of instruction. Kinyarwanda returned for the first three primary years in 2011 and 2015, and in 2019, it was announced that English would be used throughout primary from 2020 to 2021, with Kinyarwanda and French taught as subjects, private schools being allowed to maintain their usual language of instruction. Practice varies by school and may have changed since, so your child's school can confirm what applies today.

Parents weigh two prestigious languages, while the third is assumed to look after itself. English is the language of school, work, and the internet; French opens Francophone universities and scholarships, and it is widely believed that adding English later on is easier than the reverse.

UNESCO encourages mother tongue education in the early years. This research commissioned by UNESCO suggests that:

Here is the paradox. We put English or French first to master English or French, yet the research suggests the road to a strong second language may run through a strong first. A child who knows how stories work, how to explain and how to ask "why" has something to carry across.

Some caveats. The studies mostly describe schools with trained teachers, books and a planned bridge, not family life. They show patterns across many children, not forecasts for yours!

Almost everyone in Rwanda speaks Kinyarwanda, so it feels like a language that looks after itself: the kitchen, the market, and the grandmother's phone call. But speaking a language is not the same as learning and thinking in it. A child can chat fluently yet lack the words for how a seed becomes a plant or how to disagree respectfully with an adult. Those words come when someone builds them, through stories, proverbs, songs, books, and answers to the "why?" questions at dinner.

Meanwhile, school, homework, and tutoring grow in English or in French. Is Kinyarwanda growing at the same pace? Ineza could tell her grandmother about the bean. She could not tell her about the root.

Perhaps another question deserves a place beside "which language": what can my child do in each of them? Tell a story, ask a hard question, make a grandmother laugh, and understand what they have just read.

Claudine still has the flyer, unsigned and unthrown.

On Sunday she asked Ineza about the bean again, in Kinyarwanda only. Ineza frowned, searching. Then her face opened. “Umuzi,” she said. “The root.”

English will find Ineza. French may too. Every language she learns will be a branch. But which one is her root?