Influence of Foreign House Maids on Saudi Children’s First Language Acquisition
Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf
Almost every upper and middle class family (especially families with working mothers) in Saudi Arabia has a maid. Some affluent families even hire a nanny to raise the kids. Others hire a nanny who speaks English. Maids and/or nannies are recruited from non-Arabic speaking countries such as the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, or Ethiopia. They are recruited for two-year terms, but once a maid’s term is over, another maid, who might be from a different country, takes over. The maid live at home for 24 hours and over weekends and holidays The maid does not only do the house chores, but takes care of the kids since they are babies. Upon arrival in Saudi Arabia, many maids do not speak Arabic. They start to pick up the Arabic language from the family among whom they live, and when they speak it, their Arabic is far from perfect. Their Arabic language is characterized by incorrect pronunciation and sentence structure and limited vocabulary knowledge. This study aims at finding out what role foreign house maids play in Saudi small children’s acquisition of Arabic (L1), what influence the maid has on the children’s acquisition of Arabic pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. The study will try to find out the factors contributing to the negative influence of the maid’s language over the children’ acquisition of L1. To answer these questions, 300 mothers were surveyed. All the subjects have small children under the age of six in the family. It was found that 60% of the subjects are working mothers. 90% have a non-Arabic speaking maid, and 10% have an English-speaking maid. It was also found that most maids speak neither English nor Arabic when they arrive in Saudi Arabia. They pick up the Arabic language spoken at home by immersion. The maids learn to speak faulty Arabic in terms of pronunciation, sentence structure and grammatical forms such as plural formation, and use of feminine and masculine genders. They produce incomplete sentences and are unable to produce certain Arabic phonemes correctly. Their vocabulary knowledge is limited. Those who speak English, speak it with a non-native accent. Results of the surveys showed that in most cases, the maid has little influence over the child’s acquisition of Arabic, despite the fact that those children are raised by the foreign maid since they were babies and are emotionally attached to her. A small percentage of the children imitate the maid when they first start to learn Arabic at age 2 and 3. They are unable to produce Arabic sounds correctly, make mistakes in plural formation and gender. It seems that the maid’s influence depends on how much time the child spends with the maid, how much time the mother spends with the child, whether the child has siblings, and play mates. When the child goes to kindergarten, traces of foreign accent resulting from imitating the maid’s foreign Arabic accent and faulty use disappear, and the child is able to speak Arabic correctly and natively.