KIDS OF IMMIGRANTS DITCHING PARENTS' LANGUAGE FOR ENGLISH.

Byline: Mireya Navarro The New York Times

In Marcel A. Apple's bedroom, the book ``The Three Little Pigs'' rests on a shelf next to ``Mi primer libro de palabras en Espanol'' (``My First Book of Spanish Words''). The 3-year-old can sing along to both a Sesame Street song and ``La Bamba,'' or have as much fun watching ``Barney,'' a purple, English-speaking dinosaur, as he does ``Tito,'' a blue, Spanish-speaking shark.

But when Marcel tired of pounding on a piano one recent afternoon and sat on the lap of his Nicaraguan nanny, it was English that he spoke.

``Estan descansando?'' (``Are they resting?'') Josefina Avendano asked him, pointing at a picture of a countryside in a children's book.

``No, they're eating,'' he answered.

``I try to put him in an environment where there's as much Spanish spoken as possible, but it never seems to be enough,'' said Marcel's mother, Esther Perez-Apple, a Cuban-American who herself is trying to recapture the Spanish she heard while growing up in her native New York. ``He knows he can speak in English and people could understand him.''

Last month Congress entered into a heated debate over English-only legislation, with proponents insisting that the very survival of American culture and civilization, as well as the language, was at stake. On a more down-to-earth level, the English-only drive has also been fueled by resentment against bilingual rules and other accommodation of immigrants, both old and young, who have not learned English.

But what new immigrant families across the nation are learning, as their predecessors did before them, is that the power of American culture, and particularly, the lure of television, is so strong that it is a challenge to raise a child who can speak a foreign language fluently.

Parents send their children to foreign countries for summer vacations, hire bilingual nannies and read bedtime stories in a cacophony of tongues, all in an effort to pass on the family's language, give the children a linguistic advantage for the future or simply enrich them culturally. Still, the languages, parents say, often lose out to television, schools and peer pressure.

Even in Miami, one of the country's most Latino areas, parents say it is hard to get their children to learn Spanish. The challenge to raise a child to be bilingual can be even greater for families speaking less-prevalent languages like German, Swedish or Japanese, parents say.

This experience runs counter to concerns that English is in danger of being diluted. And some bilingual educators argue that anti-immigration sentiments and the English-only laws, which generally require government business to be conducted in English, only help foster a climate that plays down the importance of other languages. They say that for a child to become bilingual it is essential that he or she places value on speaking more than English.

``You can have a bilingual child a lot of different ways,'' said Barbara Z. Pearson, a linguist who is part of a University of Miami research team on bilingualism. ``But what you have to make sure is that the kid hears both languages, values both languages and wants to speak to the people who speak those languages.''

But Mauro E. Mujica, chairman of U.S. English, a group based in Washington that lobbies for English-only laws, says the language restrictions, which have been enacted in 23 states and are under consideration in Congress, are not meant to discourage other languages or dictate what people choose to speak or learn. A native of Chile who came to this country in 1964 and married an American, Mujica said he raised his three children speaking both English and Spanish.

``We are in no way forcing people to speak anything; they can speak whatever they want,'' Mujica said. ``But when dealing with the government, they need to speak English.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Esther Perez-Apple holds her son, Marcel, who is bei ng raised bilingual, while her husband, Larry Apple, looks on with the boy's nanny.

The New York Times