A family arrives in Accra with a child who speaks fluent German. Eighteen months later the same child answers in English, hesitates over words they used to know, and has started to say that German is hard. The parents are alarmed, and often quietly ashamed, as though they had let something valuable fall.
They have not done anything wrong. What is happening is well understood, it is predictable, and it can be stopped.
Why it happens so fast
A child’s language is held up by use, not by memory. In Germany, German was carried by school, friends, shops, television and overheard conversation. In Accra all of that switches to English within weeks, and the only German left is one or two people at home.
The younger the child, the faster it moves. Under about six, a language can become passive within a year. Between six and ten it usually holds longer but the writing goes first. Teenagers rarely lose the ability to speak, but they lose fluency, vocabulary range and confidence, and they notice it, which makes them avoid it, which accelerates the loss.
What is actually lost, and in what order
Not everything goes at once, and knowing the order helps you see it early.
Vocabulary range narrows first. The child still speaks, but with a smaller set of words, and reaches for English for anything specific.
Then production slows. Sentences get shorter, and the child starts answering in English even when spoken to in German. This is the stage most parents notice, and it is later than they think.
Reading and writing go quietly. If the child never reads German in Accra, that skill simply stops developing. A nine year old can keep speaking at nine year old level while reading stays frozen where it was at six.
Understanding is the last to go, and often does not go at all. That is the good news in this, and it is the basis for everything below.
Why understanding matters so much
A child who understands but answers in English has not lost the language. They have stopped producing it. The distinction sounds academic and is in fact the whole thing, because rebuilding production from intact understanding is quick, and rebuilding a language from nothing is not.
Parents in this situation often describe their child as having forgotten German. Test it before you believe it. Say something mildly outrageous in German at dinner and watch the face. The comprehension is usually all still there.
What actually stops it
Other children. This is the strongest single factor and the hardest to arrange alone. As long as German is the language of one parent, it is a family rule. The moment another child uses it, it becomes a real language again. That is why group lessons and the Saturday playgroup do something that home practice cannot.
Reading, taught deliberately. Reading is the anchor. A child who reads German keeps feeding their own vocabulary without anyone organising it. We wrote separately about how to help your child read German at home.
Never turning it into a fight. A child who is corrected every time they slip into English will speak less German, not more. Answer in German, accept the English reply, carry on. We went into this in keeping German alive when you are the only one who speaks it.
A reason that is not you. Grandparents on a video call, cousins, a summer visit, a book series that exists only in German. Language survives where it is needed.
If it has already slipped
Start from where the child actually is, not from where they were. The most common mistake is to hand a child a book written for their age, watch them fail, and conclude that it is too late. Their speaking level and their reading level are different numbers, and the reading one is usually far lower.
Expect the first weeks to be about confidence rather than content. A child who has been embarrassed about their German needs to succeed at something easy before they will risk anything hard.
Where we come in
This is most of what we do. Our groups for children and teenagers and our early learning group for ages three to five are built around exactly this situation: children who have German somewhere inside them and need somewhere to use it. Groups have no more than four learners, so nobody sits quietly for an hour.
Current times are on the timetable. Come to a free trial lesson in Airport West and we will tell you honestly what we hear, including if we think your child needs less help than you fear.
