In order to avoid the possible conflicts arising from primary socialization
at home in Ll and secondary socialization at school in L2, parents sometimes
retain their mother tongue for communication between themselves
but prefer to teach their children L2. Similarly, when parents use L1 with
their first child but then notice that the child is having difficulties with L2 at
school, they sometimes change to L2 for their second and later children.
These two examples are often the cause for language shift in minority
languages. However, as the parents in such a situation often only have
imperfect knowledge of the dominant language L2, the children inherit the
mistakes made by their parents. If these mistakes become firmly imbedded
in the child's language performance, the teacher has the greatest difficulties
in ironing them out again. One classic example is the distinction in High
German between mich and mir. This is not known in Frisian or Low German
and consequently children of Low German and/or Frisian parents may well
confuse the usage of the two forms. Thus one often hears such constructions
as: Was hast du fur mir? As a result teachers often maintain that parents
should teach their children their LI and leave the teaching of the dominant
language L2 to those trained for it.