Abstract
Thousands of Somalis call Minnesota home and it is near and dear to their hearts since their country was destroyed by a civil war in 1991, but they definitely have some language and other challenges here too. The primary aim of this study is to find out the factors that affect dual language development among young Somali immigrants. Purposive sampling was used to select a sample size of 8 Somali parents to take part in the study. The participants comprised of Somali parents who have continually resided in the United States for a period of more than10 years and this helped in obtaining reliable information. Ethnographic interviews were used to collect data from these participants where notes were taken down to record the responses with the help of a tape-recorder that was used to capture the responses that note-writing may have missed out. The data collected was transcribed and analyzed thematically where a total of ten themes were drawn from the study. The in-depth analysis of the data indicated that Somali parents value bilingualism and put efforts to ensure that their children learn both their native language and the English language. The study also identified challenges such as the school system which hinder these parents from ensuring that their children master their native language. From the findings, recommendations were drawn for the different education stakeholders comprising of parents and educators
