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More than trilingual? | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 1 of 80 15 October 2010 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I see there are a few trilinguals on here and mention of a couple of quadrilinguals. I had an interesting conversation today with an English guy, married to an Italian living in Spain. Eventually the conversation got around to languages.
His six year old daughter is being educated at school in Spanish and speaks English and Italian at home with her parents. I would suggest she will be truly trilingual. He says her French language is pretty good too (he read a degree in French Studies). His wife also speaks a number of other languages including Russian and Greek. Under what circumstances could someone be truly more than trilingual equivalent to native level? Any examples ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5174 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 2 of 80 15 October 2010 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I hope so,it would be a great advantage for his daughter to be trilingual, but I have had friends who have started off in the same way, speaking to their child or children in 2 or more languages and it has died out and the child/ren have ended up monolingual.
I remember Charles Berlitz, the linguist, claimed in his books that he had learned Spanish, French, German and Italian through four family member speaking to him solely in one of the languages, so he ended up fluent in all four and considered them all "natural" languages, i.e. he did not think of them as second languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 3 of 80 16 October 2010 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Spanish and Italian should only really count as one. They are the same language after all.
I am sure that plenty of people in China who speak Mandarin and their local "dialect" (usually a seperate language in reality) are better candidates.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 80 16 October 2010 at 11:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is usually down to consistency on the parents' part. When a child is young enough, if there are specific languages in specific contexts, the kid will stick to the pattern presented. If the parents are inconsistent in use, children will always chose their strongest language to communicate in. When I talk about contexts, I'm not really talking about "dinner table" vs "playtime" vs whatever, I'm talking about the people involved. Kids can happily support mum's language vs dad's language vs whole family language, if mum only ever speaks language A when addressing the child, dad only speaks language B and mum and dad only speak language C to each other when the child is present. Kids once they've started school may reject multilingualism in order to fit in with their peers, but the time is not wasted as nothing is truly forgotten. The child will have the option to pick the language back up later and will find it a lot easier than starting from scratch, particularly in terms of the sound system.
No they're not. They have a lot of similarities, but then so do English and Spanish.
Is everything in life a competition? Do we need "better candidates"? Well in that case I'll argue that it's harder to be bilingual in two similar languages than two very different ones as interference can occur. Somebody recently made this argument as an explanation of why the Astur-Leonese languages were in such a dire state and Gallician rapidly declining while Basque is still relatively strong. The same goes if you want to cross the border into France: Basque and Breton may be in a poor state, but they're better off than Catalan, Occitan and Picard because the softer defining line between the latter and French makes it easier to mix them. Edited by Cainntear on 16 October 2010 at 11:12am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 5 of 80 16 October 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The difference between Italian and Spanish is a lot smaller than the difference between English and Spanish. A lot smaller. Spoken English and Spanish are not mutually intelligible for starters. Italian and Spanish are only distinct languages thanks to politics. If the Spanish language was spoken in Italy it would be considered a dialect of Italian. Most Italian "dialects" are actually languages so you could argue that most Italians are bilingual using your logic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ikarias Triglot Newbie Spain multilinguae.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6032 days ago 29 posts - 36 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, GermanB1 Studies: ItalianA2, DutchA2, FrenchA2, Mandarin | Message 6 of 80 16 October 2010 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Are you Mr X? :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 80 16 October 2010 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes.
Neither are spoken Italian and Spanish. Here's just a few of the reasons: pluralisation of nouns completely different o<->ue e<->ie zzione<->ción sono<->soy/estoy sei<->eres/estás vado<->voy ne<->[no equivalent] ci<->[no equivalent] stare per<->ir a perfect replaces preterit<->maintains distinction between preterit and perfect avere as both "to have"<->haber is auxiliary only tenere "to grasp"<->tenir "to have" (posession)
Italian and Spanish are distinct languages due to politics, geography, history and linguistics. Just like English and Dutch. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 8 of 80 16 October 2010 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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^^ You should ask a native Speaker whether Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible.
English and Dutch??? I don't know where to start. They are nothing like Spanish and Italian. I like your list of differences. I would post a list of similarities.....however.. it would take me years to write all of them down... All the words sharred by Spanish and Italian would probably add at least 1,000 pages to this thread... No Dutch dialect is as distant from standard Dutch as the English language. In Italy on the other hand some "dialects" differ so much they are in fact more distant from standard Italian than standard Spanish. If you looked at all the Romance languages objectively you might find that Spanish and Italian are a lot closer than Italian and some of it's so called dialects. Anyway this isn't my own opinion. I'll find some sources to back me up. Edited by John Smith on 16 October 2010 at 3:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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