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More than trilingual? | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7016 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 41 of 80 19 October 2010 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Please keep the discussion on the original topic. If you wish to discuss the mutual intelligibility of Spanish and Italian (or any other languages) please start a new thread. Any further off-topic discussion will result in this topic being closed, which is a shame since it's rather interesting.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 42 of 80 19 October 2010 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
Well, yeah, it's related to Mandarin and Cantonese, in that it's also a Sino-Tibetan language. I suspect it's closer to Cantonese than to Mandarin because it's geographically closer. As in many other places, most of China has dialect gradients, where the language of one village is mutually intelligible but slightly different from that in the next village, but get unintelligible as you move further away. This makes it more or less impossible to define differences between languages and dialects as well as count the number of languages/dialects in China. As to "natural trilingualism", I'm not sure about the "most people in the world" part, but there certainly are places where this happens (though I think bilingualism rather than trilingualism is the norm). This guy talks his home town language and the country language, as well as the "foreign" language of Cantonese (I think he spent part of his Childhood in Guangdong, but I'm not sure). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5168 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 43 of 80 19 October 2010 at 9:17am | IP Logged | ||
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You didn't get my point: of course it's a sino-Tibetan language...I already guessed
that your friend wasn't speaking ouighour or mongol in his guangxi village. :) My question was on a lower level of linguistic relation: I was wondering if that language was related either to mandarin, either to cantonese...either to none of them! In others words, I just wanted to know if one of his three languages could be considered as a mandarin or cantonese dialect or if it was a third separated language. Sorry for this complicated (and quite useless I have to say) question, but you made me think of a south-china girl I know: she speaks cantonese, taiwanese and mandarin...they are three different languages for her, beacause the taiwanese she speaks is neither related to mandarin nor to cantonese. PS: Yes you're right: bilinguism is the norm, I forgot to mention it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 44 of 80 19 October 2010 at 9:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, as I said, it's all gradients here, so it's related to Cantonese. Are you asking whether it's mutually intelligible? I don't understand a word of it, but then my Cantonese listening comprehension isn't that great. I don't think it's a Yue dialect, like Cantonese, and it's definitely not a Mandarin dialect, like Standard Mandarin.
Taiwanese is, of course, related to both Mandarin and Cantonese, but since it's a Minnanese/Hokkien dialect, the kinship is not very close. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5168 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 45 of 80 19 October 2010 at 10:14am | IP Logged | ||
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"Mutually intelligible" is no argument for saying "it is a dialect of..." (there is
actually NO argument for saying "is it a dialect of...")! My question was only if it could be "considered" as a cantonese or mandarin dialect. We're speaking here about close languages (sometimes called "dialect")...that's why I wrote that Taiwanese is not related Mandarin and Cantonese (but it's sino-tibetan). We agree each other...please don't respond or we'll be out of topic! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 46 of 80 19 October 2010 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I hope we can get back on topic because I'm looking for ideas on how to raise multilingual kids. Preferably
ideas that don't cost a million bucks to implement. I just moved to Hong Kong and WOW is everything expensive! Tutors and play groups cost an arm and a leg and the kindergartens all seem to have waiting lists a year long. My wife is a native English speaker too so while we aren't worried about the kid learning English, we don't have the advantage of one parent, one language, and a different language from the community. (Then again, Cantonese from the community with a fair bit of Mandarin thrown in here and there is nifty.) I'm pretty sure we will be able to get Mandarin and Cantonese sorted here. French is going to be a challenge I think. Then again, there seem to be a lot of French people around so maybe it will be ok. (The original plan was English, French, and Mandarin but we wound up moving to Hong Kong so I figured might as well throw in a little Cantonese since we are here and it would be way cool.) 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 47 of 80 19 October 2010 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I still don't understand why some parents want their children to be multilingual (3 plus languages). Speaking lots of languages is your hobby. The child may not share the same interest. Maintaining languages takes a lot of work.
So many parents do this. Live vicariously through their children. I couldn't learn piano. So my child will. Whether he wants to or not Peter is going to be a concert pianist. HE WILL fulfil MY lifelong dream and he's going to LOVE every minute of it. You are playing with your child's identity. Making him different. It's not fun being the odd one out. Your child is not a miniature you. You have not built a time machine. A child is not a do over. Edited by John Smith on 19 October 2010 at 4:14pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 48 of 80 19 October 2010 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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The full consequence of this would be to deprive your child of the chance to learn anything you yourself find interesting out of fear that you might impose those interests on that poor little thing. Actually the worst thing that could happen is that your child tells you in no uncertain terms to stop speaking weird languages. Edited by Iversen on 19 October 2010 at 4:17pm 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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