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Raising multilingual children | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| quendidil Diglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 6313 days ago 126 posts - 142 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 24 18 October 2007 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Professor Arguelles, you said that your two children are bilingual in English and French and have a passive command of Korean, would you mind sharing a bit more on how you raised them? Did you have enough time to interact with them in French, being a working father, that they gained fluency?
I had read through a site called multilingual-kids or something to that effect which said that you shouldn't try and teach more than 3 languages to a child because a minimum of 33% of waking hours spent in a language is required to master it to fluency during childhood. Do you think this is true? Edited by quendidil on 18 October 2007 at 11:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 24 21 October 2007 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have indeed been able to spend several hours each day with my sons, conversing with them or reading to them in French whenever we are alone. They also listen to recorded narratives of French stories, and when I overhear them speaking by themselves or with each other, they sometimes use French quite naturally, so I suspect they think in it as well. All told, perhaps they get three or four hours a day active use, and perhaps as many with it the operating systems in their brains. There is more English in the air, however, and my wife unfortunately tends to use Korean with them only when other Koreans are around. On top of the this, I have been sending the older boy to a bilingual Spanish preschool in the hopes that he would pick that up, but thus far he has not be intrigued by it.
Given my circumstances, I do plan on trying to teach them far more than three languages although I certainly see the sense in the 33% of waking hours quote. Apart from hours in the day, I do not think there are any real limits on polyglottery, while there are undoubtedly lower real limits for multingualism. There are regions of the world where almost everyone knows five or six languages because five or six languages are in common use; however, there are also areas where many more languages are in common use, but I have never heard of or met someone who “naturally” acquired more than five or six languages. In my experience, even people who clearly do have some natural abilities in five or six languages are actually rather restricted in their range of command in most if not all of them. Indeed, I can recall reading that even most naturally bilingual people are actually stronger in one or the other of their languages for certain purposes, which stands to reason since to really master a language you need to receive a lengthy formal education in it, which inevitably involves slighting or ignoring one language in favor of another. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| portunhol Triglot Senior Member United States thelinguistblogger.w Joined 6253 days ago 198 posts - 299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (classical) | Message 3 of 24 14 May 2008 at 9:12am | IP Logged | ||
I have read the same and the same has been my experience. I have met bilinguals who claim to be equally fluent in English and another language and turn out to be weaker in the other language when we switch to speaking it. Their pronunciation is often native, or close to native in the other language; I suppose that that is what they are referring to anyway. Their command of the other language, however, is usually weak for lack use. Perfectly equal bilingualism would require someone going out of his/her way to make sure that he/she learned everything in both languages or leading a very similar lifestyle where it was required to talk about everything in both languages rather frequently. I think that it's usually best to be modest when we way that we are multilingual, pointing out the languages we speak well, which ones we have a fair command of and which we have studied but don't speak much. Just to pop off and say that one speaks seven languages is often misleading, especially when speaking with monolinguals. Edited by portunhol on 15 May 2008 at 9:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 6085 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 4 of 24 14 May 2008 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think this depends on the person and the circumstances. I think you can speak 3 or more language perfectly fluently at a native level and be close to equally strong in them. Of course this strength can sometimes change from time to time according to what environment you're in at the moment. I was raised multilingual and I can perfectly switch from one language to another in an instant or blend the languages when speaking. I remember I would speak one language to my mom and then could immediately switch to another language when speaking with my friend. Unfortunately due to a lack of use, I have kind of forgotten Czech a bit and no longer feel as comfortable in it as I used to. (and it used to be my strongest language at the time I was a small kid) I have native level abilities in Czech, Slovak and English and am also fluent in Russian and French, all languages that I was exposed to at some level before turning 18. (Russian and Ukrainian to a pretty high level and French to a smaller level, with some minimal Dutch as well) I actually wish I was forced to speak more languages when I was growing up, because my experiences tell me that a person can handle it. (although it is true that it's hard) Edited by showtime17 on 14 May 2008 at 3:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6081 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 24 15 May 2008 at 11:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Professor - Do you find your kinds mix up the languages at all?
To me, how would a small child know one language from another? If you taught them, for example. That an apple was called Manzana, would they say, Is there manzana? Is this a disadvantage of raising multilingual kids or do you find they learn to recognize the different languages pretty quickly? TEL 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 6085 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 6 of 24 15 May 2008 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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From my experience even kids can recognize languages pretty quickly. For example me I had no problem separating even between such close languages as Czech and Slovak when I was a kid and could speak one with my parents and then immediately switch over to the other when speaking with my friends. When I picked up English, it worked the same way. However I did have a problem of separating Ukrainian and Russian, but that is because I spent a lot of time in an area where the adults were regularly speaking a mixed language.
Sometimes a word can come up to your head faster in one language and then another word in another language, so you can speak a mix of languages in one sentence, but you do that as an adult too and even as kids you can recognize that you're actually using two different languages usually. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bart Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 7161 days ago 155 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Dutch*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish | Message 7 of 24 16 May 2008 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
I have a funny anecdote to illustrate why this is not happening. One of my uncles is married to a Walloon woman (= from the French-speaking part of Belgium) and so my two nephews are being raised bilingual. One time, when one of my nephews was about 3 or 4 years old he was with my grandmother and she pointed to a chair and said "chaise"(chair in French) to which my nephew eloquently responded "nee, stoel" (meaning "no, chair" in Dutch) I think for small multilingual children the languages are probably 'connected' to certain people. Like my nephew who would never even think of speaking French to my grandparents, but speaks it without hesitation with his mother and her family. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tjw Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6140 days ago 53 posts - 55 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Persian | Message 8 of 24 16 May 2008 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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RE Elven Lord
For a long time we have known that children seperate out their languages at the age of two, though current research may even suggest that they are able of doing it from the beginning, but passively. Children are very good at picking individual languages out of a "language stew" (for example, children being brought up to speak 5 or 6 languages) and even using different languages in a sentence does not confuse them. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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