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Baby growing up in multilingual home... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5565 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 41 of 43 30 June 2013 at 11:23am | IP Logged |
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I am in the situation Beano describes (except I can speak a little German, but don't
with our son) and we have followed the one parent one language rule. We have a steady stream of childrens' DVDs from Amazon.de (e.g. Heidi, Jim Knopf and other Augsburger Puppenkiste shows) and my wife reads German books to my son to provide some external media. My 4 year son a) speaks English as his dominant language b) when speaking to us, he mixes German and English as in 'I want to go to the shop to kaufen it, aber I need some geld'. According to his teachers at his nursery school he doesn't mix his language there at all, except sometimes says numbers in German c) has a seemingly perfect passive understanding of German (he will translate sentences spoken by my wife to me). Personally, I don't think it matters that the child speaks one language as a dominant and has a passive understanding of the other. That will iron itself out later - they are children after all, not walking language laboratories. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4488 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 42 of 43 26 November 2013 at 8:34am | IP Logged |
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I think the idea of children who grow up in bilingual or trilingual households will become confused and will
start talking a mix such as Spanglish, Taglish (Tagalog and English) or Chinglish instead of, for exampe, proper Chinese and proper English, and other languages shouldn't be as much a worry as some people make it out o be. As children grow older, any confusion between the languages disappear, as we can see from all natively bilingual and trilingual people who walk around today. Also, I think that early on children will be able to distinguish the differences between languages and comprehend that each language is a different set of codes. In fact, I subscribe to the school of thought where children should be exposed to as many languages as early on as possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5565 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 43 of 43 26 November 2013 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
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Well I can report that since my last post on 30 June 2013 (it is 26 November 2013 today)
my 4 year old son has, almost overnight, totally separated English and German and switches between the two without any mixing. He also considered 'advanced for his age' in English in school, so the idea of being slowed down by two languages appears to be an old wives tale. Amazing what the human brain can do... 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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