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More than trilingual? | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 49 of 80 19 October 2010 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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People who grew up speaking one language then later added a couple more don't have a clue what it is like to grow up speaking a number of languages.
It's not like an instrument or a sport. What if you child does not identify with one of the cultures? Edited by John Smith on 19 October 2010 at 4:29pm 2 persons have 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 50 of 80 19 October 2010 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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First thing: I don't understand how you can hope have a triglot kid if the mother
tongue of you and you're wife is English...a diglot kid is already good for English speaking parents! If I were you, I'd just let him speak English at home and cantonese at school...I already wrote that kids are not language freaks like a lot people on this forum: extra- lessons of french or mandarin will probably be a torture for him, with poor results. And of course, don't put him in an English-speaking school for expats...the best way for him to not speak cantonese! 2 persons have 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 51 of 80 19 October 2010 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
I hear you. Just want to make sure she knows the language of the country we live in (and our home country so she can talk to people when we move back). She will also have to take math, science and whatever else kids take in school these days. Maybe she will like it, maybe she won't but she will still have to do it just like everyone else. Need to cover the basics and let her figure it out for herself after that. 3 persons have 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 52 of 80 19 October 2010 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Exposure to language is not "torture" for an infant. Extra formal schooling, yes, but that's not what bilingualism is about. An infant will happily learn several languages. He might abandon them as he grows up and finds that he has no use for them, but no language is ever completely lost. My mum wanted to bring us up bilingual but couldn't, because her and my dad are monolingual. So instead she bought a few LPs of French kids' songs, and we learnt to sing in French. I stopped singing in French at about 4 or 5, but when I picked up French as a subject at high school and spent time in France, the sound system came very easily as I'd already learnt to discriminate all the sounds, both productively and receptively, as an infant. It's not bilingualism by any stretch of the imagination, but it gave me the advantage I needed to start enjoying languages as a teenager, which is a rare thing. The good thing about it is it can be done by anyone, anywhere. All it needs is a CD player and a few CDs. Make sure you get the lyrics, cos my mum taught us in her (bad) French accent from the printed words, but her accent didn't affect us in the long run as we spent more time listening to the discs than to her and the French accent came through. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| retorsion Newbie Canada Joined 5228 days ago 5 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 53 of 80 20 October 2010 at 7:39am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't disagree with your argument,I just think there can be a happy medium. Sometimes parents do raise their kids with unreasonable expectations (your example of the expectation that the child will be a concert pianist is a good one). On the other hand, giving your kid piano lessons just for the sake of the piano lessons (rather than due to an expectation they will become a concert pianist) is okay, IMO. The kids may resent the lessons at the time, but I see no problem with it. Kids resent doing many activities that are ultimately beneficial. My aunt had her children all take piano lessons. Of her four children, their youngest child (now an adult) is a professional musician. He doesn't make a huge income, but between gigs and giving lessons he makes enough to support himself and he enjoys it. Had my aunt not forced her kids to take piano lessons, my cousin may not have discovered his love for music. Maybe he would have discovered it, but only at a later age, making it more of a struggle to gain the skills necessary to earn a living from music. Of course, there is the point that while my aunt forced her kids to take piano lessons, she certainly had no expectation that they would become professional musicians. I guess, at least IMO, the issue is when that as you put more pressure on your child, your actions change from the noble goal of trying to raise a well rounded child, to the less noble goal of living vicariously through your child. There's nothing wrong with forcing a child to attend piano lessons (IMO), however I think most would agree it is not okay to force your kid to practice piano for several hours every day because you want him to be a concert pianist. To bring this back to the issue of teaching languages to a child, I guess the issue is at what point does the polyglot parent trying to get his child to learn multiple languages become comparable to a parent trying to get his child to play the concert piano? Personally, I think a large part of that is dependent both on the methods utilized to teach the language(s), the language background of the parents, as well as the community the child lives in. For me personally, I could imagine possibly raising a kid bilingual, but I can't see it being possible to teach a kid 3+ languages. I live in a predominantly monolingual community, and outside of my home my child wouldn't get exposure to any other language other than English and possibly French if I put my child in a French immersion school. However, if I raised my kid somewhere else, in a community where 3 or more languages or spoken and especially if my SO's mother tongue was not English, I could see it being possible or even likely to raise a kid to be multilingual. I've seen in some African countries for example, just about everybody spoke at least three languages. Now, it could be argued just how well they spoke each of those 3 languages, but they were capable of communicating in at least 3 languages, and these are people that generally couldn't afford good language learning resources. I'm certain that a family in that situation could raise kids to know four or more languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 54 of 80 20 October 2010 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
There's new research pointing to the conclusion that receiving good education, and especially being raised bilingual, delays the onset of dementia caused by Alzheimer's disease. By the way, I would not want to force my children to grow up multilingual in an exclusively monolingual culture. Edited by Bao on 20 October 2010 at 11:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| BiaHuda Triglot Groupie Vietnam Joined 5364 days ago 97 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese Studies: Cantonese | Message 55 of 80 20 October 2010 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think this is quite normal and it would surprise my if in this instance she wouldn't learn to languages on her own. My suspicion would be that if the child interacts with other children in the community at home and at school this will happen anyways. My first wife was born to Czech immigrant parents in the US and grew up with both languages. The difference would be as some pointed out on this forum, if you were to raise her in an expat environment, English speaking schools, nannies, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| NotKeepingTrack Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5168 days ago 19 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, German | Message 56 of 80 20 October 2010 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm curious how many people weighing in on this debate actually have children.
It is much easier for a child to pick up languages than it is to pick them up as an adult. And I don't think anyone here would argue that knowing more than one language is extremely beneficial, especially if you can achieve near-native fluency. So why is it not okay for a parent to want to give their child the best start possible? What is the difference between requiring math and requiring language? I can say that I certainly use language much more than I do math. I'm not saying drop math in favor of another language, but it can all easily be fit in. FWIW, I have a 4 year old (native language English) who has been learning French for almost a year. We have recently started Spanish, and she knows some German. In middle school and high school she will also study Latin. (I can say this for sure because I home school her, so her education is my decision.) Granted, we sacrifice and study a little less math and phonics than we normally would to do all the languages, but luckily (for me :) ) she absolutely loves languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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