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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes  | Message 9 of 13 26 October 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I hope that the numbers in your statistics are exact enough for comparing the 98% nativeness with the 102 % articulateness. Most certainly children who are educated bilingually today (and don't just grow up like this in a natural multilingual environment in an area of increased political instability or close to the borders of a neighbouring country) are children of something like upper class parents (or parents who want to be), who show a tendency of beeing more chatty. This would perfectly explain the statistics.
You are talking about the flourishing ideal of multilingualism in the Middle Ages? The very natural upbringing of children in monasteries or adjacent schools with Latin as their only foreign language? And this only for the 2 % (fictive number, no statistics) of people who were not completely illiterate and certainly monolingual? Or maybe you are talking about the open minded Romans of Cicero time, who had to be talked into reading something about Greek philosophy by long apologetic prooemia? And surely we have the Romance languages because the Roman colonists educated their children bilingually?
Being the unprivileged monolingual I am I cannot judge the ad hominem status of this light hearted admonition. What I know is that many children I had teaching experience with have problems reading and speaking in their native language (on a slightly higher level than needed for chat rooms or video games or watching movies), and this is the reason why their foreign language learning is not very successful. Competence and versatility in your native language are the base every new language can build on, deficits in this regard are a major obstacle. Now fancy if these children had learned some phrases of several languages in kindergarten, would this improve their overall performance? Later note: The Cicero example is of course a rather bad one, I won't delete it, but have to say that the problems of Roman and Greek bilingualism are a different matter; good knowledge of Greek was important for the elite of Rome, of course, while slavery and migration brought other conflicts for sure. An interesting book is Bilingualism and the Latin Language, but in the end this will hardly solve any contemporary problems and leads far away from my basic argument that native language competence is of highest importance for successful language learning. Edited by lingoleng on 27 October 2010 at 11:14pm 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 10 of 13 26 October 2010 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
$6,000 actually isn't too bad if you compare daycare costs. I pay 75 a week for part time care of my daughter while I'm in school. If I needed full time care I could easily pay 125 a week. So if a parent has their child in daycare, they could just transfer the costs over to school when the child reaches the appropriate age. If I could find a school where my daughter would learn English, Spanish, and French, I'd probably send her instead of keeping her home. (Well, as long as the other subjects were up to par also!) The chance to learn so many languages would (for us) outweigh the benefits of homeschooling, at least in the younger years. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Dragonsheep Groupie United States Joined 5271 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Studies: Tagalog, English* Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 11 of 13 27 October 2010 at 5:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
How about this, then: Relatively socialized such that taxes are higher but public institutions are of higher quality (when compared to the US, in which I currently live.) May just be varying definitions, although "relative" does clear up a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5957 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 12 of 13 27 October 2010 at 7:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
No question about the higher taxes; I am not in a position to comment either way on the comparison of public institutions. I cannot agree, with respect, that a country properly can be considered "relatively socialized" simply because it may have higher taxes and better institutions than another country. Edited by Spanky on 27 October 2010 at 7:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 13 27 October 2010 at 7:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Let's move on from any talk of socialism, taxes, etc.
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