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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 33 of 36 02 April 2010 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This isn't a matter of individual children mixing up languages, it's about multiple speakers reinforcing each other's mistakes. I would imagine the mechanism for this is a reduced sense of "wrongness" in utterances that diverge from the norm in one language by adopting a norm from the other, leading to lack of correction, feeding back into further reduced sense of wrongness through subsequent exposure. The relevance of this to the "ethics" of raising children bilingually is not clear. Either the child is brought up in an area without common bilingualism (hence convergence is not expected) or the child is brought up in an area with common bilingualism (in which case bilingualism is essentially inevitable, and convergence too). The problem of convergence isn't relevant to the home. Where it is relevant is in the foreign-language-medium school. The head of the school I worked in in the Basque Country was an Englishman. His daughter spoke the English of her peer group at school. She would have been better off in the German-medium school, only speaking English at home.
2.4%. 2 unacceptable responses to a particular type of negative question, and no sign of any errors in her Japanese. "Evidence of interlingual transfer" perhaps, but still no unacceptable utterances. So how does this justify the idea that infant bilingualism is bad? She certainly has a better command of a second language (English) than adult learners could ever hope for, and that's a pretty good trade-off for a tendency to use certain forms in Japanese that are only noticeable under close observation and not in natural conversation. The alternative is exposure to non-native Japanese from her father. In cannot see any way in which would that be developmentally advantageous. And in fact, she did have a non-native model of English. The study doesn't say whether her mother would have made the same mistake. It's entirely possible that some of the interlingual effects were externally interlingual but internally distinct -- ie that she learned her mother's mistakes as a native language.
Sorry, what you're quoting is simply the well-known fact that the later you leave a language, the harder it is to learn. The immigrants would have been worse off if they hadn't learned any language before immigrating, and this doesn't say anything about damage to their first language beyond what can be accounted for by reduction of use. The alternative then is to keep them monolingual in a language not widely spoken, if at all, in the US. This clearly in not more ethical. So again, you are citing a case that does not support your argument that bilingualism is bad for children. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6042 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 34 of 36 02 April 2010 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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^^ The examples I provided suggest that people who are bilingual mix up the languages they speak. I personally hate the fact that I sometimes make mistakes that make me look like a foreigner. That's just my personal opinion. It doesn't happen very often. Maybe 1% of the time or less.
If you don't mind making mistakes. If you don't mind not being able to speak any language perfectly (100%) then I agree that there is nothing wrong with bilingualism.
^^ Are you saying that a similar situation would never arise in say a family made up of 5 people? Two parents and three kids. Three kids raised speaking a number of languages. They would never code switch??? Just wondering are you bilingual? Were you raised speaking two languages before the age of 5? If not then you don't know what it's like. I would like to hear what other bilingual people think. I'm not interested in comments written by people who were raised monolingual. Then picked up another language later in life. And now plan to raise their children bilingually. Sorry. Being bilingual is great and frustrating at the same time. Basically a monolingual speaker gets the language right 100% of the time. A bilingual speaker only gets it right say 98% of the time. The truth is that getting two or more languages correct 98% of the time is great. It's only frustrating when your up against a monolingual speaker and make that one mistake. Some people don't mind. Some people do. Edited by John Smith on 02 April 2010 at 6:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7077 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 35 of 36 03 April 2010 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I have personally never met a single person that is 100% "correct" in any language. Every single person will make perceived errors in their speech or writing irrespective of whether they are monolingual or multilingual. There is often tense confusion in a lot of speech for instance. Singular/plural is another element commonly confused in speech if you listen closely. With respect to being language perfect, how does this sit with a language like English where the varieties around the globe develop independent norms? You need only go to the supermarket or somewhere public and listen to those around you. Given you're in Australia, is someone that speaks in Broad Australian English and uses a double negative speaking incorrectly and making errors or are they speaking in a way that is inline with the norms of the variety? If you compare it to Cultivated Australian English - which doesn't contain the double negative as a norm - then who is really "correct"? You need to remember, language is in constant evolution and what is "correct" is not always the reality. A reference may say one form is correct, but in the real world, what is accepted is not always correct. Case in point; we go back to supermarket... Coles specifically... "12 items or less" ...To be technically correct, shouldn't this be "fewer"? Perhaps the innovator of the express checkout lane was bilingual though, I'm not sure ;) I suggest a quick look at Pinker's The Language Instinct, specifically The Language Mavens chapter. Not 100% related, but offers some insight. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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