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Raising a natively multilingual child | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6811 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 19 26 August 2011 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's often remarked on this forum about the advantages that truly bilingual people have since they get two languages "for free". This is even more advantageous for those who are brought up trilingually, quadrilingually, etc.
This got me thinking about how many languages it would be feasible to pick up natively, merely by growing up in a suitable environment, without any extra study. However, as I usually do when contemplating these kinds of things, my imagination run wild and I thought of the following, purely fictional, child, called Bob: Bob's mum is a well-educated Egyptian diplomat who was posted to Japan, since she is very fluent in Japanese. His dad is a Russian businessman who met his mum whilst doing business in Japan. As Bob's paternal grandparents are of Georgian descent, Bob's dad also speaks Georgian. They married and settled in Japan and are bringing up Bob in their three native languages, namely Arabic, Russian and Georgian. However, as their only common language is English, they ensured that Bob was fully exposed to this also. Whilst Bob was a baby, his parents hired a Korean nanny who naturally communicated with him in Korean. When Bob got older, they kept the nanny (since Bob had grown very fond of her) and enrolled him in a Japanese/Mandarin bilingual school. When Bob was still quite young, his favourite aunt on his mother's side left Egypt and settled in the south of France, close to the Spanish border, with her German-speaking Dutch husband. Being very close to her sister, Bob's mum insisted that Bob visit her during the school holidays. Naturally, Bob's innate language abilities enabled him to pick up French, Spanish, Catalan, Dutch and German quite easily after spending a great deal of time with his aunt, uncle and cousins. Now, Bob is about to enter university and speaks twelve languages natively. EDIT: Please refer to my post on page two for more information. Edited by patuco on 27 August 2011 at 12:08pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5562 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 19 26 August 2011 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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At age five, Bob refuses to speak any other language than Japanese because the kids in his Japanese kindergarten pick on him.
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| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4862 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 3 of 19 26 August 2011 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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From personal experience, it's difficult for children to maintain two native languages, let alone twelve.
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| oldearth Groupie United States Joined 4691 days ago 72 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 4 of 19 26 August 2011 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Little children don't just learn from the media in their environment. They learn from
parents and friends. Unless you yourself are truly bilingual and in a good position to help shape your child's linguistic skill, you probably run the risk of producing a kid that knows some of two languages but is good in neither. Also, I don't want to start a debate on the definition of fluency, but you'd have to have low standards for "As Bob's paternal grandparents are of X descent, Bob's dad also speaks Y" (and therefore Bob will learn Y) to apply. By that logic, we'd have a whole lot of polyglots in the US. Many people here barely know their parent's non-english native language, much less their grandparent's. Edited by oldearth on 26 August 2011 at 7:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5177 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 19 26 August 2011 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Any examples of a bilingual parent who spoke and taught two languages to their children, those languages being different from the language of the spouse?
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| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5116 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 6 of 19 26 August 2011 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that you'll find more answers in dedicated forums such as PROZ's Multilingual families forum. Based on the posts there, it seems to be hard enough to stick with OPOL (One Parent One Language) rule.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6235 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 19 26 August 2011 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Probably Professor Argüelles? His wife is Korean, he natively speaks English, and his rather young children speak French too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5177 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 19 26 August 2011 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
And their learned French from him? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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