What are the best technologies to help an English-speaking household even introduce other languages?
Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
31–40 of 228 posts
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#32It's interesting that the article starts with the line "True bilingualism is a relatively rare thing". That's probably the case in the US or English-speaking world, but definitely not the case in many other areas. I live in Catalonia, it is very normal for locals to be fully fluent in Catalan and Spanish, I've seen the same in the Basque region. Go to India and almost every person you meet at all levels of society sp…
In Tunisia everyone grows up learning French and Arabic. Additionally most learn English in school.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well sure, but what's the point of learning another language if you're an American if you will almost without exception not ever need to speak anything other than English in the United States? Even if English wasn't the lingua franca what would the point be? Conversely in Europe you're surrounded by a ton of other languages, of course it makes sense to learn them. If they spoke French in Oregon, Spanish in California…
The point would be something called broadening your outlook.
Yes, but I could spend that time doing something else. It's opportunity cost.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#34It's interesting that the article starts with the line "True bilingualism is a relatively rare thing". That's probably the case in the US or English-speaking world, but definitely not the case in many other areas. I live in Catalonia, it is very normal for locals to be fully fluent in Catalan and Spanish, I've seen the same in the Basque region. Go to India and almost every person you meet at all levels of society sp…
As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language, namely - a flag and an army :)
Still, though I think true bilingualism is extremely rare, If by "True" you mean being able to do anything you can in one language in the other language without any hiccups and word-searching and at the same speed and eloquence and precision in all possible situations and contexts.
I've studied at a university level in 3 different languages and am highly fluent in all of them, still there are a lot of contexts where I don't know the specific vocabulary in one particular language or might have problems finding the right word in one language because I'm getting interference from the other ones.
Also, I've known a lot of bi/tri/quad linguals in my life (whole family, extended family, friends, etc), and in my studies and I have yet to encounter even one truely bilingual person as I defined it above.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you're committed to living in the States I think you have to be insane to not travel. The learning opportunities it presents are unparalleled. The world would be a much better place if every person living in a developed country were forced to spend a year living in a different one during high school, for example. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely…
>I think you have to be insane to not travel. The learning opportunities it presents are unparalleled. It depends on what you mean by 'travel'. I think spending anything less than a month in a place just makes it more like a visit to a theme park than anything enlightening.
Obviously you can't immerse yourself, but from spending maybe 6 or 7 days in Gaza over 3 or 4 visits I have a far better idea of the conditions that those people live in. It's far easier to empathise with what you read on the news when you've been there and can picture it.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#36>But if a child grows up speaking that second language — Korean, say — with cousins and grandparents, attending a “Saturday School” that emphasizes the language and the culture, listening to music and even reading books in that language, and visits Korea along the way, that child will end up with a much stronger sense of the language. Did this from Kindergarten through 10th grade. "Saturday School" was a full program…
My parents are Chinese but I grew up in Canada. Consequently, I am fully fluent in English, but my Chinese is quite poor by comparison. I am "okay" by your standard, in that I can converse comfortably on day-to-day topics with native speakers, but my vocabulary falls apart with complex subjects. I am indeed fairly self-conscious of my "child-like" use of Chinese; on a recent visit, I was shocked that I could not read…
Regarding your Chinese, you will need to spend 10x effort than an ordinary Chinese kid. I can't imagine how it could be of use to your career, but once you grasp the language, there are so many interesting and subtle things to discover that you probably won't regret the time.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#37>True bilingualism is a relatively rare and a beautiful thing(...) Highly competent bilingualism is probably more common in other countries, since many children growing up in the United States aren’t exposed to other languages. I acknowledge that this article is aimed at Americans, but I don't really think that bilingualism is rare in the world, or for that matter, in certain parts of the USA. Perhaps this is not rel…
Yeah Bilingualism isn't that rare in America. I live in Texas and there a literally millions of bilingual speakers (largely English & Spanish, but other languages like Vietnamese (~200,000) as well.)
Do they speak both with near-equal proficiency? Most people I've known tend to heavily favor one language over the other. College-level in the first, early high school in the second, or speaking one with a much stronger accent than the other.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#38>True bilingualism is a relatively rare and a beautiful thing(...) Highly competent bilingualism is probably more common in other countries, since many children growing up in the United States aren’t exposed to other languages. I acknowledge that this article is aimed at Americans, but I don't really think that bilingualism is rare in the world, or for that matter, in certain parts of the USA. Perhaps this is not rel…
The second paragraph begins
"Highly competent bilingualism is probably more common in other countries, since many children growing up in the United States aren’t exposed to other languages."
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#39It's interesting that the article starts with the line "True bilingualism is a relatively rare thing". That's probably the case in the US or English-speaking world, but definitely not the case in many other areas. I live in Catalonia, it is very normal for locals to be fully fluent in Catalan and Spanish, I've seen the same in the Basque region. Go to India and almost every person you meet at all levels of society sp…
As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language, namely - a flag and an army :) Still, though I think true bilingualism is extremely rare, If by "True" you mean being able to do anything you can in one language in the other language without any hiccups and word-searching and at the same speed and…
> As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language
A spaniard who doesn't speak catalan won't understand 95% of a normal convo... Catalan [0] is lexically as distant from the spanish as the Portuguese is [1]...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language
[1] https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/lexical-distance-among...
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#40I also think that in all the 4 languages I speak, I exhibit a slightly different personality, as you usually not only learn to speak in a language, but also how to behave in another culture.