Raising a Truly Bilingual Child • Hacker News Board

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#51

Post by saint_fiasco » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:40 PM UTC

Tade0 wrote: post #42

freyfogle wrote: post #6

It'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…

I don't think it really counts if you speak two languages from the same group that are spoken in the same territory.

Then consider not Spain, but its former colonies. In Paraguay, Bolivia, northern Argentina and some other countries it's common for people to speak two languages. The one native to the region and the one the conquistadores used.

In Africa it's the same thing, but the European language is more likely to be French than Spanish.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#52

Post by cletus » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:41 PM UTC

I'm a native English speaker and not bilingual so feel like an outsider looking in here but this is an area I find interesting. For one, I kind of wish I was bilingual. I suspect this is much easier to achieve as a non-English speaker for several reasons:

- The pervasiveness of English as a first or second language

- As much as people complain about English, in the transition from Old English to Middle English when English was not the court language of England, English lost a lot of what I like to call the grammatical bullshit (eg gender of nouns, cases, agreement of case, number, adjective and article and so on).

Anyway, this article made one claim that resonates with my observations:

> But parents should not assume that young children’s natural language abilities will lead to true grown-up language skills without a good deal of effort.

How many people do you know that have done 12 years of Italian or French or German or Spanish through school and can maybe remember how to count to 10? I know quite a few.

Another claim the article makes is that bilingual children are less fluent in each language than a child who only knows one language. I've often wondered if this is the case for a similar reason: language ability seems to largely be a function of exposure and there's only so much time to go around.

If true, I wonder how this has affected the development of English-speaking countries, which are particularly mono-lingual. Is it an advantage? A disadvantage? A bit of both?

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#53

Post by k-mcgrady » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

j_s wrote: post #31

What are the best technologies to help an English-speaking household even introduce other languages?

Try Duolingo. I use it mostly on the web but they also have really great apps and at least a dozen languages supported.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#54

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:45 PM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #44

joeyspn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/2008/0…

Interesting, I thought Spanish and Portuguese are extremely similar, so that a native speaker of one should understand most of the other.

You were closer to being right than joeyspn. Portuguese, Spanish and Italian are more or less mutually intelligible. There's a lot of complex vocabulary and grammar that's different and plenty of simple stuff too but if you speak slowly you can communicate on day 0. French is further from mutual intelligibility but you still have an enormous leg up learning it if you speak any Western Romance language. Catalan is probably more similar to French than Spanish but it's still pretty easy for a Hispanophone to learn.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#55

Post by jfaucett » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:46 PM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #44

joeyspn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/2008/0…

Interesting, I thought Spanish and Portuguese are extremely similar, so that a native speaker of one should understand most of the other.

In my experience Brasilian Portuguese is much easier to understand and I've actually been able to have conversations with Brasilian speakers where we knew about 80-90% of what the other person was saying.

But in Europe I've been sitting on trains directly next to Portuguese speakers and had a very difficult time even understanding say 40% of what they were talking about. It was as if in Portugal they just chew up the words and chop them all up, which makes it super difficult to understand. That wasn't the case with the Brasilians I've spoken too. With them I could actually have conversations and know what they were saying.

But thats just my personal experience.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#56

Post by spynxic » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:46 PM UTC

justinmk wrote: post #30

grecy wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

> 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 Not unless they also were forced to earnestly interact with the different culture. May also need to force them to be curious as well. Lots of forcing should do the trick. Everyone's "solution" to every problem...

Forcing exposure onto someone is, physically, the only way one can leverage their own ability to change another's mindset.

Beyond exposure, it's a matter of individual choice. (i.e. consider when one tries foreign foods for the first time)

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#57

Post by bluedino » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:50 PM UTC

muninn_ wrote: post #18

kutkloon7 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. People from Switzerland or Luxembourg often speak 3 or more languages fluently. A lot of other people in Europe speak their native language and a bit of English as well. I don't feel Americans appreciate the luxury of speaking a language that is basically the lingua franca of the Western world. Also, sometimes I feel that many people don't realize that there is a wealth of information that is in Latin, Greek, R…

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…

Spanish is very useful in the US if you live in the southwest

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#58

Post by joeyspn » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:51 PM UTC

jfaucett wrote: post #50

joeyspn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/2008/0…

> A spaniard who doesn't speak catalan won't understand 95% of a normal convo I don't know if I'd go that far. I just youtubed catalan and would say I understood about 75-80% of what this guy is saying. [1] Also, I mainly meant that statement ironically :) Catalan is its own language, its just funny to me that "dialect" is a negative term, language is not, and usually the big country with the military dictates which…

Yeah that man speaks slowly what appears to be the variant of catalan spoken in France... I'm referring to something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-OXwRP5A9E

Spanish speakers will notice a lot of "familiar words", but most of the time it's difficult for them to extrapolate the meaning of what is being said.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#59

Post by paperpunk » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:53 PM UTC

jfaucett wrote: post #50

joeyspn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/2008/0…

> A spaniard who doesn't speak catalan won't understand 95% of a normal convo I don't know if I'd go that far. I just youtubed catalan and would say I understood about 75-80% of what this guy is saying. [1] Also, I mainly meant that statement ironically :) Catalan is its own language, its just funny to me that "dialect" is a negative term, language is not, and usually the big country with the military dictates which…

You described yourself in another comment as fluent in three languages – I wonder if you might be much more practised at figuring out things spoken in other languages than others.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#60

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 10:55 PM UTC

kutkloon7 wrote: post #11

While I'm not exactly bilingual, I would like to teach my children (when I have them) multiple languages, just because I think that the potential for learning (and especially for learning languages) is at its maximum during childhood. However, I'm not quite sure what the best languages would be. I want to give them some exposure to a broad spectrum of languages. I know that the best way to learn a language is to actu…

I'm weak in French, German and Chinese and have even worse Spanish. Pick one language and let the child watch tv in it and only in it. Ditto for video games. If I was in the US I'd probably pick Spanish. It's one of the easiest languages to learn as a speaker of English. Pick one language.