My wife is truly trilingual in Arabic, English and French. Coming from a 80s Lebanon childhood. I.e. you wouldn't know that she isn't native in each language. It's probably less rare outside of UK/US/etc.
Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
71–80 of 228 posts
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#72Earlier 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…
Spanish is very useful in the US if you live in the southwest
Agreed.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#73"Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability"
I have to agree with one of the Indian commentator that this does not signal language abillity but rather the lack of vocabulary.
Me and my wife are doing our best trying to raise our children multilingual (three mother tongues). The use of drop in words only means to us that we dont know the right word in the current speaking language.
That aside, I think that you are truly bi/multi-lingual when you can express feelings effortless in any of your languages equally.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#74> “There is certainly no research to suggest that children need to have languages lined up with speakers or they get confused.”
This goes against the mantra that each parent should speak to their child in their native language, which I hear all the time but I've always thought was complete bs. As parents we're both fairly proficient in each other's language and speak to our children in both languages depending on context.
I find the "rule" that you speak to your child in your native language to actually be very bad because it artificially splits conversations across languages, and also gives the kid the impression that you should speak your native language, whereas the whole point is that they should be comfortable speaking any language.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#75I was born in Poland then at age 11 I moved to Germany and later at age 27 I moved to Sweden. My sister is two years younger, she had it easier to learn German but she doesn't want to speak Polish if sho doesn't need to. I don't have that. I had also big problems learning English at school, because I had to learn English in German which I didn't understand in the beginning, and later I was always behind.
I was really bad in English when I moved to Sweden which helped me to learn Swidish faster because people wouldn't use English to communicate with me, which swedes do all the time if you speak English but not Swedish.
I learned English later by mostly watching TV, which is only subtitled in Sweden, because I wasn't able to read that fast in Swedish, I started listening to the English original. Later most of the studies here at university were in English (at least in Computer Science), so I was forced to use my English and improve it. And later at work the office language was English too.
Anyway, I do even have an anegdote from my Grandfather who was captured by the Russians during WW2. He was in the Wehrmacht, but because he was from Silecia he spoke some polish too, which helped him during his time in captivity in Siberia. Because he could translate, they gave him bigger portions of food, so he always said: "You never know where life leads you and every language you speak is like an extra hand."
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#76We're native Russians and live in Germany for quite a while (17+ years). My children (8 and 5yo) were born here and we're raising them bilingual. They went/go to normal kindergarden/school and have natural exposure to the German language. At home, we speak Russian with children, unless there is a non-Russian-speaker present. The older son additionally goes to the Russian school on Saturdays. We often talk to our pare…
> He learned the language primarily from us parents, there are almost no Russian friends around, so his language is very adult, I'd even say academic. For instance, he normally does not use the word "круто", Russian equivalent for "cool", he'd rather say "remarkable".
As a Greek-American who grew up speaking both, I agree with this, although in my case I'd characterize it to some extent as more "old-fashioned" than "academic". I learned Greek primarily from my mother, but it was especially reinforced by my grandparents (because they didn't speak English, so I had to speak Greek with them). As a result my level of fluency with Greek of the 1930s-70s is better than with contemporary Greek, especially when it comes to colloquial terms and nuances like intonation, pauses, implications, gestures, etc.
I think the first time this really became clear to me is a few years ago when I was on a bus in Crete full of elderly people (mainly 80+), and I realized that listening to their conversations, I felt really 100% fluent in Greek down to the last nuance. Usually, when surrounded by Greeks who are younger, I think of myself as more like 80% fluent and miss many nuances, so being on this bus full of grandparents felt like some kind of fog was lifted and my comprehension went up to near-perfect.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#77As a person fluent in both Arabic and English, I always wonder if Arabic dialects count as "languages". Note that basically no one speaks "written" Arabic; everyone uses a dialect based on their region.
For example, North African dialects are basically unintelligible to Middle Easterners. Even within North Africa, the dialects are vastly different: for instance, Tunisians have trouble understanding the general Algerian dialect. You can go even further: people within Tunisia can find trouble understanding each other's dialects (e.g., north vs. south)! The linguistic variations are enormous.
I was raised in the UAE, so I can understand (at a high level) basically all Arabic dialects. In Tunisia, I speak Tunisian; in the UAE, I speak the dialect closest to who I'm talking to (if applicable), or a form of Emirati Arabic otherwise (e.g., in the case of Sudanese Arabic).
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> maximizing your English skill is imo a better investment of finite cognitive resources. I wonder in which extent this apply to programming languages.
Spoken languages are much more complex than programming ones, and the vocabularies are immense. You're talking about 200K+ words in English alone.
Not to mention that you also need to learn how to speak it. And sounding native is extremely hard.
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#79This article is a fluff piece for the doctors interviewed. Awful research, brief interviews, and so vague you have to laugh. The entire thing screams "Yeah, no shit."
Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child
#80As a person fluent in both Arabic and English, I always wonder if Arabic dialects count as "languages". Note that basically no one speaks "written" Arabic; everyone uses a dialect based on their region. For example, North African dialects are basically unintelligible to Middle Easterners. Even within North Africa, the dialects are vastly different: for instance, Tunisians have trouble understanding the general Algeri…
Whether something is a language or a dialect is a political question, not a linguistic one. The Arabic dialects are as varied as the Romance languages in grammar and vocabulary.