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Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

nytimes.com

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Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#171

Post by KayEss »

geomark wrote: post #155
KayEss wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(A bit OT, but) Just thought I'd say Hi as it sounds like you have a very similar set up to me. Also in Thailand, also got a kid at an international school. I'm Norwegian and grew up bilingual in the UK and I see my daughter doing many of the things that I did as a kid. Effortlessly switching language mid-sentence for example. I do expect her to (and hope she does) end up with stronger English than Thai. I think that…

I did not grow up bilingual so I was pretty impressed when I saw my kid effortlessly switching between English and Thai. I would tell him something in English and he would immediately turned to his mother to tell her what I had said in Thai. As early as 3 years old no less. I guess that is just normal! The question of which language is going to serve kids better in the future seems to depend on where they are going t…

Do they have better Thai language skills than you do? I speak and read hardly any Thai, but get on pretty well.

There is a huge amount of business conducted in English in Thailand. I expect that the better jobs (in terms of prospects and pay) will continue to be English speaking ones.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#172

Post by pbhjpbhj »

arde wrote: post #145
cletus wrote: post #52

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 E…

> language ability seems to largely be a function of exposure and there's only so much time to go around. There's an important shortcoming in that reasoning: it assumes that time is fully dedicated to learning whichever language is being used. Furthermore, it doesn't consider the possibility that learning a language may benefit from learning a different one. Based on my observations while raising my kid bilingual, th…

> there's practically no time conflict in learning two languages except maybe at the very start. //

This can't be true, otherwise you'd learn all languages and it would take, practically, no longer than learning one.

At school if a child is learning 2 languages (L2, L3) then do you think they can do that with no more time commitment than learning one additional language - if you can explain how then you can revolutionise language learning .. all schools can teach the kids 20 languages within the lesson time they currently only manage one.

In practice what's happening is you're teaching in an open manner, it's not directed learning but it is occupying more time, and mental processing, than learning only one vocabulary and one grammar. There are probably a lot of efficiency gains, but if exposure and use is at all important to language learning and proficiency (they are according to most comments here) then you need more time.

When that time is folded in to social times or family time it appears to be "free". The problem comes when people who have learnt/taught this way get to claim kids in school can learn an additional language because it doesn't take any time (and so, the logic goes, can't negatively impact other learning).

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#173

Post by pbhjpbhj »

JohnGB wrote: post #13

> “A child who is learning two languages will have a smaller vocabulary in each than a child who is only learning one; there are only so many hours in the day, and you’re either hearing English or Spanish,” Dr. Hoff said. That is rubbish. It depends on how the child is exposed to the various languages and how much exposure they get. My daughter speaks 3 languages at home (one to each adult). We were told exactly this…

>her monolingual English teacher has told us that she is far ahead of the rest of her class language wise //

How do you know what her ability in English would be if she'd not had the other 2 languages. Like I've of the languages could have buoyed it up but the other overloaded her and reduced her overall vocabulary. Or many other possibilities.

Surely the truth is you hypothesise it had no effect but without re-running her life you can't know one way or the other?

What do you mean with your last sentence, it's entirely incoherent to me?

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#174

Post by MattConfluence »

KayEss wrote: post #146
lomnakkus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. "True bilingualism is a relatively rare thing" is a truly bizarre statement for most of the world, I should think. FTR, I was raised "truly bilingual" -- I would go to kindergarten with kinds who spoke X,…

> Danish, outside of specific persons, has two genders. German and French have three genders Given that Norwegian and German have three I would expect Danish to also have three. French has two (le + la).

Danish (and Swedish) used to have three grammatical genders, but the feminine and masculine merged at some point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Danish_and_Swedish

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#175

Post by pbhjpbhj »

shioyama wrote: post #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 con…

Ah, see that idea makes sense to me - that a context allows the languages to be differentiated.

When you speak different languages to your children do you use the exact same accent?

Do you just mix the words up within a sentence, use grammar structures from one language in the other, etc? How, in your estimation, do the kids know which language a word belongs to at the point they hear it first, or so they learn that later - do they ever mix speech accidentally (can you tell if they do this if you're doing things syncretically)?

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#176

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#177

Post by cheesedoodle »

Manishearth wrote: post #113
geomark wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that this is often the case. But it is also true that when you know more than one language well you often find that words in one language are more expressive than in the other. So it becomes convenient to mix the languages in conversation by chosing a single word in one language that would be an entire phrase in the other.

As I mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14830685 , there is a major difference between deliberately mixing languages when talking to a fellow bilingual as an adult, and the accidental mixing of languages when talking to anyone that kids do because they aren't fluent enough.

Yes I have to agree with this also.

Of course, it can in some situations be applied to both adults and kids. My wife speaks Tagalog and English, which combined is the official language of Taglish. Sometimes she does not know the actual word for something in Tagalog so she substitutes it with English. This can fir example involve words for colours. More often though, the substitution is purely to emphasize.

For me, as we only speak Swedish in Sweden, I do not have this habit of mixing and substition. That being said, my English is of curse much worse then my Swedish...

I'm hoping that our kids can speak all three languages natively, and I'm sure they will naturally mix it in between them self. And that in other settings, that they uses the current locale with out thinking about it.

I'm also hoping the knowledge of many languages makes them more susceptible to even more languages and cultures. :)

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#178

Post by grecy »

rak00n wrote: post #90
grecy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly! That's why I spent 2 years driving from Alaska to Argentina, learning Spanish as I went, and am now spending two years driving right around Africa, learning French and Swahili as I make my way around! I have learned more in the last 12 months of my life in West Africa than I did in the 34 years that came before...

If you don't mind me asking, what did you learn?

I am still honestly consolidating it, so here's a random unfiltered list.

I learned the western media is only a fraction of the truth, and often for various degrees of "truth". There are hundreds of millions of people being impacted by how I choose to live in the western world. Those people want the same things I want. Those people are extremely kind, friendly and generous - about a million times more than people in the western world (yes, West Africans make Canadians look unfriendly)

Self-sufficiency is a great thing. People friendly gets you a long way, even with guys with guns. Being polite is the best way to get ahead. The entire world is severely corrupt, many developed countries just have a different word for it, like lobbying. Many international corporations are evil and severely fuing up the planet and millions of people who live in it. A massive number of foreigners in West Africa are making it worse, not better.

I'll write a book about my trip, which will not be random, and I will flesh out many more points in detail.

http://theroadchoseme.com

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#179

Post by geomark »

KayEss wrote: post #171
geomark wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not grow up bilingual so I was pretty impressed when I saw my kid effortlessly switching between English and Thai. I would tell him something in English and he would immediately turned to his mother to tell her what I had said in Thai. As early as 3 years old no less. I guess that is just normal! The question of which language is going to serve kids better in the future seems to depend on where they are going t…

Do they have better Thai language skills than you do? I speak and read hardly any Thai, but get on pretty well. There is a huge amount of business conducted in English in Thailand. I expect that the better jobs (in terms of prospects and pay) will continue to be English speaking ones.

In the cases I know of, including my own, one parent is a native Thai speaker, the other native English, kids went to international school. Instruction in the schools is in English, with a few classes per week of Thai language studies. The kids all speak Thai as natives but are weak in reading and writing skills. In my case, I speak Thai quite well and can read and write at a mid-primary level, better than my kid can. It's kind of funny that we think we will need to send him to tutoring to bring his Thai language skills up to par.

Yes, the international businesses all use English and the better jobs require English. But you still need to be proficient in Thai if you want to do business here, or even just be self sufficient in every day affairs.

Given all that, being an employee in Thailand, even with a good education and strong bilingual skills, doesn't really pay well. The only people in Thailand who make money are the owners of businesses, not employees. There's really nothing like the highly paid high tech jobs of which there are many in the west. Unless that changes in the future I will encourage my kid to go work somewhere else if he doesn't have a business of his own.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#180

Post by Symbiote »

jessaustin wrote: post #129
jfaucett wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That seems like English? Anyone from any part of the English-speaking world can understand anyone else from any other part, except there are lots of people from England that none of us can understand.

There are plenty of incomprehensible Americans and Australians etc, precepts you either don't interact with them (poor people?) or you are American / Australian, and don't realise that as a Brit I can have difficult understanding a strong Boston accent.

(I think. One of the characters in "Spotlight" was the most recent time I understood almost nothing.)

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