181–190 of 228 posts
One thing I wish us native English speakers did was work on fixing English - spelling in particular, but also the irregular grammar. English is so much harder to learn that it needs to be.
>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…
It's not obvious that speaking second language better will come out at the expense of English. I grew up bilingual and was at the top of my class for my second language compared to monolingual natives. There are whole countries of bilingual/trilingual people in Europe who speak their main language very well still. I think knowing a second (and later third) language gave me a better understanding of language structure…
I'm far from considering myself multilingual, but if I could somehow trade a part of my English skill for a magical boost in my native language I would gladly take it: half of my English abilities would still be plenty for understanding the occasional stackoverflow post, this place here would be just fine without my contributions and ordering food at a restaurant is actually easier when you can fully embrace the "helpless tourist" level. In my natural language, one level better might be the deciding difference between writing as a necessity and writing as a selling point.
A minimum of bilingualism is probably the norm in India and trilingualism is very common (I myself speak Hindi, Tamil, and English fluently, and a smattering of Kannada). It is not all that unusual to find people who speak 4-5 languages fluently also.
> “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-runni…
Not OP. I can speak 3 Indian languages and English. My English is better than native English speakers, I know that because I got above average points in IELTS.
Yes when you are learning as a kid things will be little show at first but most kids (sample size of my Indian friends who are trilinguals as well) will be fine after some years.
My son spent his first six years in San Francisco. Canadian dad, Japanese mom. He went to Japanese preschool and spent close to two years (kindergarten, most of grade one) in a Mandarin immersion public school. We moved to Japan after that. His younger sister (three years his junior) began French immersion in Japan. Actually, a truly French school, started by French parents living in Japan. Since our son was working…
I 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.
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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 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…
I don't really think any of that really matters very much though, honestly. People think of languages as distinct, separate things, but in practice I find that our brains treat them more as collections of words and ideas. If you listen to kids who are bilingual in the same pair of languages, you often see that they freely mix words from both - which is fine since they both understand both. I do this sometimes as well.
The most important thing is learning those collections of words an ideas through exposure. For kids, I find the ideal is to speak with other kids. Speaking with parents/adults is good too, but (as I said) it should be natural and not forced.
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.
Try watching an English person ask an American (in the US) for water or where the herbs are.
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> 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 indeed has "only" two genders, one too many for my taste.