My 18 month old daughter has a full time nanny who has spoken to her only in Spanish (at our request) since she was 3 months old; my wife and I speak to her only in English, and we don't speak any Spanish. It's been really fascinating to see what my daughter chooses to say in Spanish instead of English: always agua (her first word), siéntate ("sit"), mas ("more"), wacala (spanish slang for "yucky" - for poop)... other words, she can interchange depending on who she speaks to. Sometimes I can't understand her, and can't tell if she's trying to tell me something in Spanish, or her diction just isn't good enough yet. I suspect it's the latter, I think she's already adept enough at recognizing mommy and daddy don't speak Spanish...
When your child speaks a language you don’t
61–70 of 96 posts
Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t
#62My children (ages 5 and 3) were born and raised in Germany. We only speak spanish at home. They both went to day-care very early.
Today they speak like natives. When they play alone or between them, they do it in german, and while I defend myself in german quite good, he corrects me all the time, especially with the right pronunciation.
Sad true is, lot of people, including educators are ignorant about multilinguism. They did at some point ask me and my wife to speak german at home with them because they were behind with the language.
I will not even mention stupid ideas politicians have had about the topic.
Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t
#63I can speak two other languages fluently, but I live in England and neither of those two other languages are native. As such, my infant son rarely hears them. I know others in my situation who have given up, resigning themselves to being able to help with language homework. I'm tempted to push on though, much like the (possibly misguided) attempts of a man to speak to his son only in Klingon for the first three years…
Far be it for me to suggest to another how to raise their child. If it were up to me I'd so totally stick with it. The insane pace of development in these early years will never happen again. Another language is another life. The mind is also very good at adaptation, so anything you teach incorrectly today will auto-align/correct when your son is older and experiences that culture for real. What you're doing takes courage. Respect.
Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t
#64I don't understand the authors point of view.
My toddler is teaching me Spanish.
I am not being left behind, I am simply catching up.
Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t
#65The sentence, "The truth is this: I think Noa is raising us as much as we are raising her." and the paragraph it heads really resonated with me as a parent of a young child.
Upon seeing the title, I expected the article to be about the unknown languages infants sometimes seem to invent. We speak two languages to our son, but my wife and I both understand each language quite well. Our son was very vocal as an infant, but less than half of his words were English or Portuguese. He's nearly three now, but he'll still use some of his invented words to unnecessarily lengthen phrases. I imagine this is to mimic adults who express themselves with more words. He may believe that longer phrases are given more consideration as he tends to do this more often when making a request with a small chance of success, like asking for another treat after being told he can only have one.
Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
That babies can learn multiple languages with ease is a surprise to no one in the world. Only surprise is that education systems around the world continue to waste so many years of people's lives trying to teach them additional languages when they're teenagers, instead of having done the bulk of the work when they were babies, the way that nature's been doing it successfully for tens of thousands (or more) years.
What works for babies does not necessarily for adults. L1 and L2 acquisition are quite different.
This is actually a somewhat controversial claim, academically. There's pretty strong evidence for a "critical period" for acquiring a native-sounding accent, and some evidence that certain adult learners still occasionally mess up minor grammatical details after decades of immersion. But other studies suggest that language-learning ability trails off gradually with age in much the same way that, say, physical ability does. A 35-year-old can still get in pretty good shape if they work at it.
I know plenty of people whose language-learning strategy is basically, "Put myself in situations where I need to use the language and I can puzzle things out. If I get curious, maybe look something up once in a while." It's not quite like childhood acquisition, but neither is it a completely different process.
Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t
#67I have a friend who grew up in a home where her mom and grandma spoke to her only in Spanish and her dad only spoke to her in English. She was surprised when she went to Kindergarten and her teacher spoke English. She thought Spanish was what women spoke and that English was for men.
She thought Spanish was what women spoke and that English was for men.
I know a woman who grew up in Germany, and whose parents spoke Polish at home.
As a child she was convinced that German was for children, and Polish is the language you speak when you've grown up.
Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly disagree, and the education system approach is provably a massive failure in this regard. That's all I'll say for now.
You can't just "disagree". This is a matter which science (linguistics specifically) has lots of research on.
If you're just saying that they're not perfectly identical, then that's obvious, you've said nothing. What I'm replying to is your implication that they're vastly different. Science shows that they're not as vastly different as the education system assumes.
Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly disagree, and the education system approach is provably a massive failure in this regard. That's all I'll say for now.
The grandparent's point is correct, although he didn't say anything about formalized education. You inserted that yourself.
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Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t
#70This is almost OK. Wait until you have twin boys, like me. They are 20 months now, grown at home, no day care ( KiTa as in Germany ;Kindergarden is later on). They don't speak, but very few words with a meaning ( mama, papa, apa ). But! Here it comes: they speak between them and communicate using a almost invented language. The language is so strange, because is based on using the same word ( twin 1 uses 'bahdi', twi…
Idioglossia, very common among twins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioglossia