Bringing Up Babel

You would not believe how much crap my partner and I had to put up with for raising our children bilingual. "You're going to confuse them." "That's so difficult." "They're going to do poorly in school." Or even "oh, that'll help them get a job!" (No, that is stupidest reason to raise a kid bilingual.)

I'm glad there's a little bit of a reversal in views on this, now.

Re: Bringing Up Babel

#6

Post by nmalaguti » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 11:20 PM UTC

We use the term "programming language," but I wonder how much like learning a real language it actually is. Will we see some of the same benefits as bilingual individuals?

Does learning multiple programming languages make it easier to learn other languages in adulthood?

Re: Bringing Up Babel

#7

Post by thwee » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 12:15 AM UTC

As a bilingual speaker: For someone ostensibly trying to fight stereotypes around bilingualism, this article sure covers all the stereotypes without doing much to dispel them. But I guess an article stating: Listen up, my kid speaks two languages! wouldn't have met word count. They're individuals who have two language tools at their disposal instead of just one.

Re: Bringing Up Babel

#8

Post by thwee » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 12:16 AM UTC

nmalaguti wrote: post #6

We use the term "programming language," but I wonder how much like learning a real language it actually is. Will we see some of the same benefits as bilingual individuals? Does learning multiple programming languages make it easier to learn other languages in adulthood?

Well, there's language types, if you get into Comparative Programming Languages. There's imperative languages, query languages, object oriented languages, and mixes thereof. Maybe we could call them programming accents.

Re: Bringing Up Babel

#9

Post by thwee » Sun, Oct 16, 2016, 12:20 AM UTC

thwee wrote: post #8

nmalaguti wrote: post #6

We use the term "programming language," but I wonder how much like learning a real language it actually is. Will we see some of the same benefits as bilingual individuals? Does learning multiple programming languages make it easier to learn other languages in adulthood?

Well, there's language types, if you get into Comparative Programming Languages. There's imperative languages, query languages, object oriented languages, and mixes thereof. Maybe we could call them programming accents.

Imagine what that would do to dispel listing a key word list of languages ever touched, if we could just say, I know how to work with loops and functions, or I can compose systems of objects, or I know that a database can store, retrieve, and manipulate data. No more "I know C, C++, C++11, Javascript 5, Javascript 6, Python 2.7, Python 3.5!" If you're that dependent on people not looking up the syntax when they need to, you're either hacking into a computer at the site of the computer, or have no idea what the job entails.