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Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

nytimes.com

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Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#101

Post by ice109 »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #96

Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability I'm trilangual and that statement is complete BS. I would trade the decent mastery of three languages for complete mastery of one any day of the week. No one cares that I'm fluent in French or Polish expect for when I pronounce French words properly or can order two beers at a bar on a biz trip. People do notice that I tend to reel for…

I don't understand this. as long as it's obvious that you're multilingual people don't hold it against you when you make mistakes. on the other hand I have a friend whose bilingual with no accent in English and has trouble some times. people must think there's something wrong with him.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#102

Post by ice109 »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #96

Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability I'm trilangual and that statement is complete BS. I would trade the decent mastery of three languages for complete mastery of one any day of the week. No one cares that I'm fluent in French or Polish expect for when I pronounce French words properly or can order two beers at a bar on a biz trip. People do notice that I tend to reel for…

I don't understand this. as long as it's obvious that you're multilingual people don't hold it against you when you make mistakes. on the other hand I have a friend whose bilingual with no accent in English and has trouble some times. people must think there's something wrong with him.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#103

Post by geomark »

veidr wrote: post #91
hkmurakami wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I forgot to note. My Japanese is so good that very rarely can someone discern that I didn't grow up in Japan (it's usually through mannerisms or attitude that they glean that I have some foreign background). But even then, I've experienced a glaring lack of cultural fluency that only comes with spending a lot of time in the society. A lot of unwritten rules and customs that we all take for granted for…

I think that's a really interesting point, somewhat orthogonal to language mastery itself, and probably particularly impactful in Japan. A kid might grow up with perfect Japanese and be able to say anything, but choosing what to say can be another matter; how to make or respond to a request, how to deal with an affront, how to present yourself in a hiring interview, or a first meeting with a girlfriend's father... I'…

This was thought provoking for me since I am raising a child in Thailand and there seem to be many parallels. Surprising to me is that despite being surrounded by the local language my child has chosen English as his first language. It seems to be due to my constant interaction with him plus he gravitated to English media at a very early age, particularly YouTube videos of American kids unboxing and playing with toys. Your comment about needing to live in the culture to be "full-" versus how quickly one can become "full-Californian" is kind of amusing but I think it is true.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#104

Post by petecox »

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…

Why would an American not get a passport? You have French-speaking Quebec and a collection of Spanish speaking nations right on your doorstep.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#105

Post by Manishearth »

Tade0 wrote: post #42
freyfogle wrote: post #6

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. I live in Catalonia, it is very normal for locals to be fully fluent in Catalan and Spanish, I've seen the same in the Basque region. Go to India and almost every person you meet at all levels of society sp…

I don't think it really counts if you speak two languages from the same group that are spoken in the same territory.

Define "territory".

Does India count? China? Russia? Spain? France?

India has tons of mutually unintelligible languages. China does too (some call them dialects). Spain has multiple partially mutually intelligible languages -- and Basque is an isolate (and mutually unintelligible). IIRC Occitan and French are not that compatible either.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#106

Post by ice109 »

joeyspn wrote: post #58
jfaucett wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A spaniard who doesn't speak catalan won't understand 95% of a normal convo I don't know if I'd go that far. I just youtubed catalan and would say I understood about 75-80% of what this guy is saying. [1] Also, I mainly meant that statement ironically :) Catalan is its own language, its just funny to me that "dialect" is a negative term, language is not, and usually the big country with the military dictates which…

Yeah that man speaks slowly what appears to be the variant of catalan spoken in France... I'm referring to something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-OXwRP5A9E Spanish speakers will notice a lot of "familiar words", but most of the time it's difficult for them to extrapolate the meaning of what is being said.

I speak shit Spanish (very weak third language) and even I can get the gist of what they're talking about. I'll admit all the stuff around the rolling rs is very hard to make out though.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#107

Post by Manishearth »

freyfogle wrote: post #6

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. I live in Catalonia, it is very normal for locals to be fully fluent in Catalan and Spanish, I've seen the same in the Basque region. Go to India and almost every person you meet at all levels of society sp…

I was really taken aback by the first line.

For context, I'm trilingual (used to be bilingual).

I grew up near Boston. A quarter of the kids in my class were bilingual. I don't know how many had native proficiency in their non-English language, but I'm guessing most.

So I thought maybe "true" bilingualism was some hard to attain thing that none of us had. Nope, it just means "native proficiency". AIUI that's a relatively common thing, even in the US, at least in urban areas. And definitely in other countries.

There probably was some local skew in this sample set, but from what I can tell this is definitely not abnormal in cities.

The article seems to be mostly written in the context of unilingual parents who want a bilingual child.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#108

Post by veidr »

geomark wrote: post #103
veidr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a really interesting point, somewhat orthogonal to language mastery itself, and probably particularly impactful in Japan. A kid might grow up with perfect Japanese and be able to say anything, but choosing what to say can be another matter; how to make or respond to a request, how to deal with an affront, how to present yourself in a hiring interview, or a first meeting with a girlfriend's father... I'…

This was thought provoking for me since I am raising a child in Thailand and there seem to be many parallels. Surprising to me is that despite being surrounded by the local language my child has chosen English as his first language. It seems to be due to my constant interaction with him plus he gravitated to English media at a very early age, particularly YouTube videos of American kids unboxing and playing with toys…

That's interesting. There are many toy unboxing videos in Japanese, so although my kids were as addicted as many 2-4 years olds are, it didn't bias them toward English.

That is a fascinating genre of product, BTW; at first it freaked me out how many grown men were making toy unboxing videos obviously aimed at preliterate 2-year-olds. Then I saw the view counts, which are upwards of 100 million in some cases...

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#109

Post by geomark »

lucaspiller wrote: post #67
charlesism wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what one means by truly bilingual. In the context of this article, I took it to mean "no accent" and able to speak in one language as comfortably as the other. Bilingual people are a dime a dozen, but it's fair to say truly bilingual people are pretty rare, and almost invariably learned both languages at a young age.

I'd argue that it again depends on the region - as GP said in some places it's very common to speak multiple languages. I'm English and live in Lithuania now, and many of my Lithuanian friends can speak perfectly good English without an 'accent'. It's also not uncommon to speak a third language like Russian or Polish, especially if the family has their roots in that country. These languages do have some shared sounds…

A bit OT but the idea of no accent is kind of funny. My kid goes to an international school in Thailand. I hear my kid's classmates speak English with Australian, British, Canadian and northeastern American accents plus an accent we call "international school accent". I'm from California and of course I think I don't have an accent. Same as those kids and their parents. Yet I have a hard time understanding some of them.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#110

Post by Manishearth »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #96

Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability I'm trilangual and that statement is complete BS. I would trade the decent mastery of three languages for complete mastery of one any day of the week. No one cares that I'm fluent in French or Polish expect for when I pronounce French words properly or can order two beers at a bar on a biz trip. People do notice that I tend to reel for…

> Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability

I think I'll caveat that with "in the presence of other bilinguals". I am trilingual (formerly bilingual) and I, as well as people I share >1 languages with, freely switch when talking. It's quite liberating since you get access to idioms from multiple languages, and certain phrasings work out better. (There's also a lot more potential for great humor)

None of the adult bilinguals I know accidentally switch in the presence of non-bilinguals, however I have seen bilingual kids a few years younger than me do this (and I suspect I did it too).

In the context of kid mistakes, that quote was rather jarring to me; adult bilinguals do not switch languages the same way kids do; it's a completely different thing.

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