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Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

nytimes.com

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Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#111

Post by geomark »

cheesedoodle wrote: post #73

"Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability" I have to agree with one of the Indian commentator that this does not signal language abillity but rather the lack of vocabulary. Me and my wife are doing our best trying to raise our children multilingual (three mother tongues). The use of drop in words only means to us that we dont know the right word in the current speaking langua…

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.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#112

Post by noisy_boy »

I think a good mix is when your family speaks one language, you speak another in your school with friends and you still have to learn English because one must learn English. That was the setting I grew up in and it allowed enough exposure/practice for me to become very fluent in all three.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#113

Post by Manishearth »

geomark wrote: post #111
cheesedoodle wrote: post #73

"Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability" I have to agree with one of the Indian commentator that this does not signal language abillity but rather the lack of vocabulary. Me and my wife are doing our best trying to raise our children multilingual (three mother tongues). The use of drop in words only means to us that we dont know the right word in the current speaking langua…

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.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#114

Post by vacri »

geomark wrote: post #109
lucaspiller wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Well, you can't literally have no accent. I think that the GP means that there is no 'tell' that the people are eastern european when they speak.

In the UK itself, it's estimated that there's a different regional accent every 25 miles or so.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#115

Post by hiyer »

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.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#116

Post by shioyama »

kalleboo wrote: post #98
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…

I think the anecdotes I've mostly heard use that tactic as a way of forcing the kid to speak both languages - "with mom you speak this language, with dad you speak this one" - otherwise the kid will be exposed to both languages but will gravitate to only speaking one. This is what happened to me when I grew up, living in the US my parents would speak Swedish at home, but I'd pretty much just speak English all the tim…

Even so, I find "forcing" a kid to speak a language via any sort of artificial "rules" (i.e. one language with one parent, etc) is counter-productive, and can have potentially negative consequences if the kid learns to dislike a language.

My rule of thumb is we never force our kids to speak one language or another, we just try to give them opportunities and motivations to do so. Going to a different country happens to be a particularly effective one, although obviously not feasible for everyone.

I am also ok with the possibility that they will not speak my native language (English) very well. I think if as a parent you are not okay with that possibility, you will end up putting undue burden on the kids and probably make things worse in the end.

Just my two cents.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#117

Post by GuiA »

Manishearth wrote: post #107
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 relati…

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

Yes. The core target audience of the article is likely unilingual families who will put their kid in French/Chinese/whatever classes to give them a leg up for Harvard admissions, 15 years later (or, in the NYTime's subtle language: "parents who want to give their kids a bilingual boost").

Obviously if the kid only speaks the language in the context of a classroom, true fluency will never be reached. In a realistic context, true multilingualism is very achievable, and not particularly exceptional throughout most of the world as many other commenters have pointed out.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#118

Post by sliverstorm »

hueving wrote: post #25
grecy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're committed to living in the States I think you have to be insane to not travel. The learning opportunities it presents are unparalleled. The world would be a much better place if every person living in a developed country were forced to spend a year living in a different one during high school, for example. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely…

>I think you have to be insane to not travel. The learning opportunities it presents are unparalleled. It depends on what you mean by 'travel'. I think spending anything less than a month in a place just makes it more like a visit to a theme park than anything enlightening.

Ok, but by that definition, virtually no one travels.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#119

Post by vacri »

joeyspn wrote: post #46
p1esk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I thought Spanish and Portuguese are extremely similar, so that a native speaker of one should understand most of the other.

Yeah, that’s a common misconception, but the reality is different. Just because they’re in the same linguistic group (Romance-derived languages) doesn’t mean they’re the same. It’s like saying that german, dutch and english (Germanic languages) are extremely similar… =)

while English has germanic grammar, 40% of its words come from romance/french origins, so it really is a mongrel language. Word origins in english are roughly 30/30/25/15 french/latin/germanic/other, with more fancy words ('newspaper english'[1]) from romance and more daily words from germanic.

[1]https://youtu.be/2OynrY8JCDM?t=6m43s - interesting video overall

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#120

Post by ue_ »

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'…

Your "bi-cultural" point is interesting, and I don't know how much it is seriously explored. Do you think it's possible for someone with no prior connection to a place to "adopt" the culture by living there? Judging by one's personal feeling, perhaps, but can the same be said about how others might consider you? The reaction your classmates faced seems to exemplify this dichotomy.

Your point about the chimpanzee analogy, if I may say, was saddening to hear given the apparently (to me) growing acceptance of people from different backgrounds and histories joining into various societies. I don't know if I could live with that kind of thinking about me; I don't want to make people uncomfortable. I don't want to be treated specially either. I would prefer to be like everyone else, which for all practical purposes I would be, except where I grew up and my physical characteristics.

I'd appreciate your opinion on whether you think attitudes have changed, or that they might change, especially in Japan? Or will I remain the eternal foreigner if I were to ever live there?

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