121–130 of 134 posts
This is my dialect! We’ve always attracted linguists because of our unique mix of cultures. For instance, we have lots of words for turkey - guíjalo/guajalote (and various combinations of the two), pavo, ganso real, cócono, and yes, even torque.
in Argentina pavo also is used to refer to someone that is not very intelligent.
Traveling to Europe for the first time last year, my eyes were opened to how many languages there were that you don’t typically hear about in the mainstream. It surprised me to learn there were other languages in Spain other than Spanish (and that the Latin American dialect had key differences to the European one). Likewise that “Italian” is not the main language spoken by many people in Italy, which apparently has a…
Yes, they can. It is very easy.
Each parent only speaks to the child in their own language. That is all.
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The children of immigrants lose languages because their parents are ignorant of basic pedagogy (in most cases the parents just raise the kids in English, then get mad they don't magically know the language they were barely exposed to.)
Presumably, they think they should have full conversations with each other in Korean and Chinese to expose the kid - however as a baby understands that they speak all 3 languages, the baby would default to the most common one (English).
The key here is to establish boundaries of language use e.g.: "I speak Chinese to dad. I speak Korean to mom." The parents should not respond to the child in English - they have to preserve the boundary to encourage the kid to use the other languages.
If one of them uses English with the child, it will greatly weaken or ruin the effect. Adding cartoons, other speakers etc. for these languages helps but isn't as fundamentally necessary as this. You can even add multiple nannies which only speak their own language to the child. (There is some amount of regular exposure needed, but that's not an issue for 2 parents.) The child will pick up English from other children and tv.
Traveling to Europe for the first time last year, my eyes were opened to how many languages there were that you don’t typically hear about in the mainstream. It surprised me to learn there were other languages in Spain other than Spanish (and that the Latin American dialect had key differences to the European one). Likewise that “Italian” is not the main language spoken by many people in Italy, which apparently has a…
> They want to teach their son both, but can’t. Yes, they can. It is very easy. Each parent only speaks to the child in their own language. That is all. ---------------- The children of immigrants lose languages because their parents are ignorant of basic pedagogy (in most cases the parents just raise the kids in English, then get mad they don't magically know the language they were barely exposed to.) Presumably, th…
If the grandparents lived close, that could sort of be an option, but apparently they do not.
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Sadly all too common even with popular languages. I ask my dad why he never taught me Spanish and he just "didn't really think about it". Such a wasted opportunity for free goods.
I was having a related discussion with my wife about why our nephews weren’t taught Spanish as a first language (we live in Texas, their dad is bilingual). Frankly, having English as your first language gives you a much higher advantage in life in the current zeitgeist. There’s no incentive to learn RandomLanguage first, but there is every incentive to learn English first.
Besides, my mom speaks only English anyways. I don't know any bilingual kids I grew up with that ended up having a hard time with English.
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Nope, learning multiple languages from the beginning has been shown to have many benefits. I speak both my native language and English at native levels, simply because I learned my language at home and English in school. Only teaching English is really a waste when you live in an English speaking country, as the child will automatically pick up English through school and friends.
>Nope, learning multiple languages from the beginning has been shown to have many benefits. More to the point: Speaking multiple languages expands your ability to express and describe everything, which leads to having more variety in your lines of thought. Different languages have different ways of thinking, thus speaking multiple languages nurtures an open mind. Source: Me, native English and Japanese speaker.
For example, I remember after finding out what "tsukkomi" and "boke" are in Manzai I started seeing it play itself out in English conversations with my friends. It's kind of weird seeing a concept play out that was there the whole time, but you re-shaped your thinking to observe and categorize it.
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That's BS. They moved there because it was their homeland.
They moved there after hundreds of years of not living there. It was homeland of someone else and they made it their own. But the process was not friendly. Anti-semitism in those other places was also very real .. but the homeland itself was a new place for massive amount of those people and peoples got pushed out.
There were always Jews there, and they didn't push anyone out - the land was very sparsely inhabited. The incoming Jews bought land like anyone would when they move someplace.
The Arabs responded with massacres, instead of just living near their new neighbors. If they had not done that history would be quite different.
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Interestingly, I have often seen in movies with hillbilly characters dubbed to Spanish, their accent is dubbed in andalusian accent. I alway found it quite offensive.
It shouldn't be. Most of the people who went from Spain overseas was from Andalucia, the South American accent came from the Southern Spain. Also, lots of spelling traits in Southern English from the US map 1:1 to Andalusian Spanish, such as omiting vowels between consonants and speaking really fast.
In Argentina they call spaniards gallegos, like from Galicia, the Spanish region north of Portugal.
Do you have an example of omiting vowels between consonants? IMO the whole Spain speaks quite fast.
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It shouldn't be. Most of the people who went from Spain overseas was from Andalucia, the South American accent came from the Southern Spain. Also, lots of spelling traits in Southern English from the US map 1:1 to Andalusian Spanish, such as omiting vowels between consonants and speaking really fast.
I am not sure if that is true (it might be). In Argentina they call spaniards gallegos, like from Galicia, the Spanish region north of Portugal. Do you have an example of omiting vowels between consonants? IMO the whole Spain speaks quite fast.
Reventado -> Reventao Colocado -> Colocao
On vowels between consonants, maybe "tarántula" -> Trántula spelling it really fast in a hurry.
But what I meant with the Andalusian accent being really fast and omiting vowels, they do in a way pretty close to the Southern US English accent.
Also, the Andalusians got a lot of arabisms (more than former Spanish) such as zaguán, babuchas, alcancía, alhaja, alcoba... the same way the Southern US English got lots of borrowings from Spanish.
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A language is a map to reality. More languages means more maps, more conceptual models, more strategies of existence. Consider this: each additional language improves humanity's capacity to evolve and shift, a particularly valuable trait considering the pace of environmental and socioeconomic change. More languages increases the likelihood that humanity will continue to survive and maybe even thrive. (Reality one hun…
That only applies imo if the same individual learns multiple languages; not even half the world is bilingual. The cons that come with increased conflict outweigh the benefits imo. It is way too easy to “other” strangers if you don’t share the same language and general culture. It’s already bad enough when people do share the same language and main culture.
I am personally doubtful that humanity will be able to succeed for more than a few hundred years as a mono-culture. It needs variance (multiple languages) and experimentation (new languages) to evolve and respond to change.
My argument is not about individuals speaking multiple languages, it's about different groups of people adopting different models of reality and trying them out.