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Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

nytimes.com

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Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#41

Post by grecy »

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.

I agree wholeheartedly!

That's why I spent 2 years driving from Alaska to Argentina, learning Spanish as I went, and am now spending two years driving right around Africa, learning French and Swahili as I make my way around!

I have learned more in the last 12 months of my life in West Africa than I did in the 34 years that came before...

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#42

Post by Tade0 »

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.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#43

Post by azernik »

jfaucett wrote: post #34
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…

As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language, namely - a flag and an army :) Still, though I think true bilingualism is extremely rare, If by "True" you mean being able to do anything you can in one language in the other language without any hiccups and word-searching and at the same speed and…

Then how about Basque speakers, who almost all speak Spanish? Or Moroccans and Tunisian, whose urban educated populations usually code-switch between Arabic and French?

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#44

Post by p1esk »

joeyspn wrote: post #39
jfaucett wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language, namely - a flag and an army :) Still, though I think true bilingualism is extremely rare, If by "True" you mean being able to do anything you can in one language in the other language without any hiccups and word-searching and at the same speed and…

> As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language A spaniard who doesn't speak catalan won't understand 95% of a normal convo... Catalan [0] is lexically as distant from the spanish as the Portuguese is [1]... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language [1] https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/0…

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

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#45

Post by gnicholas »

> It does take longer to acquire two languages than one, Dr. Hoff said, and that, again, comes back to the exposure.

“A child who is learning two languages will have a smaller vocabulary in each than a child who is only learning one; there are only so many hours in the day, and you’re either hearing English or Spanish,” Dr. Hoff said. The children will be fine, though, she said.

This is the first time I've seen an expert go on record saying that there is some downside (perhaps temporary) of raising a child bilingual. It's all the rage to do so (and I am currently doing so, I'll admit), and everyone loves to talk about how a study showed that bilingual speakers are better at this or that.

But it's important to consider that there is some downside, and for some children - perhaps those without a huge vocabulary to begin with - it might not be the best thing to do.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#46

Post by joeyspn »

p1esk wrote: post #44
joeyspn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language A spaniard who doesn't speak catalan won't understand 95% of a normal convo... Catalan [0] is lexically as distant from the spanish as the Portuguese is [1]... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language [1] https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/0…

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… =)

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#47

Post by hartator »

hkmurakami wrote: post #2

>But if a child grows up speaking that second language — Korean, say — with cousins and grandparents, attending a “Saturday School” that emphasizes the language and the culture, listening to music and even reading books in that language, and visits Korea along the way, that child will end up with a much stronger sense of the language. Did this from Kindergarten through 10th grade. "Saturday School" was a full program…

> maximizing your English skill is imo a better investment of finite cognitive resources.

I wonder in which extent this apply to programming languages.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#48

Post by saint_fiasco »

p1esk wrote: post #44
joeyspn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language A spaniard who doesn't speak catalan won't understand 95% of a normal convo... Catalan [0] is lexically as distant from the spanish as the Portuguese is [1]... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language [1] https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/0…

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

They diverged from a common language, so it's possible for a reader of one language to understand the written form of the other.

However the spoken form diverges much faster than the written form, to the point where it's completely impossible to have an oral conversation.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#49

Post by croisillon »

p1esk wrote: post #44
joeyspn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language A spaniard who doesn't speak catalan won't understand 95% of a normal convo... Catalan [0] is lexically as distant from the spanish as the Portuguese is [1]... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language [1] https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/0…

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

The pronounciation is key here: the Portuguese language "swallows" the words, which makes it difficult to follow for a Spanish speaker; on the contrary Spanish (mainly) is easy to get for a Portuguese speaker.

Re: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

#50

Post by jfaucett »

joeyspn wrote: post #39
jfaucett wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language, namely - a flag and an army :) Still, though I think true bilingualism is extremely rare, If by "True" you mean being able to do anything you can in one language in the other language without any hiccups and word-searching and at the same speed and…

> As a US spanish speaker, saying Catalan is another language is kind of debateable at least IMHO and gets into the interesting difference between a dialect and a language A spaniard who doesn't speak catalan won't understand 95% of a normal convo... Catalan [0] is lexically as distant from the spanish as the Portuguese is [1]... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language [1] https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/0…

> 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 provinces speak a "language" and which ones are speaking a "dialect".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdiVss0X6V0&feature=youtu.be

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