

How Bilingual Babies Sort Out Language - Jun8
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/health/views/11klass.html

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ArbitraryLimits
A few years ago when I started having kids, my wife and I were friends with a
couple whose parents were each second generation American Chinese. The
mother's parents' native language was Cantonese, the father's was Mandarin.
They wanted their kids to learn their familes' languages, so the mother would
speak Cantonese to the children, the father would speak Mandarin, and they
figured the kids would pick up English from everyone else.

Once their oldest son came up to me and asked for something in (I think)
Mandarin. I told him in English, "I can't understand you, what do you want?"
and I could almost see the wheels turning inside his head: oh, this guy
doesn't know Mandarin, better try Cantonese. So he said something in Cantonese
and I said the same thing in English and I think I blew his mind. His eyes got
really big and he kind of backed away from me, the way kids do when
something's scary and fascinating at the same time, and ran to get his mom.

He speaks perfect English now, so I guess it all worked out.

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Jun8
My four year-old son is bilingual and he is also learning Mandarin songs and
some words in his daycare. Although I have read about the incredible ability
of young children to learn up to 5 languages at a time in many linguistics
courses, I'm still totally amazed.

From my cursory observations, it seems like learning the words is te easy
part, the grammar is harder to acquire. Up to perhaps three years old, when he
was talking Turkish to us you could easily understand that the underlying
grammar was English, he was just filling the slots with different words. Now,
he has both grammars fairly down (he's making the cute verb past tense over-
generalization mistake, though, i.e. all past tenses are regular with -ed).

His language skills seem to be superior to his friends in both languages. This
is one data point, of course), but I think learning 2-3 languages at once is
beneficial in language development.

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bartonfink
It's really fascinating. At 2 months old, my daughter reacted differently when
people spoke German around her instead of the English my wife and I primarily
speak at home. It's the same reaction when my wife and I speak German to her
as well, so she's almost certainly not reacting to "new" people. Now, we're
trying to speak bilingually as often as possible (which is hard as hell
because neither of us is fluent in German - merely conversational). Hopefully
it will stick and our daughter will still get some benefit.

~~~
maaku
It'll stick better if each of you are consistent with the language you use
when speaking to her. Even if it's not your native language, one of you make
the leap and talk to her only in German

(My wife and I are raising our daughter English/Mandarin bilingual.)

