

Bilingual babies are precocious decision-makers - wynand
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13489730&source=hptextfeature

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jimbokun
Anyone here have kids, and intentionally raised them bilingual?

I am more interested in anecdotes of trying to raise bilingual kids in a
monolingual home. My wife speaks some Italian, and I speak some Japanese, but
we are both native English speakers, living in the U.S. My two kids are early
elementary school age, and I fear the clock is running for them to have any
chance of something approaching native fluency in another language. "Move to
another country" is of course one option, but there are many other factors
involved in that decision.

~~~
benhoyt
Yes. My wife's from Namibia and her mother tongue is Afrikaans (but she speaks
English as well as we do). We try to speak mostly Afrikaans to our daughter
Marica, who's now two. Our theory is that "she'll learn English anyway", and
that's definitely what's happening (we speak mostly English to each other).

I've been learning Afrikaans as Marica does -- which is actually a great way
to learn, because you start at "kid level" and get tons of practice
conversing. Still, I have to resort to English quite a bit.

You'd almost think she'd learn half as fast, because she's learning two
languages at the same time. But it's pretty much the opposite -- she's
significantly ahead of most kids her age in _both_ languages.

I'm biased, of course, but what I read in that article really matches up to
our experience with Marica. So I rate the bilingual thing. But you really have
to use that second language -- plan to speak it 100% of the time, and you'll
end up with at least 50%. :-)

~~~
secret
I can personally vouch for that theory that "she'll learn English anyway." My
parents were both raised in the US and speak fluent English, but I was only
spoken to in Spanish. At the time I started school, English as a Second
Language programs didn't exist and I nonetheless learned English in class
without realizing it in probably a few months.

As for learning both languages faster, I'm not entirely sure, but I only have
one data point, so make of it what you will: my younger brother did not start
speaking until a much older age than I did, but when he began, he spoke both
languages at the same level a child would if he only knew one. (He had been
spoken to in English and Spanish all along).

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tokenadult
Duplicate submission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=566190>

It's really important when submitting articles from the Economist (which are
usually well worth submitting) to search first for duplicates, as HN's
automated duplicate detection is flummoxed by the many dissimilar URLs
assigned to each Economist story. If you see the link after the Economist
print edition has already been delivered, the link has probably already been
submitted.

~~~
knightinblue
What if the link is to an older story that was submitted a while back?

I ask because there's plenty of new readers everyday on HN who most probably
have never seen the link the first time it was submitted.

~~~
tokenadult
That's why submitting the canonical URL is preferred, because the HN duplicate
detector then upvotes the original submission, and takes you (the submitter)
to that thread.

But The Economist doesn't make this easy by posting stories with so many
different URLs. I've gradually figured out which form of the URL is the main
form, and try to submit Economist stories that way. Those tend to be the
first-submitted URLs here on HN.

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compay
The reason why some children from bilingual households stuggle in school
probably has more to do with the economic and social challenges immigrants
usually face; not because of bilingualism.

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FraaJad
It would have been interesting to see the study done in an Indian city. Most
are multilingual and have near-native fluency in those languages.

