
Raising a Truly Bilingual Child - wallflower
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/well/family/raising-a-truly-bilingual-child.html
======
hkmurakami
>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 that followed the Japanese Ministry of Education's requirements for
accreditation (since in my era, most students went back to Japan after their
parents' 4-6 year stint in the US office). I do notice that my Japanese is
stronger than that of my peers who stopped going to these schools at a much
earlier age.

>“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.

For me, this was a big problem since my English vocabulary remained quite weak
compared to my peers all the way through high school (mainly because I had a
strong preference for reading Japanese material at home). The general lack of
confidence in a broad range of English skills is a long lasting effect that is
orthogonal to my actual knowledge or skills.

I'm a "true bilingual" but I don't know if I'd want my imaginary children to
be the same. If you're committed to living in the States, maximizing your
English skill is imo a better investment of finite cognitive resources. My
personal feeling is that being highly proficient at English and being "okay"
at a second language works out well, but at the same time I know many friends
of Asian descent who are self conscious of their "child-like" use of their
second language. A conundrum.

~~~
grecy
> _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 on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable
views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner
of the earth all one 's lifetime_

\- Mark Twain

~~~
hueving
>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.

~~~
grecy
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...

~~~
rak00n
If you don't mind me asking, what did you learn?

~~~
grecy
I am still honestly consolidating it, so here's a random unfiltered list.

I learned the western media is only a fraction of the truth, and often for
various degrees of "truth". There are hundreds of millions of people being
impacted by how I choose to live in the western world. Those people want the
same things I want. Those people are extremely kind, friendly and generous -
about a million times more than people in the western world (yes, West
Africans make Canadians look unfriendly)

Self-sufficiency is a great thing. People friendly gets you a long way, even
with guys with guns. Being polite is the best way to get ahead. The entire
world is severely corrupt, many developed countries just have a different word
for it, like lobbying. Many international corporations are evil and severely
fu __ing up the planet and millions of people who live in it. A massive number
of foreigners in West Africa are making it worse, not better.

I'll write a book about my trip, which will not be random, and I will flesh
out many more points in detail.

[http://theroadchoseme.com](http://theroadchoseme.com)

------
freyfogle
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 speaks several languages.

In many parts of the world bilingualism is the norm.

I don't recall the exact book, but I remember reading a Jared Diamond book
about societies in remote Papua New Guinea and meeting indigenous peoples who
all spoke several different languages. If I recall correctly he argues that
being monolingual is the historic oddity.

~~~
jfaucett
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 eloquence and
precision in all possible situations and contexts.

I've studied at a university level in 3 different languages and am highly
fluent in all of them, still there are a lot of contexts where I don't know
the specific vocabulary in one particular language or might have problems
finding the right word in one language because I'm getting interference from
the other ones.

Also, I've known a lot of bi/tri/quad linguals in my life (whole family,
extended family, friends, etc), and in my studies and I have yet to encounter
even one truely bilingual person as I defined it above.

~~~
joeyspn
> 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language)

[1] [https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/lexical-distance-
among...](https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/lexical-distance-among-
languages-of-europe/)

~~~
p1esk
Interesting, I thought Spanish and Portuguese are extremely similar, so that a
native speaker of one should understand most of the other.

~~~
joeyspn
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… =)

~~~
jeeceebees
German and Dutch _are_ extremely similar. As a fluent Dutch speaker without
any formal German lessons whatsoever I can read German pretty well. Speaking
and understanding are more difficult, but I'd say most Dutch/Germans would be
able to make smalltalk in a bar if they took it slow and used a lot of hand
gestures.

------
ldd
>True bilingualism is a relatively rare and a beautiful thing(...) Highly
competent bilingualism is probably more common in other countries, since many
children growing up in the United States aren’t exposed to other languages.

I acknowledge that this article is aimed at Americans, but I don't really
think that bilingualism is rare in the world, or for that matter, in certain
parts of the USA.

Perhaps this is not relevant to the article, but it seems that bilingualism is
a forgotten issue these days in the USA. Yet, it is actually a very important
issue. One time a person simply told me that they couldn't see the point in
Junot Díaz work because it used so many 'foreign' words.

At the time of writing this reply, there were already plenty of other replies
that suggested that we should all speak English exclusively or at least that
speaking English proficiently should be prioritized. I think that they are
probably at least partially right, but it surprises me that there is really
not a lot of controversy on this topic.

All I am saying is that here we have a perfect topic in which humans are not
entirely rational, and instead of being puzzled and talking about it, we just
simply forget about it.

[edited for clarity. Like Celia said, my English is not very good looking, so
I'd appreciate corrections :D]

~~~
kutkloon7
True. People from Switzerland or Luxembourg often speak 3 or more languages
fluently. A lot of other people in Europe speak their native language and a
bit of English as well.

I don't feel Americans appreciate the luxury of speaking a language that is
basically the lingua franca of the Western world.

Also, sometimes I feel that many people don't realize that there is a wealth
of information that is in Latin, Greek, Russian, or Mandarin. What's not
English doesn't exist for them. In this way, the world is still divided in
some sense.

~~~
muninn_
Well sure, but what's the point of learning another language if you're an
American if you will almost without exception not ever need to speak anything
other than English in the United States? Even if English wasn't the lingua
franca what would the point be? Conversely in Europe you're surrounded by a
ton of other languages, of course it makes sense to learn them. If they spoke
French in Oregon, Spanish in California, and Dutch in Colorado Americans would
be just as bil-/tri- lingual as Europeans are. It just doesn't make sense to
be.

~~~
interfixus
The point would be something called broadening your outlook.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Learning a language is pointless as well as very very difficult if you have no
opportunity to use it. I never got really far spending a coupple of years
learning Chinese in the states, but got really far spending 6 months in china
doing the same.

Learning French doesn't broaden your horizons. Using French does.

------
wvh
I'm raising my 3-year-old bilingually – I speak 6 languages myself, although 2
are somewhat rusty. It's hard, because my native language is the underdog as
it's pretty much just me talking with her. She understands what I say, but
replies always in mommy's language. It forces you to switch languages if you
want to have a fluent back-and-forth conversation instead of something that
just peters out. If you want true bilinguality, as the minority language
speaker, you have to be willing to push and fight, and sometimes feel on the
outside yourself.

When she was younger, it was sometimes heartbreaking to read a picture book
where she knew some words in one language, and then the other parent comes in
and all the words change.

Kids' minds are amazing though. I sometimes speak some English or French (not
our native languages) with her as a game, and the speed with which those words
stick is unbelievable – their minds are just sponges. Last week she threw some
random French words at guests, confusing them to no end.

------
JohnGB
> “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.

That is rubbish. It depends on how the child is exposed to the various
languages and how much exposure they get. My daughter speaks 3 languages at
home (one to each adult). We were told exactly this that she would be behind
language wise, but we made sure that she was read stories in each of the
languages, and had good exposure. She has just started at a bilingual school,
and her monolingual English teacher has told us that she is far ahead of the
rest of her class language wise.

Yes, this may be an outlier, but every family that I know that has bilingual
or more children and who expose the children to enough of each language have
children that are ahead of the norm in each of those languages.

If however you simply split the time that you would give in language related
activities or conversation between multiple languages, then of course the
child will be behind in each one, as you've only exposed them to half the
language in each. This is true up to about 7 years old, and non-existent after
that anyway.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>her monolingual English teacher has told us that she is far ahead of the rest
of her class language wise //

How do you know what her ability in English would be if she'd not had the
other 2 languages. Like I've of the languages could have buoyed it up but the
other overloaded her and reduced her overall vocabulary. Or many other
possibilities.

Surely the truth is you hypothesise it had no effect but without re-running
her life you can't know one way or the other?

What do you mean with your last sentence, it's entirely incoherent to me?

~~~
sumedh
> How do you know what her ability in English would be if she'd not had the
> other 2 languages.

Not OP. I can speak 3 Indian languages and English. My English is better than
native English speakers, I know that because I got above average points in
IELTS.

Yes when you are learning as a kid things will be little show at first but
most kids (sample size of my Indian friends who are trilinguals as well) will
be fine after some years.

~~~
resf
I think by "better" you mean "more properly" ;)

I'm sure IELTS doesn't cover important life skills such as "use of the word
innit".

------
spraak
Somewhat related is an experiment I've been doing with my child, where the
only media I've introduced to them (since birth) is in a language other than
English (we live in the US). Usually this is Swedish or German, which are the
languages I know best besides English, but sometimes Spanish, French,
Japanese, Korean etc. etc.

What I've found is that they have a play/babble language of their own that
sounds like a mix of mostly Swedish and German. We talk together in this
language at times, too. Sometimes they even have asked me what the English
word for an idea/thing they've learned or experienced in German or Swedish.
Another time they asked me what "zum Beispiel and till Eksempel" mean! which
amazed me because they obviously connected that they both mean the same thing
("for example").

In real life (i.e. not at home watching movies) they can hold conversations
with Germans and Swedes, too.

At this point they're not truly bilingual, but it's been really fun and
interesting to see how much they have learned, and makes available for them in
the future, as with deeper study and practice they could be truly
multilingual.

~~~
wingerlang
> till Eksempel

In Swedish it should be "till exempel".

~~~
spraak
Thanks! I meant to edit that but I think it was too late. I've learned some
Danish and Norwegian as well and get them mixed up sometimes.

------
arde
> screen time doesn't count

Absolutely false. Screen time is an excellent way of exposing the child to a
language and thus learning to distinguish the phonemes that make it up. It can
be argued that screen time alone doesn't help too much in learning to speak a
language (if by screen we mean a non-interactive one, of course). But it's
great for listening comprehension.

Source: starting when she was a baby, I let my kid watch as much TV as she
wanted as long as it was in English and not in our language (Spanish). She
watched about 2 hours a day, on average. Her mother and I are quite fluent in
English and, even though we rarely speak it among us, we encouraged our child
to learn it this way, occasionally answering her questions or translating the
words that she couldn't figure out by herself. She's now 6 and speaks it
pretty well, she can easily maintain a conversation and she is very good at
identifying the correct phonemes while listening (even in the cases when she
may not know the word). Actually, she's better at listening comprehension than
what her mother and I could ever hope to achieve ourselves. Differentiating
phonemes is a crucial ability that is learnt optimally at an early age and
after only a few years old it cannot be learnt that well (I remember reading
an article about this limitation in Scientific American more than 20 years
ago, I don't have a link for that).

~~~
aqsalose
"Screen time" is also a great motivator to learn any language, if the fancy
entertainment on the screen you'd like to understand is in a language you
don't yet understand. (Similar effects apply to the written communication, of
course.)

However, this is coming from my "learning a new language as a teenager /
adult" experience than "raising bilingual kid" viewpoint, but it seems
sensible that it would be also a powerful incentive for small kids, too.

~~~
arde
It is a very good incentive for small kids as long as they are interested in
watching TV and in the particular content shown. But not all kids like to stay
quiet watching TV, some really need physical exertion and can't sit down.

------
matthewaveryusa
Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language
ability

I'm trilangual and that statement is complete BS. I would trade the decent
mastery of three languages for complete mastery of one any day of the week. No
one cares that I'm fluent in French or Polish expect for when I pronounce
French words properly or can order two beers at a bar on a biz trip. People do
notice that I tend to reel for pretty basic words in English. I guess it's
always a matter of perspective.

~~~
Manishearth
> Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language
> ability

I think I'll caveat that with "in the presence of other bilinguals". I am
trilingual (formerly bilingual) and I, as well as people I share >1 languages
with, freely switch when talking. It's quite liberating since you get access
to idioms from multiple languages, and certain phrasings work out better.
(There's also a lot more potential for great humor)

None of the adult bilinguals I know _accidentally_ switch in the presence of
non-bilinguals, however I have seen bilingual kids a few years younger than me
do this (and I suspect I did it too).

In the context of kid mistakes, that quote was rather jarring to me; adult
bilinguals do not switch languages the same way kids do; it's a _completely_
different thing.

~~~
vacri
I used to work with a Thai office manager, who'd speak bilingually on the
phone to her parents. I noticed that she'd switch to English when the comment
was about something negative. Not necessarily severe, but things like "oh, we
have to wait until wednesday?". Maybe she switched to English for 'negative
idioms'?

Her Thai sounded light and bubbly, so the effect was magnified. I have no idea
if she also said negative things in Thai, but almost all the English speech
was in some way negative. She got on well with her parents and was never in a
poor mood after speaking with them, so it's unlikely she was wholly negative
in both languages. Curious.

Similarly on idioms, many years ago I knew a woman who spent a year of high
school in Finland. She said that it was apparently common to use the English
phrase for "I love you", because the Finnish phrase was harsh and tended to
'kill the mood' a bit.

~~~
Manishearth
Interesting!

For me, _French_ is the language I like to be negative in. It's not a language
I'm native-level fluent in, but I'm at the level where I can carry out those
mental self-conversations you have with yourself when thinking in French as
well.

In french, negating a statement involves two words sandwiched around the verb
(usually ne...pas, e.g. "il ne trouve pas"). I think for me this gives the
negation a lot more "weight". It's hard to explain (and I'm not even sure if
this _is_ the explanation, it's more of a guess). But if I'm thinking a
strongly negative statement I'll often think it in French.

There aren't that many things for which this happens for me, most kinda of
thoughts get expressed in no particular one of the languages for me. But most
strong negatives happen in French (and certain kinds of questions happen in my
non-English native language).

I wonder if it's just a coincidence or something special about negative
statements going on here.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
In French doesn't the negation get partially swallowed sometimes/often, like
"il trouve pas" or is that my poor listening?

~~~
umanwizard
“Swallowed” isn’t the right way to describe it. That implies that in people’s
heads they think they’re saying “ne” but they don’t because they’re speaking
too fast, or whatever.

In reality, “pas” (without “ne”) is simply the unmarked, natural way of
forming negation in spoken French. The extra “ne” is relatively uncommon
(except in writing which is a whole different ball game) and normally
signifies a slightly higher level of formality.

As an aside, “pas” was originally a noun meaning “step” (and still does have
this meaning) – quite an odd etymology for a negative particle!

------
geff82
I also think that in all the 4 languages I speak, I exhibit a slightly
different personality, as you usually not only learn to speak in a language,
but also how to behave in another culture.

~~~
Paul_S
I thought that was strange, glad to see I'm not the only one! And the
differences aren't slight for me, crossing the border I seem to revert to the
person I used to be 10 years ago when I left. It's strange to talk about but
feels natural when it happens.

------
cheesedoodle
"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 language.

That aside, I think that you are truly bi/multi-lingual when you can express
feelings effortless in any of your languages equally.

~~~
geomark
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.

~~~
Manishearth
As I mentioned in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14830685](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.

~~~
cheesedoodle
Yes I have to agree with this also.

Of course, it can in some situations be applied to both adults and kids. My
wife speaks Tagalog and English, which combined is the official language of
Taglish. Sometimes she does not know the actual word for something in Tagalog
so she substitutes it with English. This can fir example involve words for
colours. More often though, the substitution is purely to emphasize.

For me, as we only speak Swedish in Sweden, I do not have this habit of mixing
and substition. That being said, my English is of curse much worse then my
Swedish...

I'm hoping that our kids can speak all three languages natively, and I'm sure
they will naturally mix it in between them self. And that in other settings,
that they uses the current locale with out thinking about it.

I'm also hoping the knowledge of many languages makes them more susceptible to
even more languages and cultures. :)

------
cletus
I'm a native English speaker and not bilingual so feel like an outsider
looking in here but this is an area I find interesting. For one, I kind of
wish I was bilingual. I suspect this is much easier to achieve as a non-
English speaker for several reasons:

\- The pervasiveness of English as a first or second language

\- As much as people complain about English, in the transition from Old
English to Middle English when English was not the court language of England,
English lost a lot of what I like to call the grammatical bullshit (eg gender
of nouns, cases, agreement of case, number, adjective and article and so on).

Anyway, this article made one claim that resonates with my observations:

> But parents should not assume that young children’s natural language
> abilities will lead to true grown-up language skills without a good deal of
> effort.

How many people do you know that have done 12 years of Italian or French or
German or Spanish through school and can maybe remember how to count to 10? I
know quite a few.

Another claim the article makes is that bilingual children are less fluent in
each language than a child who only knows one language. I've often wondered if
this is the case for a similar reason: language ability seems to largely be a
function of exposure and there's only so much time to go around.

If true, I wonder how this has affected the development of English-speaking
countries, which are particularly mono-lingual. Is it an advantage? A
disadvantage? A bit of both?

~~~
arde
> language ability seems to largely be a function of exposure and there's only
> so much time to go around.

There's an important shortcoming in that reasoning: it assumes that time is
fully dedicated to learning whichever language is being used. Furthermore, it
doesn't consider the possibility that learning a language may benefit from
learning a different one.

Based on my observations while raising my kid bilingual, that's probably not
the case. When she learnt a new word in a language, she usually asked for it
in the other language too so she could learn both. At 6 years old, she now has
much better language skills in both languages compared to her peers. There may
have been a period at about 2 or 3 years old that her skills weren't
outstanding but she was still perfectly fine by her age's norm (which accounts
for quite a bit of variance). My guess is that, after learning a few basics,
new language is learnt sporadically with lots of "waiting" time in between,
and thus there's practically no time conflict in learning two languages except
maybe at the very start.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> there's practically no time conflict in learning two languages except maybe
> at the very start. //

This can't be true, otherwise you'd learn all languages and it would take,
practically, no longer than learning one.

At school if a child is learning 2 languages (L2, L3) then do you think they
can do that with no more time commitment than learning one additional language
- if you can explain how then you can revolutionise language learning .. all
schools can teach the kids 20 languages within the lesson time they currently
only manage one.

In practice what's happening is you're teaching in an open manner, it's not
directed learning but it is occupying more time, and mental processing, than
learning only one vocabulary and one grammar. There are probably a lot of
efficiency gains, but if exposure and use is at all important to language
learning and proficiency (they are according to most comments here) then you
need more time.

When that time is folded in to social times or family time it appears to be
"free". The problem comes when people who have learnt/taught this way get to
claim kids in school can learn an additional language because it doesn't take
any time (and so, the logic goes, can't negatively impact other learning).

~~~
arde
Of course I referred to the language learning process in toddlers. By the time
they reach school it's a different process, and they learn a lot of other
subjects too.

------
lordnacho
This is really, really hard to do properly.

I'm native in two languages, neither of them my first. By this I mean native-
accented speech, and able to do a degree in these language. The only way it
was possible was that I went to school in one language and lived in a society
that spoke another. So school was teaching me English, meaning I learned all
of math/science/history through high school with English vocabulary.

But I was only able to learn the local language because I kept local friends
and my cousins spoke it with me. And I read the papers and watched the TV, as
well as socialising with people who showed up at my parents' restaurant.

So now as an adult there are only two languages in which I could do a degree.
What happened to my other languages? It's like I'm tourist when I speak the
old with my parents. Oddly enough there are two of those, as they were also a
minority where they grew up. I can ask them for various kinds of food, but I
can barely explain to them what I do for a living. I can read a paper in
French or German too, and get along ok, but nothing too deep.

The absolute most that I know of (personally) is to be able to do a degree in
three languages, a few friends of mine who'd lived in two countries while
learning English. Even so they were identifiably non native accented.

I still tend to think most multilingual people are slightly deficient in one
of their languages. If you expand "language" to mean "culture", even more so.
You just aren't going to know all the minor celebrities of multiple language
zones. For instance I met a young guy in Switzerland who'd been taught Danish
by his dad. He spoke with a native accent, but wobbled when it came to common
language and cultural idioms. Like an English aristocrat who'd apologise in
perfect RP at not knowing what happens at the Ascot, or what wrapping your
head around something means. Being Swiss, he spoke Danish, English, French,
German, and Spanish. I'm guessing with that level of skill: high in all, but
wobbly when you dig a little.

~~~
zzzcpan
Some countries have true bilingual culture, where being a bilingual is a
necessary part of life and not something to achieve. Meaning that it's not
uncommon to see a group of people discussing something in two languages like
it's a single language and not bothering to switch to other peoples language,
because everyone automatically assumes that everyone else understand them in
either one.

~~~
umanwizard
There are places in the US where this is true. It's definitely true of most of
southern Arizona (i.e., further south than Tucson) and probably other parts of
the Southwest as well.

I saw a video of a Nogales, Arizona city council meeting -- the meeting was
being conducted in English, then at some point somebody made a 15 minute
speech in Spanish and nobody batted an eye.

------
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.

~~~
sumedh
It's kind of weird reading all these comments about bilingualism while here I
am with fluency in 3 Indian languages + English. Am I special :)

------
joshaidan
Bilingualism in Canada is very common among French-English languages, and
depending on what part of the country you live in, your exposure to both
languages can be fairly even.

My favourite bilingual situations is seeing a child "complain/whine" to their
grandparent in English while the grandparent tries to soothe the child in
French. Both understanding each other perfectly.

Something that blew me away once was this one kid at church who spoke with a
British accent--I believe he lived in Whales before moving to Canada. A week
later I heard this same child speak with a perfect Québécois accent. I later
found out his mom was from Montreal.

~~~
coredog64
> I heard this same child speak with a perfect Québécois accent.

French speakers from France might blanch at calling it "perfect"

~~~
RodericDay
He said qc accent not fr accent. Unnecessary comment.

------
ivanbakel
>The ones who are sucessful bilinguals as adults are still much better in
English than they are in Spanish

Sadly true. Probably the biggest challenge of a bilingual childhood (or I
imagine, bilinguality anywhere) is the lack of exposure to a massive amount of
second-language vocabulary that you'd normally learn by use. At least it's
good to know that not having equal proficiency isn't a failure.

Interestingly, I've had discussions in the past where the other side suggested
that immigrant parents have a duty to speak the native language in the
household, to encourage their children to learn it better. This article does a
nice job of explaining why that's already unnecessary, and maintaining a
second language in the face of native schooling, media, and what else, is hard
enough.

One thing that helps, in my experience, is reading fairy tales. They have some
of the most common use of language, and can take a conversational tone that's
missing from regular reading.

------
Cyph0n
As a person fluent in both Arabic and English, I always wonder if Arabic
dialects count as "languages". Note that basically no one speaks "written"
Arabic; everyone uses a dialect based on their region.

For example, North African dialects are basically unintelligible to Middle
Easterners. Even within North Africa, the dialects are vastly different: for
instance, Tunisians have trouble understanding the general Algerian dialect.
You can go even further: people within Tunisia can find trouble understanding
each other's dialects (e.g., north vs. south)! The linguistic variations are
enormous.

I was raised in the UAE, so I can understand (at a high level) basically all
Arabic dialects. In Tunisia, I speak Tunisian; in the UAE, I speak the dialect
closest to who I'm talking to (if applicable), or a form of Emirati Arabic
otherwise (e.g., in the case of Sudanese Arabic).

~~~
barry-cotter
Whether something is a language or a dialect is a political question, not a
linguistic one. The Arabic dialects are as varied as the Romance languages in
grammar and vocabulary.

~~~
uiri
While this is true to some extent, I think the question is mostly one of
mutual intelligibility; that is, whether a speaker of dialect A and dialect B
can understand each other by each speaking their own dialect. This is
obviously a spectrum - there can be no mutual intelligibility at all, some
amount of mutual intelligibility (like among some of the romance languages),
near full mutual intelligibility, and full mutual intelligibility. So, where
the line is drawn depends upon political factors.

Despite all of the PRC's claims to the contrary, Chinese is not a single
language but a language family. There isn't really much you can do politically
when mutual intelligibility is low.

------
guftagu
A very significant part of the population in most 'third world' countries is
actually trilingual. Fir example, Pakistan is divided into 4 provinces, each
with its own language and culture. So people there end up learning their local
language and the national language Urdu. Most children who go through schools
also learn English as a core subject in their curriculum which makes them
trilingual. Well, now the government is also pushing Arabic language in
schools as a core subject which would make most children in Pakistan tetra-
lingual?

------
foobaw
Not trying to brag, but due to my background I ended up trilingual (Korean,
Spanish and English).

It all depends on circumstance - I spent a few years growing up in Korea,
Latin America and the U.S - and went to school in all three countries where I
was forced to learn the native language. It's been a few years but I still
speak all those languages due to friends and family so I haven't lost the
ability yet.

It's not a very useful skill for my job - but I just wanted to point out that
I can attest that immersion as a child is one of the best ways to learn
languages.

------
jeena
I was born in Poland then at age 11 I moved to Germany and later at age 27 I
moved to Sweden. My sister is two years younger, she had it easier to learn
German but she doesn't want to speak Polish if sho doesn't need to. I don't
have that. I had also big problems learning English at school, because I had
to learn English in German which I didn't understand in the beginning, and
later I was always behind.

I was really bad in English when I moved to Sweden which helped me to learn
Swidish faster because people wouldn't use English to communicate with me,
which swedes do all the time if you speak English but not Swedish.

I learned English later by mostly watching TV, which is only subtitled in
Sweden, because I wasn't able to read that fast in Swedish, I started
listening to the English original. Later most of the studies here at
university were in English (at least in Computer Science), so I was forced to
use my English and improve it. And later at work the office language was
English too.

Anyway, I do even have an anegdote from my Grandfather who was captured by the
Russians during WW2. He was in the Wehrmacht, but because he was from Silecia
he spoke some polish too, which helped him during his time in captivity in
Siberia. Because he could translate, they gave him bigger portions of food, so
he always said: "You never know where life leads you and every language you
speak is like an extra hand."

------
jasonkester
We pulled this off by moving to France when our first kid was 2 years old. He
went in the local village school at age 3 and was happily speaking French to
our adult friends at age 5.

A year later, French is just the language that Kids and Strangers speak, so he
pulls it out in those situations then falls back to English if that doesn't
work.

It's fascinating to watch. I'm trying to gauge when will be a good time to up
sticks and move to a Spanish speaking country for a year or two.

------
jayhuang
The easiest way to learn a language is simply to put a child in that
environment, an environment where they have no other option but to learn.
Granted, it's can be immensely stressful, but having been in a similar
situation, I can attest that it works.

I grew up in Canada my whole life, but was taken to Taiwan towards the end of
my elementary years and enrolled in the normal school system there without so
much as knowing the alphabet. Spending 3.5 years there allowed me to pick up
the language fluently, at a fluent, accent-less level (reading, writing,
speaking, listening). While there I also learned "Taiwanese" at a fluent,
accent-less level while visiting produce and night markets.

Now when I interact with Mandarin speakers in Mandarin, they assume I grew up
in Asia, and vice versa with English.

On the flip side, many Asian friends who grew up here attended Saturday
Chinese schools, and although it helps allow you to communicate on a basic
level, most hate learning Mandarin, and thus fight it. Speak with classmates
in English the second the teacher isn't hounding them, speak in English during
breaks, etc. Many end up not even being capable of conversing

~~~
rahimnathwani
I read your comment and assumed you had no exposure to Mandarin before moving
to Taiwan. Then I saw your username and am now assuming you did. But I could
be wrong :)

I'm curious to know how early you were exposed to hearing Mandarin sounds
(from birth?) and whether you spoke Mandarin at all with your family before
you moved to Taiwan.

I ask because one of the toughest things getting started for many foreigners
learning Chinese is being able to distinguish the tones when listening and
speaking, and AI read some report of some research that said that early
exposure to hearing another language (I think at under 12 months old) allows
you to distinguish the sounds that occur in that language, even if you only
learn that language later in life.

If you went from zero to fluent in 3.5 years, that's awesome. I can imagine
the second half being hard but doable. I can't imagine how you got through day
1 and month 1 at all!

~~~
jayhuang
I'm actually of mixed origin (half Caucasian/Asian) (:

I was born in Taiwan, so I assume the exposure was there, at least from the
staff at the clinic if not anything else. That said, my first language was
English as we came to Canada immediately after my birth. English was the
language at home, and while I had a few Asian classmates, all of us only spoke
English, and there weren't many immigrants from Asia (mostly Taiwan/Hong Kong)
at all. So despite exposure at birth, hearing Mandarin for me at the time was
much like hearing someone speak Spanish or Russian now.

In fact, I had no interest in relocating to Taiwan and losing contact with my
friends. I'd be lying if I said it was not hell; the school administration
strongly suggested I be put in kindergarten so I could learn the language from
the beginning just like the locals, but my mother insisted I be put in 5th
grade, where I belonged. It was a major hit to my ego, to go from top of the
class throughout my young life, to a bottom feeder. It was also a culture
shock to many kids to see someone "white", so bullying was a huge part of my
life there, but I digress.

Being forced into an environment like that is incredibly stressful, but I
can't say it doesn't work. I'd say it took about 6 or 7 months before I was
consistently not the bottom performer in class, and another year or so till I
was consistently top 3.

So while there was technically some exposure, and probably some learning going
on in my infant brain, none of it was apparent to me.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Wow. I wonder whether other people in a similar situation would have
progressed so quickly, or whether you're an outlier. But I guess it's not a
common situation, so hard to know. Thanks for sharing!

------
karaokeyoga
My son spent his first six years in San Francisco. Canadian dad, Japanese mom.
He went to Japanese preschool and spent close to two years (kindergarten, most
of grade one) in a Mandarin immersion public school. We moved to Japan after
that.

His younger sister (three years his junior) began French immersion in Japan.
Actually, a truly French school, started by French parents living in Japan.
Since our son was working on three languages, and there were limited options
for being immersed in Mandarin here, we decided on French for her.

Fast-forward eight years, six of which were spent in Japan, and two in the UK
and France. Our son is bilingual, but his English is short of native. Japanese
took over as the dominant language for him. His Mandarin is as good as gone,
in spite of three extended trips to China and the (intermittent) use of native
Mandarin tutors while living in Japan. I gave up on Mandarin for him when I
realized how much his English was deteriorating.

Our daughter is native-level Japanese and English, and just short of native in
French. She speaks without an accent but is short on a lot of vocabulary, for
example. (Similar to my son and his English.)

Looking back at the experience of raising these children with multiple
languages, my main observation is that, although children are superior at
learning languages compared to their adult selves, there are starkly different
levels of language acquisition ability from child to child.

My daughter is truly a language monster. She is shockingly impressive in all
three of her languages, and is constantly trying out new words and getting
them absolutely right (context, etc.).

My son is, not surprisingly, much like his parents. Language is hard for us.
He is stronger in other areas (music, visual art, writing ability), and we
work hard to let him know that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.
He's jealous of his younger sister's French (and her English, too), but we
tell him that we're jealous, too!

My second observation is that raising children like this is a substantial
amount of work.

Last but not least, I have come to appreciate the joy and magic of being
truly, madly, deeply native in a language. Having that final 1% of ability
adds untold richness and closeness. There's nothing quite like it. Being truly
bilingual is fantastic, but not the same as being dual-native, and it doesn't
come close, in my opinion.

And, as an afterthought, there are all the non-spoken aspects of another
culture, such as behaviour, body language, and even the volume of your voice,
that are, in my opinion, as important as language fluency in terms of feeling
"close" within a society.

~~~
rtx
Are conducting some kind of experiment.

------
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.

------
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.

------
shioyama
> “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 context.

I find the "rule" that you speak to your child in your native language to
actually be very bad because it artificially splits conversations across
languages, and also gives the kid the impression that you should speak your
native language, whereas the whole point is that they should be comfortable
speaking _any_ language.

~~~
kalleboo
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 time and
when we moved to Sweden I had a lot of work catching up. It was still all in
there somewhere since I had been exposed to it, but I would never have become
bilingual if we hadn't moved back to Sweden to force the issue.

~~~
shioyama
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.

------
pacaro
My sister is bilingual, but because she only lived in the U.K. as a child and
teenager, there is vocabulary that is used more commonly in adult
conversations that she knows, but has a hard time with.

So while she is bilingual by any useful definition, there are common scenarios
in which she sounds like a foreigner with "very good English" rather than a
native speaker.

Our grandfather had the opposite problem. He lived in the U.K. from age 18,
and only had the very faintest accent, but in his 60s and beyond would be
frequently complimented that his German was "very good for an Englishman"

------
guytpearson1
This article is a fluff piece for the doctors interviewed. Awful research,
brief interviews, and so vague you have to laugh. The entire thing screams
"Yeah, no shit."

------
quickthrower2
My wife is truly trilingual in Arabic, English and French. Coming from a 80s
Lebanon childhood. I.e. you wouldn't know that she isn't native in each
language. It's probably less rare outside of UK/US/etc.

------
orless
We're native Russians and live in Germany for quite a while (17+ years). My
children (8 and 5yo) were born here and we're raising them bilingual. They
went/go to normal kindergarden/school and have natural exposure to the German
language. At home, we speak Russian with children, unless there is a non-
Russian-speaker present. The older son additionally goes to the Russian school
on Saturdays. We often talk to our parents (who live in Russia) over
videochat. Me and my wife are fluent in German, my wife is even Master of Arts
in German language and literature studies). We parents also speak English and
some French. A few years ago we even had a habit to speak a different language
(Russian/German/English) each day, just for practice. We dropped the habit
when we got children, completely switching to Russian at home.

I would say that our experience largely overlaps with what I read in the
article. Raising bilingual child is hard, "truly bilingual" (whatever the
measure for "truly" is) is even harder. But it is probably easier if you're
living in a foreign country.

Judging from the older son - yes, his vocabulary in German is somewhat smaller
compared to his German peers, but not significantly. His Russian vocabulary is
probably also smaller compared to Russian kids, but more than that - it is
different. He learned the language primarily from us parents, there are almost
no Russian friends around, so his language is very adult, I'd even say
academic. For instance, he normally does not use the word "круто", Russian
equivalent for "cool", he'd rather say "remarkable". His grammar in Russian,
is, however, heavily influenced by German. Prime example are reflexive verbs.
For instance, for "I'm wrong" you'd probably say "ich habe mich geirrt" in
German - literally "I have erred myself". Note the usage of the reflexive
pronoun "mich" ("myself"). You don't use it in Russian as reflexion is encoded
in the verb suffix itself - "я ошибся". But my son sometimes still uses the
reflexive pronoun in Russian, saying something like "я меня ошибся" which is
not correct and sounds pretty funny.

Over the years we've estabilished a small set of rules for language. Speak
Russian in the family, unless a non-Russian-speaker is present. Answer in the
language in which you were addressed. Do not mix languages. It seems to work
pretty well for us.

The article seems to take mixing of languages quite easy. We see this as one
of the biggest challenges. It is way too easy to start using German words
where Russian translations are cumbersome or unusual. (Prime example is
"Termin" \- "appointment". In Russian there's just no good translation for
this word. The closest is probably "назначенное время" \- "the appointed
time", but that has a completely different connotation.) It may be not sound
so bad if you mix Romance/Germanic languages, but if you mix Russian and
German, the result is absolutely horrible. You end up with a language which
neither "pure" Russian nor "pure" German speaker will understand. You'll need
to know both languages to understand the mixture.

So this is probably the rule where we are most strict and persistent. Do not,
never, mix languages. If you don't know a word, ask, we'll help. If it's too
complicated, say it in German, we'll help to translate.

It is hard to keep the language and it is easy to loose it. We know families
which lost Russian in the next generation. Their children understand some
Russian but answer and German. I think this is a pity. Second language has
great value, it takes so much effort to learn it as an adult, so it is
unforgivable to loose this opportunity in the childhood.

~~~
mjn
> He learned the language primarily from us parents, there are almost no
> Russian friends around, so his language is very adult, I'd even say
> academic. For instance, he normally does not use the word "круто", Russian
> equivalent for "cool", he'd rather say "remarkable".

As a Greek-American who grew up speaking both, I agree with this, although in
my case I'd characterize it to some extent as more "old-fashioned" than
"academic". I learned Greek primarily from my mother, but it was especially
reinforced by my grandparents (because they didn't speak English, so I _had_
to speak Greek with them). As a result my level of fluency with Greek of the
1930s-70s is better than with contemporary Greek, especially when it comes to
colloquial terms and nuances like intonation, pauses, implications, gestures,
etc.

I think the first time this really became clear to me is a few years ago when
I was on a bus in Crete full of elderly people (mainly 80+), and I realized
that listening to their conversations, I felt really 100% fluent in Greek down
to the last nuance. Usually, when surrounded by Greeks who are younger, I
think of myself as more like 80% fluent and miss many nuances, so being on
this bus full of grandparents felt like some kind of fog was lifted and my
comprehension went up to near-perfect.

~~~
orless
How did you learn Greek? Only from parents/grandparents or did you have
additional lessons?

~~~
mjn
Mostly just at home. My dad is American and mom is Greek, so they each spoke
to me primarily in their native language and I grew up speaking both natively
to some extent. The Greek side's grandparents also lived with us for about a
year when I was aged 3-4, which I think helped a lot. I'm told my Greek was
better than my English up until I started going to school, and then my English
rapidly got better and I started using Greek less often even with my mom—
she'd speak to me in Greek and I'd often reply in English.

I did take some lessons from the local Greek Orthodox church's after-school
courses, but most of the kids spoke less Greek than I did (many were 2nd or
3rd generation Greek-Americans) so I don't think I learned a lot there as far
as spoken fluency goes. I did learn the basics of reading and writing from
there, but this didn't seem interesting to me at the time so I didn't really
put much effort into it. Now as an adult I put a little more effort into
reading Greek newspapers now and then, but I still approach it as mainly an
oral language and read very very slowly due to lack of practice.

------
danieltillett
One thing I wish us native English speakers did was work on fixing English -
spelling in particular, but also the irregular grammar. English is so much
harder to learn that it needs to be.

~~~
ygaf
Not on-topic, but definitely. English is like C++, it's a monster. Apparently
Germans managed to revamp their own written language very recently.

------
GnarfGnarf
In Montreal, panhandlers on the street are bilingual. It's all about what you
are exposed to growing up.

------
j_s
What are the best technologies to help an English-speaking household even
introduce other languages?

~~~
k-mcgrady
Try Duolingo. I use it mostly on the web but they also have really great apps
and at least a dozen languages supported.

~~~
njloof
I really like Mango for two reasons: it has Québécois French (since I'm in
Montreal now) and it has a feature where you can compare your pronunciation to
a native speaker. It's really helped me learn the unvoiced consonants that
lurk at the end of French words.

------
80211
With bi-lingual parents (Yiddish, English), I grew up bilingual. In school and
some courses at Yivo, I was able to finish off full literacy in Yiddish. I
grew up reading/writing Hebrew, too, but it took spending a year in Israel to
lose the "Yiddish" accent and speak like an Israeli.

So, if parents are bilingual and you have friends/school where both languages
are spoken, it's very easy.

------
Ice_Walker
In some areas of the world bilingualism is quite common. I'm bilingual myself
and I'm also quite high on the English proficiency scale. My kids will
probably grow up to be at least trilingual. Of course it's hard to say, but I
intend to speak West Frisian with my kids, my girlfriend and her family will
talk in Bulgarian to them. We communicate in English with each other and
depending on the country where we live by the time, they will also learn that
language. To say that they will become truly bilingual or trilingual (or
quadrilingual) is quite a stretch, but they will take in at least something.

------
kutkloon7
While I'm not exactly bilingual, I would like to teach my children (when I
have them) multiple languages, just because I think that the potential for
learning (and especially for learning languages) is at its maximum during
childhood.

However, I'm not quite sure what the best languages would be. I want to give
them some exposure to a broad spectrum of languages. I know that the best way
to learn a language is to actually use it. In this light, I'm wondering what
the best balance between casually exposing them to a huge number of languages
and learning them just one extra language really well would be.

~~~
barry-cotter
I'm weak in French, German and Chinese and have even worse Spanish. Pick one
language and let the child watch tv in it and only in it. Ditto for video
games. If I was in the US I'd probably pick Spanish. It's one of the easiest
languages to learn as a speaker of English. Pick one language.

