From: harold@ccl.umist.ac.uk (Harold Somers)
Newsgroups: misc.kids,sci.lang
Subject: Re: infants and bilingual training
Date: 26 Aug 92 17:10:58 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre

In <1992Aug12.154455.4388@chiton.ucsd.edu> martin@chiton.ucsd.edu (Martin Olivera) writes:

>In article <Bsu4Co.8JD@acsu.buffalo.edu> gorman@acsu.buffalo.edu (Anne-Marie K. Gorman) writes:
>>
>>I have heard of children who were spoken to in a different language by
>>every important adult (mum, dad, grandparents) and thought that every 
>>person speaks a different language.  Urban legend, perhaps.
>>

My brother (English) is married to a French woman; they live in Vienna.
Because most of my brother's friends were English-speaking men, and my 
sister-in-law's French speaking women, for a while, my nephew thought 
that men speak English, women speak french and children (or people who
work wioth children) speak german. The mould was broken when his maternal
grandfather visited and spoke French.

He is now 2;5 and for the moment has only passive French and English, and
speaks German with a very strong Viennese accent. The 'mistake' his
parents made was letting him speak to them in German whilst on their own
in the home (it's different if monolingual friends are there). However,
all the literature on multilingualism indicates that this is a temporary
phase, and in a year or so he will be functionally trilingual, with his
competence in direct proportion to his needs.

>>languages simultaneously.  Friends of mine who had teh same system as
>>my sisters and me (English at home, French at school) ended up with
>>worse English *and* worse French than we did.

This would be expected at certain stages of language development, but
would not persist. 

>>
>>I think success depends on a lot of things:
>>- child's natural aptitude

The evidence is that ALL children have a built-in natural aptitude for
bi- or trilingualism. Remember, strict monolingualism is, on a world
scale, the MINORITY condition.

>>- how much language practice teh child gets in general
>>  (e.g. reading, listening, speaking, etc.)
>>- who speaks what to child and how often/how long
>>

The important thing is to be consistent. Even if that consistency is
complex (e.g. mum speaks X and dad speaks Y at home unless there are strangers
in which case we all speak Z; outside the home we all speak Z...). Above
all, you must perservere: of course your child's development will be
slightly slow at times compared to other children - s/he is having to
learn twice the vocabulary and grammar - but all the evidence is that in
the long run, given only moderately favourable circumstances, s/he will 
effectively have two mother tongues of equal or nearly equally
competence. There is a bonus too, which is that there is evidence that
bilingual children score higher on so-called intelligence tests which
involve abstract symbol manipulation (note that I dont say "They are
more intelligent", but if scoring highly on IQ tests is a measure of
inteligence, then yes they are more intelligent), are quicker at learning 
skills like music, chess, computing, and of course at learning other
foreign languages.

>>I would go for it, but be ready to stop if it looks like the child is
>>having too much trouble.  (How can you tell?  I have no idea.  If you
>>find out let me know, so I'll know when to stop speaking French to
>>my babies!)
>>
NO NO NO - do not be "ready to stop if it looks like the child is having
too much trouble": I promise you the child WILL look like s/he is having
trouble, but it will all work out fine in the end if you perservere. 
(Another anecdote: I know of a slightly dyslexic child who was taught
both English and Hebrew from an early age - note that Hebrew is written
R->L; yes the kid was pretty confused at first, and it probably didnt
help; but she got there in the end....)

I dont know anyone who regrets having been brought up bilingually. I know
plenty of people who regret having missed that opportunity, whether as
parents or children.


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