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I think there is an elephant in the room here. There is no easy way to have a control subject. Each person they test has a unique set of abilities and intellig
by junto 11y ago
I think there is an elephant in the room here. There is no easy way to have a control subject.
Each person they test has a unique set of abilities and intelligence level.
My children are bilingual, and I know many other families that have children who are being brought up in a bilingual environment.
I have an example of a bilingual child that didn't say anything almost at all until they were 2.5 years old. My daughter has language skills that are advanced for her age in comparison to her monolingual peers of the same age. But she is just bright (parental bias I know). My younger son appears to be improving even faster, but then he has a bilingual older sibling, so that isn't a surprise.
The point is that it all depends on the person, as to how well they can adapt to a bilingual upbringing. They are so many factors involved, that it becomes impossible to categorically compare one person against another. Apples to oranges, every single time.
- geomark 11y agoMy son is growing up bilingual. It's natural since mother and father have different first languages. I've been amazed since age 4 how easily he switches between the two languages. I'll be talking to him in English and he will turn to his mother and repeat the whole conversation in his other language without missing a beat. He is also picking up Mandarin from watching videos on YouTube. I have no way of knowing if his "executive function" (ok, I'll go with that term) is better because of it. But learning to speak more than one language appears to be very easy for kids.
- iolothebard 11y agoFrom my understanding it's not the learning that's easier, it's the fact that the brain tunes itself to the local languages by a certain (early) age. I'd love to learn tonal languages but I have an extraordinarily hard time with them (Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese). I've learned French, German, Italian and Spanish with very little difficulty.
- geomark 11y agoSame for me with tonal language. At first I couldn't even hear the tones when given examples of 3 Thai words with the same spelling but different tones and hence different meanings. Eventually I got it and do pretty well now.