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Kids learn not just the language, but the dialect(s) that they're exposed to. At that age, being talked to is the only way they have of acquiring language, so t
by lmkg 16y ago
Kids learn not just the language, but the dialect(s) that they're exposed to. At that age, being talked to is the only way they have of acquiring language, so they're going acquire exactly what they're exposed to. The idea of dialects is absolutely critical, but a lot of people aren't aware of them[1]. A kid isn't going to learn proper English unless they're raised hearing and talking it, no amount of grammar instruction is going to make proper English anything more than another foreign language unless they're actually speaking it for themselves.
This is not to say that "proper" English is any better than dialects of English. I'm a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist. That said, a) "proper" English is a pretty significant signalling mechanism so it's socially advantageous to speak it fluently b) if language influences thought patterns, "baby talk" is a pretty crippled language and you shouldn't cripple your kid's expressive or reasoning abilities. Even if they grow out of it, replacing their language facilities is lost development time.
[1] Going sociopolitical for a second: This is more of a problem for people who are members of the group "in power," for various definitions of the term, but being a middle-class white guy in America qualifies. If you're "in power" and your own dialect is the default, then you don't have to switch dialects depending on the social situation, which makes you less sensitive to the presence of dialects as well as their role in social interactions.
- foldr 16y ago> if language influences thought patterns, "baby talk" is a pretty crippled language and you shouldn't cripple your kid's expressive or reasoning abilities. Kids are actually pretty insensitive to the precise form of linguistic input they get. It doesn't matter much if it's baby talk directed at the kid, or the ambient speech of other adults. Any regular exposure to a language/dialect is sufficient for a kid to acquire it perfectly. (Bearing in mind that perfect acquisition of a non-standard dialect may be viewed by the linguistically ignorant as imperfect acquisition of the standard dialect.) There's certainly no evidence for "baby talk" crippling kids reasoning abilities. There are even cultures where parents don't talk to their kids until the kids can talk back, but the kids don't grow up with any kind of linguistic deficit. Of course, there may be sociological benefits to having your kid acquire something close to standard English as their native dialect. But if schools could get over prescriptivism and do a better job of teaching standard English, I doubt this would be so much of an issue.
- mukyu 16y agoAre you saying that middle-class American white guys do not change the way they speak depending on the situation? Even a white guy 'in power' is going to speak differently to co-workers, when giving a presentation in front senior executives, talking with their wife, or with their friends at a bar.