7 ms·

> so that they don't get confused. I don't get this. I'm trilingual, and I think in English, but I'm fluent in the other 2 languages as well. My parents conve

by pm90 9y ago

> so that they don't get confused. I don't get this. I'm trilingual, and I think in English, but I'm fluent in the other 2 languages as well. My parents converse in the mother tongue at home, but with friends they would switch to another language. I think parents are vastly underestimating the cognitive powers of young children.

pavel_lishin 9y ago
I think for a lot of them, it comes from fear - if you don't speak the language as fluently as natives, or with a noticeable accent, you are very often aware of it, and sometimes reminded explicitly. Some parents are probably just trying to shield their children from what they see as a handicap, or a source of embarrassment. They're wrong, but their motivations are understandable.
- magic_beans 9y ago
  It ends up doing kids a lot more social harm than good if their non-native speaking parents speak to them in their non-native language poorly -- you end up with a child who speaks their parents non-native language badly, and who doesn't even know their mother tongue.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    Unless they're in a very cloistered community, kids are exposed to the, uh, "host language" very, very frequently. Our toddler has been in daycare since she was fairly young, and started picking up both English and Spanish words. (Her word for "water" remains "agua", in fact; she only recently switched from "abre" to "open".) (And if they're in a very cloistered community, their parents are probably more focused on the native language instead of the host language anyway.)
  - sampo 9y ago
    If kids play with native kids, if they go to daycare and school, they will pick up the native accent from other kids.
  - fahadkhan 9y ago
    My kids seem manage Shanghainese, Urdu, English (in RP, cockney and a Pakistani accent) pretty well. I was surprised to hear my son (at the time only four) say "Hiro is the hero Big Hero 6." Pronouncing both Hiro and hero correctly.
jmkirby 9y ago
,>vastly underestimating the cognitive powers of young children. I have been wondering if education in a single language is not a inhibitor of development much beyond anything that we can presently suspect. My pathetic reading of history places human development where either languages are daily flux, along trade routes, else in close proximity and contact even as created in wartime alliances. How easily do we attribute to the national character our perception of intellectual capacity and style. The joke about Hungarians being perforce genii the complexity of their language demanding that agility. So should I expose my infant son to as many spoken languages as possible for the longest time?
- pm90 9y ago
  I'm not a behavioral psychologist so I don't think I can offer a professional opinion about this. My point was only that if parents are proficient in another language, they shouldn't hesitate in teaching/talking to their children in it. Seems like a wasted opportunity.
lhorie 9y ago
> so that they don't get confused Is that really a thing? My father is japanese and I grew up in Brazil. I don't think my lack of fluency in japanese was due to any fear from my parents - my parents spoke japanese at home and even had me attend nihongakkou (japanese classes). But it's very hard to develop real fluency without a community. My cousins had always been more fluent due to being involved in a karaoke community - something my family wasn't. My mother was born in Brazil too, and spoke japanese fluently as a child because she was raised in a isolated japanese farming community where many people couldn't speak portuguese. Even now, with my kids, it's been far easier for them to pick up mandarin (my wife's mother tongue), since until a few months ago, their grandparents lived with us and spoke mandarin exclusively, and since the community where we lived was predominantly chinese (read: there are chinese supermarkets, there are chinese books in the library, and most classmates in their school are 1st/2nd-gen chinese). Compared to that, it's been a lot harder to get them to learn portuguese, since I'm literally the only person around them who speaks it.
- pm90 9y ago
  Wow, you have a truly unique mix of languages in your family! :) I thought about this a little more, and yes, community did help me develop my mother tongue a lot. There were the parents who exclusively spoke the language, but I would frequently visit my grandparents, who would also speak it. And they would take me to visit other members of the clan, who would also speak that. Perhaps it is a diversity of people speaking the language that gives one a certain amount of fluency? I learned Hindi because it is the national language and my peers in school usually conversed in it. English was what most books were written in and it was the language of instruction. So it seemed very natural to be fluent in multiple languages.
  - iamd3vil 9y ago
    Just nitpicking, Hindi is not the national language of India (assuming you are from India). It is just an official language.
    - abraham_s 9y ago
jason_slack 9y ago
besides English what are the other 2 languages you are fluent in?
- pm90 9y ago
  Hindi and Konkani (its a regional language spoken by a few million people in South Western India).
luckydata 9y ago
You're lucky. I wish I could speak with my 3yo in my native language but my wife can't speak a word of it. My son refuses to speak my language because his mind refuses the idea that things can have two names. Maybe when he grows up he'll want to learn but right now there's just now way, I tried and failed.
- lhorie 9y ago
  I'm the only person that speaks my mother tongue at home too. Something that worked well for me was making it a game when the kid wasn't expecting it. The first time was over breakfast. I brought a boogie board and told him we were gonna learn some portuguese. I drew a happy chubby boy and asked him who it was. He shrugged. I told it was him. Now I had his attention, so I drew a strawberry and asked him what that was. Once he answered, I told him "yes, morango". Then, I drew him eating it and said "Calvin come morango" (pointing to him and the strawberry as I said the respective words). Then, I said "Calvin come..." and picked up a real strawberry. Now, the exercise was kind of a guessing/memory game for him. I only covered a few words and it involved a lot of repetition and high fives, but he became a lot more open to the idea of learning portuguese after that. When my kid was learning to read, making some flash cards also worked really well - drawing on one side, word on the other. The trick is in making a few verb ones, and nouns that can complement, plus one with a drawing of the kid, then do permutations, e.g. "Calvin come bolo" (cake), "Bolo de morango", "Calvin come bolo de chocolate", etc. "Eat" is a good starting verb, "go" is also very versatile in combination with types of vehicles and places, then you can try expanding to other daily things. Would love to hear how that works for others
  - luckydata 9y ago
    I'll test this out, sounds like a good strategy. I have also done something slightly different which is giving him a word without telling him the meaning, just playing with the sound. After a while once he can repeat it and say it fluently, I would explain what it means. By the time I do that, he's already said the word a bunch of times so I tricked him into "knowing" the word and there's nothing he can do to go back in time :)
- 9y ago

by pm90 9y ago

pavel_lishin 9y ago

I think for a lot of them, it comes from fear - if you don't speak the language as fluently as natives, or with a noticeable accent, you are very often aware of it, and sometimes reminded explicitly. Some parents are probably just trying to shield their children from what they see as a handicap, or a source of embarrassment. They're wrong, but their motivations are understandable.

magic_beans 9y ago
It ends up doing kids a lot more social harm than good if their non-native speaking parents speak to them in their non-native language poorly -- you end up with a child who speaks their parents non-native language badly, and who doesn't even know their mother tongue.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  Unless they're in a very cloistered community, kids are exposed to the, uh, "host language" very, very frequently. Our toddler has been in daycare since she was fairly young, and started picking up both English and Spanish words. (Her word for "water" remains "agua", in fact; she only recently switched from "abre" to "open".) (And if they're in a very cloistered community, their parents are probably more focused on the native language instead of the host language anyway.)
- sampo 9y ago
  If kids play with native kids, if they go to daycare and school, they will pick up the native accent from other kids.
- fahadkhan 9y ago
  My kids seem manage Shanghainese, Urdu, English (in RP, cockney and a Pakistani accent) pretty well. I was surprised to hear my son (at the time only four) say "Hiro is the hero Big Hero 6." Pronouncing both Hiro and hero correctly.

jmkirby 9y ago

,>vastly underestimating the cognitive powers of young children. I have been wondering if education in a single language is not a inhibitor of development much beyond anything that we can presently suspect. My pathetic reading of history places human development where either languages are daily flux, along trade routes, else in close proximity and contact even as created in wartime alliances. How easily do we attribute to the national character our perception of intellectual capacity and style. The joke about Hungarians being perforce genii the complexity of their language demanding that agility. So should I expose my infant son to as many spoken languages as possible for the longest time?

pm90 9y ago
I'm not a behavioral psychologist so I don't think I can offer a professional opinion about this. My point was only that if parents are proficient in another language, they shouldn't hesitate in teaching/talking to their children in it. Seems like a wasted opportunity.

lhorie 9y ago

> so that they don't get confused Is that really a thing? My father is japanese and I grew up in Brazil. I don't think my lack of fluency in japanese was due to any fear from my parents - my parents spoke japanese at home and even had me attend nihongakkou (japanese classes). But it's very hard to develop real fluency without a community. My cousins had always been more fluent due to being involved in a karaoke community - something my family wasn't. My mother was born in Brazil too, and spoke japanese fluently as a child because she was raised in a isolated japanese farming community where many people couldn't speak portuguese. Even now, with my kids, it's been far easier for them to pick up mandarin (my wife's mother tongue), since until a few months ago, their grandparents lived with us and spoke mandarin exclusively, and since the community where we lived was predominantly chinese (read: there are chinese supermarkets, there are chinese books in the library, and most classmates in their school are 1st/2nd-gen chinese). Compared to that, it's been a lot harder to get them to learn portuguese, since I'm literally the only person around them who speaks it.

pm90 9y ago
Wow, you have a truly unique mix of languages in your family! :) I thought about this a little more, and yes, community did help me develop my mother tongue a lot. There were the parents who exclusively spoke the language, but I would frequently visit my grandparents, who would also speak it. And they would take me to visit other members of the clan, who would also speak that. Perhaps it is a diversity of people speaking the language that gives one a certain amount of fluency? I learned Hindi because it is the national language and my peers in school usually conversed in it. English was what most books were written in and it was the language of instruction. So it seemed very natural to be fluent in multiple languages.
- iamd3vil 9y ago
  Just nitpicking, Hindi is not the national language of India (assuming you are from India). It is just an official language.
  - abraham_s 9y ago

jason_slack 9y ago

besides English what are the other 2 languages you are fluent in?

pm90 9y ago
Hindi and Konkani (its a regional language spoken by a few million people in South Western India).

luckydata 9y ago

You're lucky. I wish I could speak with my 3yo in my native language but my wife can't speak a word of it. My son refuses to speak my language because his mind refuses the idea that things can have two names. Maybe when he grows up he'll want to learn but right now there's just now way, I tried and failed.

lhorie 9y ago
I'm the only person that speaks my mother tongue at home too. Something that worked well for me was making it a game when the kid wasn't expecting it. The first time was over breakfast. I brought a boogie board and told him we were gonna learn some portuguese. I drew a happy chubby boy and asked him who it was. He shrugged. I told it was him. Now I had his attention, so I drew a strawberry and asked him what that was. Once he answered, I told him "yes, morango". Then, I drew him eating it and said "Calvin come morango" (pointing to him and the strawberry as I said the respective words). Then, I said "Calvin come..." and picked up a real strawberry. Now, the exercise was kind of a guessing/memory game for him. I only covered a few words and it involved a lot of repetition and high fives, but he became a lot more open to the idea of learning portuguese after that. When my kid was learning to read, making some flash cards also worked really well - drawing on one side, word on the other. The trick is in making a few verb ones, and nouns that can complement, plus one with a drawing of the kid, then do permutations, e.g. "Calvin come bolo" (cake), "Bolo de morango", "Calvin come bolo de chocolate", etc. "Eat" is a good starting verb, "go" is also very versatile in combination with types of vehicles and places, then you can try expanding to other daily things. Would love to hear how that works for others
- luckydata 9y ago
  I'll test this out, sounds like a good strategy. I have also done something slightly different which is giving him a word without telling him the meaning, just playing with the sound. After a while once he can repeat it and say it fluently, I would explain what it means. By the time I do that, he's already said the word a bunch of times so I tricked him into "knowing" the word and there's nothing he can do to go back in time :)
9y ago