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If you are native speaker of any language different from English, the greatest educational life hack is to learn English at the earliest time. It opens one's mi

If you are native speaker of any language different from English, the greatest educational life hack is to learn English at the earliest time. It opens one's mind and allows access to content and communication at a global level.

M4v3R 2y ago
And if you’re a non-English parent but speak English consider talking to your child in English from the very beginning. There are many different ways to approach this, one relatively simple way is to have one parent speak their native language while the other speaks English (called “one parent one language”). Even if your pronunciation isn’t perfect it will still yield very good results. Source: I’m a parent of a 3yo who now understands speaks both English and Polish. Me and my wife are Polish and only I speak English. Apart from speaking we also use English audio in all TV content she watches and buy books that contains both English and Polish text. Edit: as pointed out below I should’ve clarified that this applies when you live in a non-English country where your child does not have any other way to learn English (over here you can’t really learn English in schools - not enough hours, plus it starts way too late anyways).
- et-al 2y ago
  I would clarify this is for parents residing in non-English speaking countries. Because over here in the States folks are doing the opposite: spending thousands a month to send their children to language immersion schools to not speak English.
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  > And if you’re a non-English parent but speak English consider talking to your child in English from the very beginning. If you are living in a place where people don't speak your mother tongue but English is spoken everywhere and is the main medium of education, don't do this. The kids will pick-up English anyway because they will be exposed to it for 8 hours daily at school but if you don't speak with them in your mother tongue, they will never pick it up. The older they get, the harder it is. First hand experience.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    They need English at home too, a lot happens in those early years where there's no schooling and it'd be way better to know English well going into school (what ever level that happens to be at) too.
    - querez 2y ago
      My daycare has a lot of non-native people who do not speak the local, native language with their child, at all. Still, all children (age 3, they're usually in daycare since age 1) speak the local language fluidly, thanks to how much they they spend in daycare.
    - zarzavat 2y ago
      No, it’s not necessary to speak X at home if you live in an X speaking country, and it may even be harmful: often children will not pick up language Y if only one parent speaks it and the other parent speaks X. Bilingual children whose parents don’t speak the language of the community at home may learn languages slightly slower but they quickly catch up once they make friends who only speak X.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
      Not really. The tv content alone is all in English, the books you buy are in English, the people you talk to are speaking English. In a way or another, they get English (I have two children and we speak Italian at home, they both know English). By the way, something nobody mentioned, once your kid learns English in an English speaking country, your English gets better (assuming you are non-native). My daughter started correcting my pronunciation and it's getting way better
- lbrito 2y ago
  I would say the opposite; talk to your child only in your native language. Kids will learn English by themselves in school anyway, and if they don't learn your language from you, they for sure won't learn it elsewhere. Source: as a kid I was in that situation, at first my parent spoke only in English with me and I started to forget Portuguese. After my parents realized that they pivoted to speaking Portuguese. I learned English fine at school and never had problems with either languages. Now I'm a parent of a 2yo and 1yo and am speaking Portuguese with both.
  - M4v3R 2y ago
    > Kids will learn English by themselves in school anyway If you live in an English speaking country then sure. Over here it’s almost impossible to learn English in school, you only get a few hours per week of English classes.
    - paganel 2y ago
      It depends on the kid and on the type of “immersion” (for lack of a better word). I grew up in Romania in the ‘90s, when we had 2 hours of English per week starting with the 5th grade. I turned up fine when it comes to speaking/writing/reading the language, of course that I’ll always carry an accent when speaking it but I don’t care. Looking back at it, after 3 decades, what helped me learn the language was that immersion I mentioned, i.e. I was watching English TV programs (Cartoon Network, Eurosport, MTV Europe) for a big part of the day, without that I wouldn’t have been able to pick it up so easily.
  - flyinglizard 2y ago
    My experience is that it’s very easy to expose kids to English in a non-English country - just let them consume all their entertainment (Netflix, games, books) in English right from the start. You don’t need to do anything special other than that.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Do be mindful of the kid though. One of my wife's coworkers wanted to teach their kid multiple languages, I think the final count was 4 total (they wanted both the parent's native tongues, German which is where they were going to live after their visas expired in the US and of course English), while living in the US and it just made the kid confused and angry. Granted that's way more than just doing two but it could still back fire with the kid if it's too much.
qsort 2y ago
As a non-native English speaker, this. Native English speakers are reluctant to give this advice, but it's the lingua franca of any field that matters. Not being able to communicate effectively will definitely be a blocker.
- smokel 2y ago
  Using the term "lingua franca" for English demonstrates, twice, that this is only a temporary phenomenon.
  - qsort 2y ago
    Since Eve ate that apple pretty much everything is a "temporary phenomenon".
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ptmcc 2y ago
    Ok, yes, and? English is the dominant language now and for the foreseeable future. Some day that may change but it won't be overnight.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    English will almost surely still be the dominant world language for as long as any of us is alive.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - galdosdi 2y ago
    Someday, when the global language is no longer English but some other language, the new global language will still be full of fossilized English phrases, just as English today is full of fossilized French and Latin phrases. There is absolutely nothing going on in the world to suggest that happen in the foreseeable future though. There is no competition, and it's inherently hard to change like any standard due to chicken-and-egg, so it tends to only happen when the entire world system is completely upheaved, to the point of the old world being a small part of the new world, and to a degree far greater than the possibilities of today. The stuff going on in the world today is mild comparatively. In particular, politcal falls of the sponsoring empire don't directly lead to much change here, actually. Latin kept being the language used throughout Europe centuries after the Roman state was gone and buried in the west. Scholars were still writing in Latin in the 1600s. Within my parents' lifetime, Catholic mass was still said in Latin.
gwervc 2y ago
Heck no, I'd rather protect my (future) kids from a lot of ideas spreading in the English speaking sphere until they reached some given age. There's enough cultural, scientific and entertainment content in French and Chinese to fill one's mind until adolescence.
- rcbdev 2y ago
  This. Most money is spent in manipulating English media. Only fractions for other languages. It makes a difference.
runiq 2y ago
Another reason to learn English ASAP is because the orthography is pants-on-head stupid. Your young self will not have a reference system for just how pants-on-head stupid it is and happily accept it without giving it a second thought. If you are learning English later in life, you will struggle.
- rcbdev 2y ago
  I'd argue some pants-on-head stupid declinations and arbitrary genders for every noun is a much more compelling reason to learn a language early than orthography. English is probably one of the dead simplest languages of use to learn later in life.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    It helps that since English is the lingua franca, people tend to be kind of used to interacting with those who don't speak it perfectly. Plus even those who don't functionally speak it likely know enough words to convey things in a pinch through either loan words or osmosis through media.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Nah, it sucks. Source: native speaker who also knows Spanish and Hindi
    - galdosdi 2y ago
      Idk. Native speakers are biased. I would trust someone who learned BOTH the languages they are comparing as a second language most. Even then they may have different views depending on what languages they already knew prior (eg, portuguese is a lot easier for a spanish speaker than a mandarin speaker) My dad (who learned English as a second language after his native Spanish, and also learned Portuguese and Latin, don't recall if he knew any others) used to claim English was one of the easiest languages. I don't recall his reasoning but I think it might have been because the rules (other than spelling lol) were simple and forgiving. And I've met people who felt the opposite. Idk.
richardreeze 2y ago
As a non-native English speaker, I agree. I always say English is what Esperanto wanted to be.

M4v3R 2y ago

And if you’re a non-English parent but speak English consider talking to your child in English from the very beginning. There are many different ways to approach this, one relatively simple way is to have one parent speak their native language while the other speaks English (called “one parent one language”). Even if your pronunciation isn’t perfect it will still yield very good results. Source: I’m a parent of a 3yo who now understands speaks both English and Polish. Me and my wife are Polish and only I speak English. Apart from speaking we also use English audio in all TV content she watches and buy books that contains both English and Polish text. Edit: as pointed out below I should’ve clarified that this applies when you live in a non-English country where your child does not have any other way to learn English (over here you can’t really learn English in schools - not enough hours, plus it starts way too late anyways).

et-al 2y ago
I would clarify this is for parents residing in non-English speaking countries. Because over here in the States folks are doing the opposite: spending thousands a month to send their children to language immersion schools to not speak English.
noisy_boy 2y ago
> And if you’re a non-English parent but speak English consider talking to your child in English from the very beginning. If you are living in a place where people don't speak your mother tongue but English is spoken everywhere and is the main medium of education, don't do this. The kids will pick-up English anyway because they will be exposed to it for 8 hours daily at school but if you don't speak with them in your mother tongue, they will never pick it up. The older they get, the harder it is. First hand experience.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  They need English at home too, a lot happens in those early years where there's no schooling and it'd be way better to know English well going into school (what ever level that happens to be at) too.
  - querez 2y ago
    My daycare has a lot of non-native people who do not speak the local, native language with their child, at all. Still, all children (age 3, they're usually in daycare since age 1) speak the local language fluidly, thanks to how much they they spend in daycare.
  - zarzavat 2y ago
    No, it’s not necessary to speak X at home if you live in an X speaking country, and it may even be harmful: often children will not pick up language Y if only one parent speaks it and the other parent speaks X. Bilingual children whose parents don’t speak the language of the community at home may learn languages slightly slower but they quickly catch up once they make friends who only speak X.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
    Not really. The tv content alone is all in English, the books you buy are in English, the people you talk to are speaking English. In a way or another, they get English (I have two children and we speak Italian at home, they both know English). By the way, something nobody mentioned, once your kid learns English in an English speaking country, your English gets better (assuming you are non-native). My daughter started correcting my pronunciation and it's getting way better
lbrito 2y ago
I would say the opposite; talk to your child only in your native language. Kids will learn English by themselves in school anyway, and if they don't learn your language from you, they for sure won't learn it elsewhere. Source: as a kid I was in that situation, at first my parent spoke only in English with me and I started to forget Portuguese. After my parents realized that they pivoted to speaking Portuguese. I learned English fine at school and never had problems with either languages. Now I'm a parent of a 2yo and 1yo and am speaking Portuguese with both.
- M4v3R 2y ago
  > Kids will learn English by themselves in school anyway If you live in an English speaking country then sure. Over here it’s almost impossible to learn English in school, you only get a few hours per week of English classes.
  - paganel 2y ago
    It depends on the kid and on the type of “immersion” (for lack of a better word). I grew up in Romania in the ‘90s, when we had 2 hours of English per week starting with the 5th grade. I turned up fine when it comes to speaking/writing/reading the language, of course that I’ll always carry an accent when speaking it but I don’t care. Looking back at it, after 3 decades, what helped me learn the language was that immersion I mentioned, i.e. I was watching English TV programs (Cartoon Network, Eurosport, MTV Europe) for a big part of the day, without that I wouldn’t have been able to pick it up so easily.
- flyinglizard 2y ago
  My experience is that it’s very easy to expose kids to English in a non-English country - just let them consume all their entertainment (Netflix, games, books) in English right from the start. You don’t need to do anything special other than that.
rtkwe 2y ago
Do be mindful of the kid though. One of my wife's coworkers wanted to teach their kid multiple languages, I think the final count was 4 total (they wanted both the parent's native tongues, German which is where they were going to live after their visas expired in the US and of course English), while living in the US and it just made the kid confused and angry. Granted that's way more than just doing two but it could still back fire with the kid if it's too much.

qsort 2y ago

As a non-native English speaker, this. Native English speakers are reluctant to give this advice, but it's the lingua franca of any field that matters. Not being able to communicate effectively will definitely be a blocker.

smokel 2y ago
Using the term "lingua franca" for English demonstrates, twice, that this is only a temporary phenomenon.
- qsort 2y ago
  Since Eve ate that apple pretty much everything is a "temporary phenomenon".
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ptmcc 2y ago
  Ok, yes, and? English is the dominant language now and for the foreseeable future. Some day that may change but it won't be overnight.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  English will almost surely still be the dominant world language for as long as any of us is alive.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- galdosdi 2y ago
  Someday, when the global language is no longer English but some other language, the new global language will still be full of fossilized English phrases, just as English today is full of fossilized French and Latin phrases. There is absolutely nothing going on in the world to suggest that happen in the foreseeable future though. There is no competition, and it's inherently hard to change like any standard due to chicken-and-egg, so it tends to only happen when the entire world system is completely upheaved, to the point of the old world being a small part of the new world, and to a degree far greater than the possibilities of today. The stuff going on in the world today is mild comparatively. In particular, politcal falls of the sponsoring empire don't directly lead to much change here, actually. Latin kept being the language used throughout Europe centuries after the Roman state was gone and buried in the west. Scholars were still writing in Latin in the 1600s. Within my parents' lifetime, Catholic mass was still said in Latin.

gwervc 2y ago

Heck no, I'd rather protect my (future) kids from a lot of ideas spreading in the English speaking sphere until they reached some given age. There's enough cultural, scientific and entertainment content in French and Chinese to fill one's mind until adolescence.

rcbdev 2y ago
This. Most money is spent in manipulating English media. Only fractions for other languages. It makes a difference.

runiq 2y ago

Another reason to learn English ASAP is because the orthography is pants-on-head stupid. Your young self will not have a reference system for just how pants-on-head stupid it is and happily accept it without giving it a second thought. If you are learning English later in life, you will struggle.

rcbdev 2y ago
I'd argue some pants-on-head stupid declinations and arbitrary genders for every noun is a much more compelling reason to learn a language early than orthography. English is probably one of the dead simplest languages of use to learn later in life.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  It helps that since English is the lingua franca, people tend to be kind of used to interacting with those who don't speak it perfectly. Plus even those who don't functionally speak it likely know enough words to convey things in a pinch through either loan words or osmosis through media.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Nah, it sucks. Source: native speaker who also knows Spanish and Hindi
  - galdosdi 2y ago
    Idk. Native speakers are biased. I would trust someone who learned BOTH the languages they are comparing as a second language most. Even then they may have different views depending on what languages they already knew prior (eg, portuguese is a lot easier for a spanish speaker than a mandarin speaker) My dad (who learned English as a second language after his native Spanish, and also learned Portuguese and Latin, don't recall if he knew any others) used to claim English was one of the easiest languages. I don't recall his reasoning but I think it might have been because the rules (other than spelling lol) were simple and forgiving. And I've met people who felt the opposite. Idk.

richardreeze 2y ago

As a non-native English speaker, I agree. I always say English is what Esperanto wanted to be.