So true. My kids both spoke two languages at that age. They take to it so easily when they get the right input. You have to carry it on but the beginning is so easy.
My friend & I were on a train between Rome & Naples some years ago and we briefly shared a compartment with an American woman and her two children, aged (I think) around 6 and 8. The woman was married to an Italian and they lived in Switzerland. The mother was bi-lingual and the kids could speak English, Italian, German and French. What I found most intriguing was that the kids dropped foreign words into their conversation with us as they seemed more appropriate than the English alternative (or didn't know/couldn't think of the English version). They ended up speaking multiple languages in the same sentence!! We were amazed - and rather embarrassed at our lack of language skills!
My sister & her partner have a property in France they visit for the summer holidays. All of her kids are very adept at French and my youngest niece is apparently also very good at Mandarin which they teach in her school.
The earlier you teach kids a language, the better. They are always good at mixing languages. You talk to them in one language and if they know you also know they other, they might answer in that one. And dropping in words from another language, that happens to us often, sometimes that word is just more convenient or even better.
I do envy the way kids pick up languages. Teaching it should start in kindergarten but here (I think) we generally start at age 11 which is far too late. I probably know 5-10 words or phrases from 5-10 languages so I managed to 'get by' in Paris for a week on my own and a friend & I managed to get around Italy for a week which some VERY basic Italian and a LOT of help from locals and others who could speak English and tolerate our attempts at communicating with them. I even managed to try out my Japanese in Australia and the woman I was speaking to was kind enough to say that my accent was good. Which is quite a compliment for a phrase I'd picked up watching the TV series 'Shogun' decades previously!
Its good to know that multi-language sentences were not a figment of my imagination! SO strange being introduced to them though... Funny & totally intriguing.
I suppose they'll have something like a Star Trek Universal Translator at some point soon, so maybe language skills will decline? I wonder if, as a by-product, niche languages that few people speak (taken over by mass languages that are seen as 'more useful') will make a come back because it'll no longer be necessary to speak a local language @ home & the common (foreign?) language everywhere else?
That would be nice though I doubt that's going to happen. We speak Low German around here, at least, we used to. Not many young people do anymore, parents speak High German to them because they fear the kids might have disadvantages. Of course, it's the contrary. If the parents don*t speak High German well enough, the kids don't learn it properly. Also, those with both langauges benefit a lot from that when learning the offical "second" language which, in fact, is their third.
7 comments:
So true. My kids both spoke two languages at that age. They take to it so easily when they get the right input. You have to carry it on but the beginning is so easy.
My friend & I were on a train between Rome & Naples some years ago and we briefly shared a compartment with an American woman and her two children, aged (I think) around 6 and 8. The woman was married to an Italian and they lived in Switzerland. The mother was bi-lingual and the kids could speak English, Italian, German and French. What I found most intriguing was that the kids dropped foreign words into their conversation with us as they seemed more appropriate than the English alternative (or didn't know/couldn't think of the English version). They ended up speaking multiple languages in the same sentence!! We were amazed - and rather embarrassed at our lack of language skills!
My sister & her partner have a property in France they visit for the summer holidays. All of her kids are very adept at French and my youngest niece is apparently also very good at Mandarin which they teach in her school.
The earlier you teach kids a language, the better. They are always good at mixing languages. You talk to them in one language and if they know you also know they other, they might answer in that one. And dropping in words from another language, that happens to us often, sometimes that word is just more convenient or even better.
I do envy the way kids pick up languages. Teaching it should start in kindergarten but here (I think) we generally start at age 11 which is far too late. I probably know 5-10 words or phrases from 5-10 languages so I managed to 'get by' in Paris for a week on my own and a friend & I managed to get around Italy for a week which some VERY basic Italian and a LOT of help from locals and others who could speak English and tolerate our attempts at communicating with them. I even managed to try out my Japanese in Australia and the woman I was speaking to was kind enough to say that my accent was good. Which is quite a compliment for a phrase I'd picked up watching the TV series 'Shogun' decades previously!
Its good to know that multi-language sentences were not a figment of my imagination! SO strange being introduced to them though... Funny & totally intriguing.
They start in primary school here now. It was the same here as in the UK when I started school, I only had my first English lesson when I was ten.
I suppose they'll have something like a Star Trek Universal Translator at some point soon, so maybe language skills will decline? I wonder if, as a by-product, niche languages that few people speak (taken over by mass languages that are seen as 'more useful') will make a come back because it'll no longer be necessary to speak a local language @ home & the common (foreign?) language everywhere else?
That would be nice though I doubt that's going to happen. We speak Low German around here, at least, we used to. Not many young people do anymore, parents speak High German to them because they fear the kids might have disadvantages. Of course, it's the contrary. If the parents don*t speak High German well enough, the kids don't learn it properly. Also, those with both langauges benefit a lot from that when learning the offical "second" language which, in fact, is their third.
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