Children and languages

Both my kids speaking, reading and can write English and Chinese. I don't remember where I read an article that having kids learning multiple languages as early as possible in fact benefit them, since it makes their brian development having more nerve connections and therefore help them in learning in all aspect.

My daughter's native language is English. I speak English, Spanish and a little Cantonese. I'm trying to help her learn all the languages I speak since she has an interest in them right now. I think in the long run, being multilingual will be of a tremendous advantage. For that matter, look at how many Asians post in English on mylot even though it isn't their first language. I think as technology continues to bring the world closer together, knowing more than just your native language will become more and more important.

my 3 year old daughter knows english and is now learning french. we have been working on it for a couple of months now and she understands a lot but doesn't speak much yet. but she will be attending a french school in the fall. i think it's very benefitial for her to learn both english and french, especially where we live in canada and we are agaisnt the quebec border you need to be bilingual here to get a job.

I think giving our children the means to communicate with other people is so wonderful. I've been slowly teaching my 5 year old son spanish and he loves it! My parents are apalled that he's learning spanish. They live in the States and have this whole weird thing about Mexicans having to learn English. I feel that learning spanish is a helpful tool to communicate with. Here in Canada, french is taught in schools along with English because Canada has two official languages. But people from every culture you can think of live here and being able to communicate with them in their own language would be great. I'd love to learn Italian. I think knowledge is never a bad thing, and those who do think that are really missing out. It's best to start children learning other languages when they're young, because they absorb the information easier. And once they've learned one language (at least with the latin based languages), learning other languages becomes easier as well, since a lot of them are similar.