Bilingual and multilingual; facts and fiction

Tweet

Being in college studying to become a pedagogue I am learning to answer questions about raising children. There have been topics about facts and fiction of raising kids bilingual or multilingual and asking for suggestions. Rather than posting the same answer over and over again I am opening a topic with information I got so far from research inside and outside college. I hope it helps! Learning a new language, what age? Children have an amazing gift to learn a language very rapidly through many channels including mimic and play. This is most easy up to approximatly age 10 and they can learn to speak a language fluently. It's best to start from day one to make the process fluent. Baby facts, making sounds When babies start making noises they can still pronounce every sound from any language, it's universal. Because a baby hears only it's own lanuage(s) it will start and loose the noises provided to make sillabels that are not used in his language(s). This is why people get accents and have trouble pronouncing certain sillabels, words or sounds that are not used in their own language. When you speak two or more languages around the young baby it will keep all the sounds neccaisary to learn all these languages. They will react to both languages. OMG my child is mixing things up! When children grow older a common sight is that they start using both languages and scramble them up. This is because the brain hasn't categorised words into different 'language maps' yet. The child will use the word that it hears most often or first occurs to them. They are about 2 years when this happens. It's nothing to worry about as this happens with basicly all young children. Not wanting to speak the other language When children get older they might like one of the languages better than the other, they might find it easier to talk or they hear it more frequently. Never push the child into speaking the language but keep talking the language around the house so they still hear it. This is a fase that most likely will pass and when you try and push it you will only put negative feelings around that language. Should I try and speak the other language? Researchers found out that it's best to only speak the language you speak fluently. Say you speak very good spanish but not good English and your partner does, then limit you to one language. This also helps the child categorise the languages in it's brain when it grows up. It's like making two or more folders as in a computer and the child slowly learns what words and grammar rules etc go where. This takes time but isn't impossible. You'll give your child a great gift. Other tips - Try to speak both languages frequent so they hear both equally as mush. - Be proud of your language and culture, your child will see that, appreciate it and copy it; language is important for your culture and pride. - Buy books in the other language as well and read to them from these books. - Never push your child to talk a certain language. I would be happy to answer any questions, I'll try my best to be of service!