If a child is raised from birth until about 5 years old and spends two days of the week hearing nothing but Korean, two days Spanish, and the rest of the week English, will she have difficulty communicating?
Would she learner slower, but ultimately learn all three languages? Or learn all three at the same pace as a child learns 1? Or would it take 3 times as long for the child to learn to effectively communicate with a speaker of one language?
What kind of lasting effects on the child would that have? Positive, negative?
Let’s say that after 5 years old, the child went to an English elementary school and stayed in a predominantly English speaking house, but still got a lot of Korean at home and also stayed with a Spanish speaking relative or sent to a Spanish tutor at least twice a month. Would this child retain three languages?
My guess is that the kid would be blessed with being triligual with no downside. One thing that the young have an unlimited capacity for is learning language. But I suspect that it would require more than twice a month after 5 years old for the kid to stay sharp on the spanish.
No. Early on, she might not understand that not everyone understands all the words she does, but very quickly, she’ll learn to realise that different words belong to different languages and that not everyone knows all languages.
I doubt it.
She would only learn the languages that she has regular (almost daily) reinforcement in.
It’s hard to say. In the United States, once she starts going to school, various social pressures will likely dissuade her from speaking anything other than English, unless her parents insist that she use another language at home.
Our daughter is 3.5 years old and speaks in Czech 95% of the time, but understands 100% of the English I say. I understand Czech, so that is why she speaks it to me. I bet if I didn’t understand any Czech, she would be speaking English to me (“I want a cookie!” simply NEEDS to be understood, no language barriers allowed). There are no negative consequences that I can see except for this speaking Czech to me all the time. I keep asking her to speak English, but she doesn’t speak it well enough, so she gets frustrated and stops.
Now, we put her in an English school with teachers that didn’t understand Czech and after 2 weeks she was speaking a heck of a lot more…but we took her out (for various reasons) and she regressed. So the active speaking is very important.
I think in Belgium kids many people speak upwards of 7 languages, mostly learned in school and on TV. Kids are very adaptable in this regard.
-Tcat
An anecdote: I knew a Belgian guy who spoke French and German like a native, and passable Flemish and Dutch just from all the people talking to him growing up. And while nobody actually spoke English to each other he learned it from songs and TV (most shows are undubbed with subtitles, apparently) and, of course, so he could play video games and go online. He speaks English with a pretty strong accent but his actual understanding of the language is pretty much the same as your average Joe off the street. And then he learned a little bit of Latin in school. And he says this is nothing unusual where he comes from. :eek:
Whether speaking so many languages slowed him down as a kid… I dunno. I should ask him some time, but as a Chinese immigrant I know plenty of kids who grew up bilingual and I would guess that even if it causes some sort of delay the kids catch up again pretty quickly. Most of 'em can switch back and forth with ease, preferring to speak Chinese to adults and English to younger people but if I talk to them in Chinese they’ll respond in Chinese, and if I switch to English they’ll use English. It’s kind of fun to see how many times you can switch them back and forth before they start asking you why you’re talking funny 
An anecdote: I knew a Belgian guy who spoke French and German like a native, and passable Flemish and Dutch just from all the people talking to him growing up. And while nobody actually spoke English to each other he learned it from songs and TV (most shows are undubbed with subtitles, apparently) and, of course, so he could play video games and go online. He speaks English with a pretty strong accent but his actual understanding of the language is pretty much the same as your average Joe off the street. And then he learned a little bit of Latin in school. And he says this is nothing unusual where he comes from. :eek:
Whether speaking so many languages slowed him down as a kid… I dunno. I should ask him some time, but as a Chinese immigrant I know plenty of kids who grew up bilingual and I would guess that even if it causes some sort of delay the kids catch up again pretty quickly. Most of 'em can switch back and forth with ease, preferring to speak Chinese to adults and English to younger people but if I talk to them in Chinese they’ll respond in Chinese, and if I switch to English they’ll use English. It’s kind of fun to see how many times you can switch them back and forth before they start asking you why you’re talking funny
An anecdote: I knew a Belgian guy who spoke French and German like a native, and passable Flemish and Dutch just from all the people talking to him growing up. And while nobody actually spoke English to each other he learned it from songs and TV (most shows are undubbed with subtitles, apparently) and, of course, so he could play video games and go online. He speaks English with a pretty strong accent but his actual understanding of the language is pretty much the same as your average Joe off the street. And then he learned a little bit of Latin in school. And he says this is nothing unusual where he comes from. :eek:
Whether speaking so many languages slowed him down as a kid… I dunno. I should ask him some time, but as a Chinese immigrant I know plenty of kids who grew up bilingual and I would guess that even if it causes some sort of delay the kids catch up again pretty quickly. Most of 'em can switch back and forth with ease, preferring to speak Chinese to adults and English to younger people but if I talk to them in Chinese they’ll respond in Chinese, and if I switch to English they’ll use English. It’s kind of fun to see how many times you can switch them back and forth before they start asking you why you’re talking funny
An anecdote: I knew a Belgian guy who spoke French and German like a native, and passable Flemish and Dutch just from all the people talking to him growing up. And while nobody actually spoke English to each other he learned it from songs and TV (most shows are undubbed with subtitles, apparently) and, of course, so he could play video games and go online. He speaks English with a pretty strong accent but his actual understanding of the language is pretty much the same as your average Joe off the street. And then he learned a little bit of Latin in school. And he says this is nothing unusual where he comes from. :eek:
Whether speaking so many languages slowed him down as a kid… I dunno. I should ask him some time, but as a Chinese immigrant I know plenty of kids who grew up bilingual and I would guess that even if it causes some sort of delay the kids catch up again pretty quickly. Most of 'em can switch back and forth with ease, preferring to speak Chinese to adults and English to younger people but if I talk to them in Chinese they’ll respond in Chinese, and if I switch to English they’ll use English. It’s kind of fun to see how many times you can switch them back and forth before they start asking you why you’re talking funny
Oh, crap. :smack:
Next time you wonder if it is going through or not, you can hit ‘Preview Post’
-Tcat
I will try to find the study, but there was one I saw from a previous discussion of this here. The results were that very early in life children will have learned a certain number of words. If they are exposed to several languages then these words will be divided up among the different languages while the total number remains comparable to monolingual children. This means the the multilingual child will initially have a smaller vocabulary in each language. However, this effect quickly dissipates and the children are not seen to have any lingering difficulties.
That’s what I did the 5th time. :wally
You should have posted all three times, but once in English, once in Korean and once in Spanish. Now that would have been cool.
My niece just turned two. She speaks German to her dad (my brother), Russian and English to her mother (who is Russian), and Polish to her babysitter (luckily my SIL also speaks Polish). Four languages, and she has figured out who speaks what, pretty much.
I have personal experience in this matter, but it is only anecdotal evidence so take it with a grain of salt. Mytwo cousins are around 6 and 3 years old. Their mother is Japanese and their father is American. The 6 year old was raised in Japan, Australia and the United States. The 3 year old in Australia and the United States. They both speak Japanese and English very fluently. When the 3 year old is unable to describe something in English, he switches to Japanese. The 6 year old does the same. Actually Kyuzo, the 6 year old, plays along Wheel of Fortune usually beating the contestants. What it comes down to is that these two speak two languages very well and they certainly learned no slower than other children and likely quite a bit faster than many.
Must depend on the child.
I spent the time between 6mo and 3.5yr in Turkey with my family when Mr. Butler Sr. was stationed in the USAF. The maid my parents had spoke to me only in Turkish (Arabic??) and was my primary care giver at least 2 days a week. My parents spoke nothing but English.
I was unable to speak until we arrived in the states, where my parents say I was talking normally in a very brief period of time (weeks/months, I think).
I haven’t shut up since (well, I’ve slowed down since marrying Mrs. Butler, SHE talks more than anyone I’ve ever met), and consider myself fairly smart.
-Butler
Turks speak Turkish, an Altaic language. Arabs speak Arabic, a Semitic language.
Different children develop speech differently. I doubt your exposure to Turkish had anything to do with it. And it has nothing to do with being smart. Multilingualism is a natural skill that all humans are born with, but many manage to lose by failing to exercise it.
[hijack]Turkish at one time was written in the Arabic alphabet, though since 1928 has been written in a Latin-derived alphabet.[/hijack]
I have two cousins that speak english, spanish and basque.
The dad is mexican and speaks to them only in spanish, the mother is technically from the midwest but her parents moved there from spain and talked to her in basque and so she talks to my cousins only in basque, they live in San Diego which is where they learned english by watching TV and then at school.
They speak all three perfectly and have no speech impediments.
Make of that what you will.
Someone knew this guy from Belgium who had a lot of languages - csharpmajor, maybe? He might be able to give you an anecdote. 