I was looking into buying some new videos for my four year old daughter. I came across some videos of cartoons, similar to Seaseme Street, but they are in different languages. What do you think would be a good language for her to be introduced to? I have no particular preference, but I would like your feedback. I think another language would be greatly benificial to her. What do you think and do you have any suggestions?
Spanish. Then she can watch the Spanish TV stations. 
I say Spanish, because it’s cool.
Isn’t that the flimsiest reason you’ve ever seen?
No, seriously, it’s cool.
I swear.
Actually, there’s a better reason (though it is cool). Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in the US and it is projected that in just a few years they will be the largest minority in the US.
From an everyday, purely practical point of view:
If you live anywhere in the continental US, except for Maine, I’d say go with Spanish.
If you’re in Maine or Canada, I’d go for French.
If you’re elsewhere, go with one of the languages being spoken near you?
From a broader perspective:
German has a lot of cognates with English, and a good grammatical structure. (Plus, it’ll make it easier to read Wittgenstein and Nietzche, and old texts on economics…)
Latin’s always a plus, since it has a good grammar (again), lots of cognates with English, and it’s a good base for learning other Romance languages.
Cantonese and Japanese seem to be picking up in the business world, and it’s good to learn a language so different from English. (I don’t know much more about them)
Arabic is another fairly major language, again very different from English.
You could always go with Bantu, or Tagalog, or Esperanto, for something completely different…
Latin is good for a base for other languages . . . if you can get Latin, you’ll be able to get a slew of other languages.
Greek’s good for that, too.
French and Spanish are so similar that I, with my 12 or so years of French instruction, can understand a decent amount of Spanish, both spoken and written.
However, Sesame Street videos likely don’t come in Latin or Greek (which are both good for etymology, as are Old languages).
Certified Language Mechanic and Bilingual Mom sticking her nose in here…
It doesn’t really matter which language you choose, because watching videos in a language she doesn’t understand won’t teach her anything except maybe a few words. If you think it would be cool for her to be able to count to ten in Spanish, (or French or Japanese or whatever other language you can find kiddie videos in), go for it. Just don’t expect much more than that. Even videos specifically geared towards teaching a child a second language are of little use without a chance to use the language in real life.
Your daughter would learn more from playing with kids who speak the target language, if you can arrange that. She still won’t become fluent unless she spends a lot of time with them, but she’ll get more natural exposure to the language than she would from TV or from a computer game.
I’m a pretty standard American and my wife is Thai. Thai is similar to Chinese in that it is a tonal language and about as different from English as you can get.
Anyway, to cut a long story down to something reasoable, before my daughter was born, a TOEFL instructor from the UK suggested that I should speak ONLY English to the child while her mother spoke only Thai.
We followed the ladies advice and it worked. My daughter is commonly mistaken for a native in BOTH countries. An initial problem was her (reasonable) assumption that “all men speak English and all women speak Thai.” Once we got around that it was smooth sailing.
I have no idea how you can arrange something like this but it DOES work.
Regards.
Testy.
Sign language! No, seriously. Or maybe Spanish.
One Chance said it: Sign Language. Another one: Math.
Taking into account what many stated above, I agree that the only way to teach your child a language is to immerse them in it. Either make a household rule that you speak one language ot your child while your SO speaks another… if not, then make sure that the kid spends a lot of time with foreign friends.
In my case, I learned my heritage language in the home as my first language. And whenever I was with family, we always spoke language #1. At school and with friends, obviously it was language #2. As I grew older and moved up the school system, I learned language #3. #3 is French, but the problem is, who do I speak French to? In the part of the country where I grew up, verrrrrry few people actually spoke French.
So I know a little French. This is good.
But as a result of not having the real-world practise, I can’t just “jump into” a conversation with a French man without saying “pardon? Je m’excuse, mais je parle un peu de Francaise…”. This is bad.
However, if you dropped me into the middle of France, with time I’d be able to get into it relatively easily because of the head start. This is good.
And my parents (and the school system) sarted me off relatively young. This is very good.
So, that all being said, I’d put my vote on two languages:
-
Spanish. You’re in the US (I presume), and besides that, there are a LARGE number of Spanish-speaking countries out there.
-
Chinese. In the international business world, your kid will end up bumping into a number of Chinese warlor-err… business tycoons. What an strategic advantage it would be for her to know the language while the people across the table are unaware of it.
…which is why I intend on going back to language school and picking up one or two more to add to my repertoire (I’m up to four now)
I’d have to say Japanese if you envisage her growing up to be a high-falutin’ international businesswoman, Spanish if otherwise. Just don’t teach her BASIC. That’s what they taught me when I was young and I still think the “GOTO” is a useful comand.
Glad to see George W’s campaign of hate is taking off so quickly :(. (Incidentally, are any Americans as worried about Bush’s actions as we Brits? And the world was doing so well…)
Ebonics.
That way if the car ever breaks down in Harlem/Watts, you’ll speak the native tongue.
With a heavy dosage of Italian sign language, used primarily when in traffic jams.
…Profanity?
Latin (but I’m biased) Seriously though, if you have Latin anything else is cake. Its not hard and its the base for most anything else.
Spanish. Useful, but I’ll give you a warning note, my parents wanted me to be bilingual and I hated Spanish. (Still do, its pretty, but not for me. I don’t speak Spanish. I’ll attempt others but being forced into it when I hated it as a small child…shudder)
Sign Language. This stuff rocks. This is what my sisters do, and I’m slowly learning. They will even talk to themselves, fingerspelling thoughts, while writing or doing homework.
And a note on Ebonics. I’m fluent and don’t use it. My mom just about died laughing when I demonstrated this. (She didn’t think I could.) What gets better is when you realise that my physics partner taught me the subtle inflections. (I remember a week of trying to get a suppressed h sound. Yes, my high school physics program went too slow.) So basically, kids will pick up what they are around.
Sign language is nice. We had a girl about 7 at our sign club meeting, She was so cute & signs better than my family.
Big plus, it keeps them quiet.
Oh alright… it was a bad joke… I have nothing against-
You know, I just realized that it doesn’t even matter what I say at this point, does it?
Me=Not American. And as someone I knew once put it:
“I’m not racist. I hate everybody equally.”
Sooner or later everybody will be speaking Esperanto. May as well get her started.
Either that or the true international language …
money.
If all you are doing is getting videos, what you will get for the effort is a slight-to-significant increase in her later ease at producing the accent/language-specific-sounds, should she later make the effort to learn that language (varies depending on the child and how much she watches the videos). Plus a few words here and there, maybe. My (Equadorian) step-mom would occasionally speak to us in Spanish for the few weeks we spent with her and my dad in the summers. Even as an adult having never learned Spanish, native speakers have said my accent is excellent (mostly for pronouncing their names). But both my French and Chinese accents suck. I don’t feel like I’m TRYING to get the accent right for the Spanish names and such, so it is automatic in the processing somewhere. I think it was the early exposure that did it.
My son is in an immersion program for French (he’s 3) at his preschool. Now, when I say immersion, I mean full immersion (not one word of English) for, like, 1 hour twice a week. Not exactly going to make him into a French speaker, but his accent for what words he DOES say is amazingly good. He actually uses a lot more Hindi in conversation than French, as two of the kids in his class speak Hindi, and he talks to them. I’m basically assuming that all he’ll get is a slightly sharper acuity in recognising and reproducing the sounds when/if he learns the language later.
Go for a language that might be useful later, I guess. I’d also vote for sign language, if you want to actually teach a language, now. The syntax is different, but it isn’t hard to learn. I learned to sign when I was in grade school, as I was in a mainstreaming school (hearing impaired and disabled of various varieties getting their toes wet for mixing with mainstream kids). Everyone learned sign language, because more than a third of the kids were primarily signers (though some did some lip reading, too), and you just couldn’t communicate without it. I don’t remember much sign anymore, but even just fingerspelling is useful at times, like when you’ve had your wisdom teeth out and can’t talk (no, wait, while you are still coming off the drugs your finger spelling is as incoherant as speaking!), or during the transition phase of labor, when words may not come out of your mouth at all, but you really need ice chips, NOW! (faster than writing it down) Voice of experience. 