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Author Topic:   Bilingualism
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 12 of 71 (518419)
08-06-2009 12:29 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Straggler
08-05-2009 4:50 PM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
This is my experience. My ex is Mexican. The eldest child, she grew up in Chicago speaking Spanish in the home and learning English when she started school. When her brother was born, her parents had them speak Spanish with them and English with each other. By the time her younger sisters came along, she and her brother had already worn out their parents and so those kids got by a lot more easily. They later moved to Southern California, where we met and live. When our sons were little, my in-laws provided day care entirely in Spanish, so our sons learned to understand Spanish though they were reluctant to try speaking it -- our older son did take Spanish in school and now uses Spanish all the time as a cop; he's been told that he doesn't have an accent.
Since my ex and I were both foreign-language students (German for me, French for her; we met in the university language lab), we observed how they learned. One thing we noticed with them and with their cousins was that young kids very quickly learn which language to use with each person they know. When my father, who had grown up in Texas, started using some Spanish, our son got very upset with him and told him sternly that he's not supposed to speak in Spanish.
I noticed an interesting thing that might have a bearing on your situation. I tried speaking German with my son in order for him to learn. No interest at all. But when he heard two people speaking Spanish, he listened intently. My interpretation of what was happening is that the key is for the child to see the language being used by others. If they see it being used, then they recognize it as a language and as something they need to learn. If only one person is using it, then that person is just making funny noises again.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 32 of 71 (518777)
08-08-2009 4:53 AM
Reply to: Message 14 by Straggler
08-06-2009 4:43 AM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
Sorry, I'm recovering from what all medicos describe as "major surgery" (abdominal, bowel resection), so I guess I'm a bit out of sync with all "normals."
You are doing it better than I was. I tried my German with my son when he was a lot younger and gave up.
Your wife is trying Spanish with your son much later than I was and had established it as a mode of communication with her. By my figuring, esablishing a language as a mode of communication with the child is the main point, so that crucial point has indeed been made. Hu-rah! (ie, you have accomplished your objective!).
Children's morality is "rule-morality" oriented. That is to say that they have learned rules for what must be. Those rules are kind of arbitrary, but that is how they think. The classic test is if your family needs bread or a particular medicine. If your family or a family member requires that bread or medicine to survive and you cannot buy it but must instead steal it, then did you do right or wrong? If they decide that you did wrong, then they are stuck in rules-based morality (which would have been my entry into another thread). But if they think you might have done right, then they are starting to employ moral reasoning.
IOW, your son's reaction to your parent's using the "wrong" language is completely normal.
His level of bossiness is quite normal. It looks like you have very little to worry about with your son!
Your wife has established with him Spanish as a means of communication. Hu-rah!
You establish with him English as a means of communication. Hu-rah!
As I described regarding my ex and her siblings: her parents had them speak Spanish with them so that they could correct their Spanish. And they had them speaking English with each other so that they could correct their English.
Looks to me like you are there! Hu-rah! (Sorry. I'm a 32-year veteran in the US Navy Reserve, so US Marine culture has leached over.)
In case I need to elucidate, my personal experience with German as when he was much younger. Your wife has established with your son that Spanish is a means of communication, and to me that is the vital point to be made with your offspring. In my opinion (such as it is), that is the all-important deciding factor. To my own limited opinion and experience, you are leading your son in the right direction.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 33 of 71 (518778)
08-08-2009 5:08 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by Straggler
08-06-2009 3:28 PM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
Eddie Izzard? To be honest, I had never heard of him until The Riches came on cable TV here a couple years ago. Looking at the YouTube links, I was honestly surprised that he had ever been so young. Yank. What you donna do? (to quote Homer Simpson). Of course, I am better known among my peers as being totally out of touch with popular culture.
Enjoyed the YouTube links. I could follow the French and German with very little difficulty. Actually, the "German" he breaks into in that one link was more a mixture of German, French, and Italian. Reminds me of a Hebrew test question I encountered wherein I had to come up with a sentence that illustrated a particular grammatical point, so I started out in Hebrew, but half-way I hit a word I didn't know, to I switched to French and ended in with the German word, "damit" ("with it").

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 34 of 71 (518780)
08-08-2009 5:19 AM
Reply to: Message 17 by Straggler
08-06-2009 3:08 PM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
Since my own experience growing up has made me extreamely anti-sports, my reaction to your concerns is: FRAK THEM ALL!!!!! (Seriously, whenever a sports report comes on the radio, I switch to another station, that is how distasteful sports is to me)
More seriously, with what country should his loyalties lie? That is a kind of serious question to consider. Citizenship-wise, shouldn't he be British? Culturally, isnt' that a hazier question? Should he be tied to one particular national identity? Or should he transcend individual national identities? He is, after all, more than just merely British, is he not?

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 35 of 71 (518781)
08-08-2009 5:37 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by Straggler
08-06-2009 3:28 PM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
Educationally, knowing more than one language is incredibly enriching. English is basically a fusion of two languages: German and French. Most things have two words for them, the Anglo-Saxon word and the French (ie, Norman) word. Here's what a philologist radio show offered a few years ago as to the size of different language's vocabularies:
English 616,000 words
German 185,000
Russian 130,000
French 100,000
My mother-in-law (Mexican by birth and by education into the start of her adulthood) took an English writing class and her instructor's most common criticism of her was that she used words that were too fancy and not very common. Well, the common words in English are of Anglo-Saxon origin, whereas the fancier words are of Romance origin. The Spanish word for "to chew" is "masticar", like the "fancy" English word, "masticate". Those words that she would choose were the common Spanish words, whereas the common Anglo-Saxon words were not known to her.
My own experience with German was very instructive of the history and structure of English, especially when I took a seminar in Old English (which is a very Germanic language).

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 36 of 71 (518782)
08-08-2009 5:56 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by Straggler
08-06-2009 6:39 PM


Re: Comedy Culture
No never. I've been asked but spanish humor is sooo different from American humor. Sarcasm doesn't go over well. It's not understood to be funny, where as slap-stick comedy is hilarious to them. I don't do slap-stick, nor can I translate my sarcasm to spanish in a way that can be understood to be funny.
That is well interesting!! Why is that? Simply linguistic differences? Or more cultural?
I guess that I would have to say that a lot is cultural.
In the Los Angeles area there's a German shopping Center, Alpine Village in Torrance. Back in the 1970's, they had a cinema, which is no longer there -- I departed the area in 1976 and returned by the mid-1980's, and I assume that the cinema had disappeared during that time.
Anyway, circa 1970, a German native (in my French class, BTW) had informed me of the existence of that cinema and she immediately warned me that the German sense of humor was much more physical and slap-stick, as opposed to the word-play that is so prevalent in English.
In my own opinion, what with English having 2, or 3, or 4 times the vocaulary of other languages, English humor has a lot more room to play around with words than other languages have.
Here's the Spanish joke that I was taught, albeit from a Mormon co-worker:
Cul es el animal ms flojo del mundo?
El pez.
Por qu el pez?
Pues, qu hace el pez todo el da?
Nada.
Pues!
Which is the most lazy animal in the world?
The fish.
Why?
What does the fish do all day long?
It swims.
Well????
"It swims" happens to be "nada", which is also how you say "nothing".
Try it on your son and see what his reaction is. OK, you might need to have your wife do it with him.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 37 of 71 (518783)
08-08-2009 6:06 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by Straggler
08-06-2009 3:28 PM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
Curiosity.
There was an episode in a (relatively) recent episode of Doctor Who. The Daleks were laying waste to Earth and a main character teleported to Germany and there was about 5 or 10 minutes in which the dialog was entirely in German.
Now, in the US SouthWest, many people are bilingual in English and Spanish. My question is whether a lot of Brits tend to be bilingual in English and German. To be honest, I would expect a lot more English/French bilingualism, since France is the first foreign country that a Brit would be likely to visit.

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Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 42 of 71 (518813)
08-08-2009 4:03 PM
Reply to: Message 39 by xongsmith
08-08-2009 3:03 PM


Re: Comedy Culture
There are many such commercial snafus.
Like the Mist Stick. In Germany they named it the Miststock and couldn't understand why it didn't sell. In German, Mist means animal manure.
And I saw a chocolate candy bar in Germany that would have never done well in the US. It was called Zit.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 43 of 71 (518814)
08-08-2009 4:10 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by Straggler
08-08-2009 2:56 PM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
So then when the British go on holiday on the Continent, they make like Americans and expect everybody to speak English?
I guess then my question shifts to British TV. In US productions, if meaningful dialog takes place in a foreign language and nobody's going to translate afterwards, they'll subtitle it. Is it customary for British productions to forego subtitles?

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Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 51 of 71 (518849)
08-08-2009 10:18 PM
Reply to: Message 44 by Straggler
08-08-2009 6:40 PM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
So when it becomes apparent that the person doesn't understand English, does the tourist repeat himself, only louder?
I've always understood Americans' monolingualism to be due to our geographical isolation from the rest of the world, with also accounts for outbreaks of isolationalism here. The only exception to that are the southwest border states, which actually used to be part of Mexico so they came with a Spanish-speaking indigenous population. And I've always understood that so many Europeans are polyglots because they needed to be, what with being surrounded on all sides by foreign languages.
But now my ideas have been challenged by the British. They're surrounded by foreign languages (indeed, English is mainly an amalgam of different languages) and yet they follow the isolationalist pattern. Is the UK being a group of islands what leads its population to be insular?
But thinking more about it now, I wonder if it's far more the society's view and approach to foreign languages that's at work, granted that that view is undoubtedly shaped by isolationalism. On the Continent and into Eurasia, foreign language education starts in the lowest school grades, whereas most American schools don't offer it until high school (the 10th or 12th year) or college. One of the things we were taught was that young children's brains are almost literally wired to learn a language, but then puberty rewires the brain and that talent and drive is largely lost. That means that while the Continent is teaching languages to children at the right time for them to learn them, the US is waiting until it's much more difficult for its students to learn a language and, as a result, many Americans walk away thinking that they can't learn a foreign language. Kind of like the messed-up way we tried to teach the metric system, which left most Americans thinking it was too difficult, when in reality it's so much more delightfully easy than the English system.
Question: when do British schools start to teach foreign languages?
Is it true that in the US some British, Australian and other accented but English speaking films are subtitled? I find that quite funny.
It happens, but I've only seen it twice in my 57 years. The second time was about a month ago, but I forget what the show or movie was. The first time was two decades ago in the PBS production, The Story of English.
Though it reminds me of that scene in Simon Pegg's Hot Fuzz where they talk with that farmer. His dialect is so thick that only the old constable and he can understand each other, and only Edgar Wright's character could understand the constable.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 57 of 71 (519065)
08-11-2009 2:11 AM
Reply to: Message 53 by caffeine
08-10-2009 11:43 AM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
Yes, we've be sabotaged by English having become a commercial lingua franca.
I'm coming from a slightly different perspective than most, I would like to think. My first 6 or 7 years in college, I was a language geek. My intelligence is a bit above average, so I basically just skated through school. But then in 11'th grade (around age 17), I decided to try to learn a foreign language and, since I failed to learn Spanish (audio-lingual conversational classes in 7'th grade, which was not how my own mind works), I decided to take German (Scottish-Irish as I am, my family name, Wise, is from a German ancestor 4 generations ago). That was the first subject that I would actually study for, so when I started college I continued with the same subject, along with a few other languages (French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Welsh, Old English). I lived and worked in Germany for two summers, 1973 and 1974, but then the only countries I as in were ones whose languages I had studied. Then I married and enlisted in the Air Force and turned to studying computer languages, which were surprisingly similar. Interestingly, I don't think that I have the ear for languages, but rather it was the structure of the other languages that had me.
Another interesting thing I noticed was that if the other people spoke your native language, you became reluctant to speak their language. In 1974, a woman working for the city had a room free (her usual Yugoslav tenent was gone for the summer), so I stayed with her family. She could also speak English, but she confided with me that, since I could speak German, she was reluctant to speak English with me. I've felt the same, as I'm sure my boys have, regarding Spanish.
Yes, I prefer to try to use the local language, but I'll try adjust to what the locals want to use. Eg, my first time at a local restaurant (in Santa Ana, Calif, AKA "Tijuana del Norte" -- you immediately know when you've entered Santa Ana, my birth place, when all the signs switch to being in Spanish), one of our party had already eaten, so I automaticallyh told the waitress, "Ya coma". Understand, I had been Mexican by marriage for 28 years. 5 years post-divorce, I'm just getting to where I don't automatically respond in Spanish.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 58 of 71 (519066)
08-11-2009 2:14 AM
Reply to: Message 54 by Straggler
08-10-2009 12:43 PM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
I'm thinking that the more educated individuals are aware of the sterotypes and they want to "do it right". Not really "having a go", but rather trying to do it right.
Of course, as I have just mentioned, I've never been in a country where I hadn't already studied the language.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 59 of 71 (519068)
08-11-2009 2:26 AM
Reply to: Message 56 by xongsmith
08-10-2009 9:53 PM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
British currency! Since I was a paperboy in the late 60's, I remember the stories of the "Decimal Dollies", the women who were hired in the stores to explain the new decimal money to the patrons. All my European time was in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and France, all of which had decimal currency, so money was all so very simple. I never had to try to deal with British currency.
Now, English system of measurements, that was a different matter! After 57 years, I still have to look up how many feet are in a mile (5280?). I remember that horrific year in 3rd or 4th grade. Our math book did not have any conversion tables for the English system. I was completely without a rudder. Argghhhhh!
The first summer I worked in Germany was on a construction site. The very first day on the job, I was handed a Meterstock and told to get some boards that measured so many centimeters across. Simple! A few years later, a co-worker needed to know how much the water would weight in a trough of certain dimensions. Simple! (1 ccm is one ml and one ml of water masses at 1 gram ... take it from there). The metric system is so simple, but they decided to teach it by converting from English to metric and back. Dumb!
I still prefer the metric system.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 63 of 71 (519104)
08-11-2009 10:48 AM
Reply to: Message 62 by Straggler
08-11-2009 8:28 AM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
Working within the metric system is much easier than trying to work within the English system. And that is really the secret to teaching it: just have the students use it.
However, visualizing a measurement is where the difficulties lie, since I've had to live with the English system for most of my life. Though the solution for that should be to live it for long enough. And, while I was working in construction during college, a carpenter pointed out that switching to metric would be hard for him because there are so many standard measurements for things that he'd have to relearn all over again.
Money-wise, I heard stories of American tourists who would be so confused by a country's currency that they would just hold out their money and have the salesman take what he needed to pay for what they were buying. Even when that country had decimal currency. The very idea would boggle my mind. Every coin and bill I saw had the face value expressed in a numeral, so how much does it take to figure it out? US coins, OTOH, are notorious for withholding that information. It's all written in English. And if you didn't know how much a dime was worth, what good would it do you to read "ONE DIME"?

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 66 of 71 (519124)
08-11-2009 3:40 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by caffeine
08-11-2009 11:09 AM


Re: Bilingualism - Bringing Up Kids
"How much is that in real money?"
Actually, I enjoy reading money and have never been at a loss with any European or American (in the hemispherical sense of the word) currency. I especially enjoyed the French 20-franc bill from 1974. It was very colorful and looked like it had been clipped from a comic book.
ABE: You say 'even when that country had decimal currency'. Has anyone ever been to a country that doesn't have decimal currency?
Well, England used to be non-decimal, but I don't know of any that isn't decimal. The point I was making was that that foreign currency is based on the exact same system as our own, so why can't they deal with it? It would be like a Ford driver having to drive somebody's Chevy. Sure it's different, but you use it in the same way so what's the problem?
ABE2: Just wanted to mention something here in this thread quickly, as it contradicts what I was saying earlier. I just drew a total blank as to how 'assistant' was spelt in English, being now accustomed to writing the Czech 'asistent' at the end of emails. Maybe bilingualism can create a few spelling issues!
Actually, it had helped my spelling, at least while I was still current enough with French. "Assistant" is one of those words with different ways to spell the ending, all of which are pronounced with a schva (an unaccented vowel which in English kind of sounds like "uh"; in phonetic transcriptions it looks like an upside-down "e"). The other endings include -ble, -nce. What I found was that the French spellings tended to be the same as the English and, whereas English pronounced them all the same, French pronounced them exactly as they are spelled (albeit with a French accent). So all I had to do was to remember the French pronounciation and I would have the correct spelling. Of course, that was a few decades ago, so I can't rely on it anymore.
Another way in which bilingualism helps spelling is that learning another language makes us aware that words actually mean something. You know better than to write stupid things like "Starting today, their will be ... " and "Please come and get you're stuff." and "Is that to hot?" Having learned a language, you no -- er, know {grin} -- that you choose a word because of its meaning and not because of its sound.
I participate on a C programming forum which a lot of non-English speakers also frequent. The worst and most incomprehensible posts are by native speakers. They constantly use the wrong words. One classic example is a guy who wanted sample code for a Barber Poll. OK, we figured it must be some kind of statistical method we hadn't heard of before, so we asked for more information. "You know, that twirly thing in front of a barber shop." I really wanted to reach through the screen and rap him up the side of the head for that idiocy.
Foreigners may not be able to express themselves that well and their sentences might be a bit strange, but most of the words they use are the right ones. Except sometimes which they chose the wrong word from their dictionary. We had one guy from Portugal who had a question about multithreading and lights. Huh? So he tried to describe what he was doing and I realized that he had meant "semaphores". As in Spanish, the Portuguese word for traffic signal (AKA "light") is "semforo". So I introduced him to Wikipedia and the fact that most articles are translated into other languages, so you can see the right words being used.
Edited by dwise1, : typo

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