Bilingualism

Yo Straggler,Both my kids understand spanish, having been exposed to their grandparents who, for the most part, only speak spanish. They just don't speak it very well. The weird thing is my 1st daughter only spoke spanish unitl the age of 4, or so, because her grandmother would take care of her during the day. When my 2nd was born we moved from Miami, and away from the grandparents, and she wasn't exposed to it...except when me and my ex-wife would argue. The spanish flew out of our mouths then. So my 2nd doesn't speak it as well as my 1st, who doesn't speak it all that well anyways.I don't know what the best way would be to bring your son up speaking both. If it's not the common language spoken in your house by both you and your wife, I think, from my experience with my own kids, that it's very hard for them to speak it fluently.I speak perfect spanish but both my parents only spoke spanish at home, they still do. So even now when I speak to them it's in spanish, except form my mom who does speak english to me when we are speaking away from dad.The advantage, aside from him being able to pick up women when he visits Argentina , I wouldn't know if there are any. I speak both and it only helps when I'm in a situation were there are only spanish speaking people. But in these same places many people who only speak english get along fine, it just takes more body language to express what they are saying. Maybe I just take the fact that I can speak it for granted, perhaps there are advantages, I don't know...Good luck though. I hope he does end up speaking both because honestly it is a beautiful language and there's a lot of great literature from spanish speaking authors that he could enjoy. Plus, lets not forget picking up women in Argentina. - Oni

I suspect that when all is said and done that will be the main reason he ends up speaking Spanish come post teenagehood. If I wasn't already married to an Argie girl I might well be have more "impetus" to try and learn the language myself for exactly that reason It might be a struggle maintaining his bilingualism in the preceding years. But grandparents and uncles etc. on that side of the world (plus his regular trips to family in Madrid) will no doubt keep him versed enough in the meantime. Once he discovers the "pulling power" and world of opportunity that two languages allows him I suspect that your insightful reasoning may match his own conclusions.Now all I need to worry about is how to get him to support England rather than Argentina in the next world cup..........

On a more serious note...Did you ever feel that your own bilingualism disadvataged you at school?Do you consider English or Spanish as your "first" language? Or are both equal?On a completely opposite of serious note..... Do you ever do comedy in Spanish............?Have you ever seen Eddie Izzard? Atheistic transvestite comedian who regularly breaks into French/German/whatever in front of English speaking audiences. Not my favourite British comedian by any stretch of the imagination. But kinda relevant to the topic and more widely the EvC forum to some degree. Here are some links for when you are bored.Eddie on bilingualism (and pot): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IzDbNFDdP4Eddie on religion (even though he breaks into German at one point - just to keep the bilingual theme going on) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ope-1Zb5t-kWhether you like his stuff or not the topics at least seem highly relevant to you personally Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

If he knows anything about football you have your work cut out for you.....- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

I didn't but my sister did. But the reason was that she was never exposed to english until she started school. She actually had to repeat 1st grade due to her lack of english. I had it easier because by the time I was talking my sister had already been in school and spoke english. Her and her friends would talk in english to me and I picked it up. Even still for the better half of my early years spanish was my first language. Even today when writing I often make the mistake of spelling the word how it sounds, which is how spanish works. I have to catch myself and correct it, I do it unconsciously. I'd say equal. I'm very proud of my heritage, where my family came from and the struggles they went through to be in this country. I also value what this country allowed my parents to acheive, and that I was born here and not in Cuba, so it's an equal appreciation for both. English is my families future, but spanish is my families past. I'm in the middle with both influences, and value them equally. 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. I think I'd just come off as an asshole (like on this forum sometimes ). I've done spanish commercials before, though. And spanish theater. YES!!! The man is brilliant! A true genius of comedy, and a great actor as well. Don't know if you guys in England caught the show The Riches? Check it out, some of Izzard's best work. There are others...? - Just kidding, seriously though, who are your favorites?One of my favorites, not from England but an Aussie (same shit ) who made it in England, Jim Jeffries. I put one of his videos in the Humor thread. Thanks dude, I'm going to check those out. I love his work.- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

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If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
~George Carlin

Hi, Dronester. There was a time when I would have said, "yes, fluently." Unfortunately, I'm not that good anymore. Though, when I was interviewing for a PhD, I did help translate for a lady from Beijing during a layover at the Cincinnati airport (the northern accent is extremely hard to understand though: it sounds like Irish people speaking Chinese, and many sounds get turned into "r" for some reason).I'm a Mormon: we serve two-year missions around the world, and I was sent to Taiwan. They have one of the best language training facilities in the world in Utah, where dozens of languages are taught. We had about 2 months of 8-to-10-hours-a-day training, then we got dumped in the deep end (i.e. the streets of Taiwan).I took some classes during my undergrad, but I ran out of the extra time for fun classes when I got married and suddenly became a father.-----I used to speak Spanish as a teenager, when I worked with a bunch of Mexicans, but I was never all that good at it. Learning Chinese follows a completely different path from learning Spanish: with Spanish, you can start with simple concepts, learn a bunch of vocabulary, and gradually get into the harder stuff later on, all the while still communicating passably. The learning curve gets steeper as you get in deeper.With Chinese, it's actually a fairly simple, straightforward language, but you have to start with all the hard concepts first (because, on a fundamental level, it's entirely different from English). Once you've mastered that, it gets easier as you go. So, the learning curve is steepest at the beginning, then drops off (until you start trying to learn to write: then all bets are off).The result is that people who only speak a little Spanish can get by, but people who only speak a little Chinese don't really know any Chinese at all.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Onifre. I can't imagine what you could possibly be referring to here.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hard to believe, I know. Seriously though, I actually enjoy getting to know people's level of humor on this site. It's a weird thing that I do when I read posts. I try to guage the type of personality and if they like jokes or not. Sometimes I push the envelope when I know they don't like it. But like I said, I can be an asshole sometimes. - OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

Hah! Fortunately his only source of footballing knowledge at this early stage in his development is ME!! It is the single area of unadultered indoctrination and prejudice that I insist upon. Without alternatives, impurities or compromise. Objective rational assessment of the superiority of the relative merits of any alternative is not an option he will be afforded.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I went to high school with a brother and sister who's family was from Panama. The family would regularly spend a portion of the year in the States and then a portion in Panama. They told me that when they were in the States, where they could expect to talk English in public, the parents insisted on Spanish being spoken at home. When they were in Panama, the parents insisted on English being spoken at home.

It changes all the time. But currently:Ross Noble - (Surreal Improvisation) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAJ-q03JnQkFrankie Boyle (Harsh Scotsman) http://properlaughs.com/...-at-the-apollo-191208-part-3-of-3?David Mitchell (Poshboy English twat who doesn't take himself at all seriously) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkObvXY24tkJack Dee (Lives down the road from me and discussing the area that I used to work in until recenetly) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peVqzx3BfnQFinally a really short and relatively shallow but funny one from Russel Howard http://odeo.com/...relationships-scare-Mock-the-Week-BBC-Two That is well interesting!! Why is that? Simply linguistic differences? Or more cultural? Never! I'll see your asshole (so to speak) and raise you a pompous wanker. Anything you can do I can do better. And I don't even have the excuse of testing people's comedy boundaries for professional research to use as an excuse for my behaviour.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I don't think you should worry too much about this. Learning a new language will never be as easy again as it is when they're children, and I deeply regret the fact I was never exposed to any foreign language as a child. In my experience, this seems to be a fairly widespread opinion among English-speakers living on the continent, embarrased about how much better most of the rest of Europe is at foreign languages.I don't think being bilingual will hold anybody back in English - on the contrary I think it might be an advantage. English and Spanish are related languages, and knowing both and seeing the links between them can help you understand both better. The experience of learning a heavily inflected language has certainly increased my understanding of English. Many things, particularly archaic sentence formulations you come across in literature, suddenly started to make sense as the leftovers of when English was an inflected language.I do think I've lost some English vocabulary, but this has more to do with regularly simplifying my English for non-native speakers than it does with learning a second language. I've always wondered whether Utah had a big community of Czech speakers due to some oddity of migration history, or whether they taught all these Mormon missionaries Czech just in order to come and spread the Good Word here in the heart of heathenism. Now I know.Edited by caffeine, : Reworded to avoid redundant overuse of the same words, making it look like I'm not at all the right person to be discussing how to improve language skills.

Hi, Caffeine. When you say "here," you're referring to the Czech Republic? I thought you were just another boring American.Actually, my brother-in-law was a missionary in the Czech Republic, but I think they taught him Slovakian.Other than him, I can't remember having ever met another Czech-speaking Mormon.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

That's right, I live in Prague. I thought I used to have a location listed, but never mind. I'm not Czech though - just another boring Brit instead.There seems to be a permanent Mormon mission here in Prague, and I saw them preaching to somebody in the nearby town of Plzen once, too. To be fair though, the last time one was preaching to me was a few years ago, and at the time I wouldn't have been able to distinguish Czech from Slovak. It would make sense to teach Slovak, as it's easier than Czech - the pronounciation is simpler (no '' sound for one - a bizarre noise that only exists in Czech. Try saying 'zh' like in fusion and a rolled 'r' simulatenously), and they have more words similar to other European languages than Czech (months are a great example - január, február and marec, as opposed to leden, nor and bezen).They're very similar languages though, so you can get by here fine speaking Slovak. I'd go so far as to say that they're different dialects of the same language with their own formalised writing systems, but this sort of talk doesn't go down too well with a lot of locals.

In the world so globalized as ours the more languages one knows the more useful s/he is when it comes to doing business. For example, in Houston, TX, the lawyers that speak english and spanish make much more money than the ones that only speak english. This is due to high percentage of spanish speaking population here. Bilinguilism is an advantage no matter what profession you are looking at because things are more and more being done on international level at least in some way.In addition to being a financial advantage, knowing a foreign language is in itself gratifying. It allows you to learn and connect to a foreign culture at a more intimate level. It opens doors and allows you to make connections.The best way to learn a foreign language is to live in a country for a while. If thats not possible make sure everyone who can speak spanish speak it to the child. Buy some spanish cartoons and movies. Maybe you can find some spanish speak freinds for your child as well. Make sure your child takes spanish in school.Also, learning spanish will not effect the level of English (if anything it will improve it). The only way it could be a concern if the child lived in a non-English speaking country. Seeing how its not the case, don't worry about it.Being bilingual will give your child a big advantage over great majority of Americans (or wherever you are from). Edited by Ragged, : you from the UK not America, well no matter. Edited by Ragged, : Typo*