The only thing I really wanted to comment on is that research into second language acquisition shows that the only area children actually have an advantage in is pronunciation. In all other areas of language adults actually learn languages more quickly.
The misconception that children learn languages faster is mostly attributed to the fact that kids spend most of their time learning and studying, where as most adults have jobs and can’t spend equivalent amounts of time on it!
May your lessons and reviews be blessed by the Crabigator.
Well more confuse in her learning the Japanese word for something before the English, and then trying to use said Japanese word in normal conversation (well, normal for a toddler anyways), and having to relearn when nobody understands her. Plus not understanding why a word she knows, nobody else does. But, highly unlikely. We’d have to say the Japanese word far more than English, which is bound to never happen.
Oh yeah, that used to happen to me Water in Urdu is “paani” and I went to school and kept asking the teacher if I could get some paani and she was like wut >_> Then I learned the word I’d have to use at school was “wataa” or something and to this day I speak a strange hybrid of Urdu and English at home, and at school sometimes forget the English word for something and have to try explaining it.
“In the soup, it was like, a vegetable. And it was small and round.”
“A tomato?”
“No, tomatos are red. It was green. Hey random Urdu-speaking classmate, what’s kadu in English?”
“I don’t know!”
“Ummmmmm D:::::::” ten hours later
“Oh my god it was a pumpkin -.-”
Thanks for the replies everyone! And yeah, I 100% agree with the points about the forums. That’s not something she’s going to be using, and she knows that. She knows the rules and sticks to 'em. Written communication online is primarily adult-oriented, so I steer her away from that sort of thing. These forums are of course no exception. Thanks for the information everyone!
As if learning all those other languages wasn’t impressive enough: Ojibwe! Good for you! Please run for Prime Minister some day.
I think it’s amazing how children can learn different languages simultaneously. Sounds like your parents taught you similarly to the way my wife and I taught our son. She spoke Japanese to him and I learned that my role was to speak to him only in English. I learned that because he refused to listen to my Japanese.
Once when he was first starting to talk, we were out in the neighbourhood and I pointed out a small animal to him. I said, “リス.”
He said, “What?”
I said, “リス.”
He said (louder this time), “What?”
I said, “Squirrel.”
And he said, “Oh!”
Not sure about that. When we lived in Switzerland we knew a few families where the parents didn’t share the same native language and only had English as a common language. One that comes to mind was a Swiss father with a Japanese mother. The daughter’s English was really good (yes she went to a bilingual school but her’s was better than some of the other children whose parents were Swiss and who only spoke Swiss German or German at home). She also spoke German, Swiss German and Japanese - although I think she was struggling and/or hated learning to write in Japanese.
Children will pick up the language that’s spoken outside their home fairly easily regardless of what they hear at home. That’s why an immigrant parent talking in broken X (or not speaking any X) won’t affect the kid’s ability to speak and understand proper X. X can be only 1 language or even more, so long as it’s being used to communicate with the kid.
The problem starts when there’s only 1 person who speaks language Y with the kid, as it’s the sole input the child has.
If I immigrated to Japan with a spouse who doesn’t speak Japanese at a high level, me speaking in broken Japanese with our child wouldn’t change affect the kid’s Japanese ability after a few years. Me staying in Israel and speaking to my child in broken Japanese, however, would be detrimental to everybody involved. Me talking to my child in English (a language I’m native-level at!) while living in Israel or Japan might also be detrimental.
In your case the kid was spoken to in Swiss German and German (native Swiss parent, school) and Japanese (native Japanese parent), who probably used English to communicate at home (more than 1 person speaking non-natively). If that was the end of it, the child’s English would’ve probably ended up being strange, but functional (because she could observe other people using it). The fact that some community around her (school) spoke also in English, however, was the final nail in the coffin that allowed her to to make the transition between English-family-creole to non-Creole-English.
I get the rest of your post, but I don’t understand this part. Why do you think speaking your native (or native-level) language to your child would be detrimental no matter where you lived?
My native language is Hebrew, and me speaking that wouldn’t be detrimental at all, no matter where I lived. English, on the other hand, is different – my phonology is different enough that if my child only heard English from me, I worry about what rules they’d internalise. Even if my phonology rules in English matched that of native English speakers, I don’t know much about child vocabulary, songs, rhymes, and games in English. You’d be surprised how much you miss them if you can’t use them.
Let me tell you a story. My sister dropped my niece over to our house for the weekend last year, she was about a year and 10 months old. I decided to put on Kiki’s delivery service. Apparently, my dear niece is ahead of her time in terms of empathy and emotional development, because something about Kiki missing her mother and family resonated with her, she recognized what was happening, remembered her mother was gone and silently balled her eyes out for a minute until we noticed.
Go for it, when either of you are feeling a little less motivated you can help and lean on each other. As you level you can set individual goals for her, she will probably be able to go faster than you…ahhh to be young. Maybe when she gets to level 10, maybe a pizza party or when she burns her first kanji, have some sort of reward.
As far as adult themes, eh, kids find all that stuff out anyway. I’d just tell her upfront that there might be some adult topics and if she has any questions to come to you first.
As a kid I wanted to learn Japanese, but this was before we had the internet and wk… So never had the resources or encouragement to continue. Support her, even if she uses it for nothing other than you two talking to each other. Then you’ll have a secret coded language when you’re around others. As a kid I would have loved that.
OK I sort of see, but I think your concerns are somewhat overblown. The worst outcome I can see in your scenario is that your child would learn English with a non-native accent and would speak like an adult rather than like a child. I don’t see how that’s worse than not learning the language at all. And it’s not like external sources of native English are hard to come by anywhere in the world, apart from maybe North Korea.
As an aside, I took Spanish starting in high school (so maybe 13 years old) from a non-native teacher in rural America. I sincerely doubt that she spoke as a native would. I don’t even know how fluent her Spanish was. I was certainly in no position to judge. Yet I learned a lot just from that class, continued my studies for a few more years, and while I’m sure my accent is far from native, I’m able to hold basic conversations in Spanish even now. So in this case, I’d say imperfect was better than nothing.
Water in Urdu is “paani” and I went to school and kept asking the teacher if I could get some paani and she was like wut >_> Then I learned the word I’d have to use at school was “wataa” or something and to this day I speak a strange hybrid of Urdu and English at home, and at school sometimes forget the English word for something and have to try explaining it.
As a kid I would have loved that.
I’ll open a ビール for you when I get to level 10 ha!