Outside the US, it's very common to see young kids switch back and forth from language to language. My wife is a 2nd grade teacher, and she has students who translate for Polish, Czech, Russian, Pakistani, Indian, and Asian immigrant parents.
Only native Americans seem to have a problem with multiple languages.
No kidding.. LOL Unfortunately you would have to be a genius to learn to speak Chinese to "any" Chinese person. My neighbor is Chinese and cannot understand what other Chinese neighbors are saying. Apparently there are many many versions of Chinese.
Tue, Oct 3, 2006, 12:36am (EDT+4): .@. (Stoutman) Why do 'they' feel it is important to teach my 4-year old son Spanish words when he can barely speak English??
It has been proven that it is much easier to learn a second language early. Knowing a second language makes learning additional languages much easier. Knowing a second language, or more, could come in handy to the kid. Never hurts to learn new things.
I learned German (passable enough to understand, and tell, dirty jokes) in my mid-late 20s. I was in Germany at the time and it came in handy numerous times. What helped me most was my female friend at the time hung out in her mother's little bar, frequented mostly by people who only spoke German. It was either learn or be left out - still took some work on my part tho. Would have been even handier if I'd known French, for when I was in France, and later Vietnam. Would be handy today to know more Spanish today than just taco and burrito.
JOAT It's not hard, if you get your mind right.
- Granny Weatherwax
| Stoutman (in VfiUg.253$ snipped-for-privacy@tornado.southeast.rr.com) said: | || Why do 'they' feel it is important to teach my 4-year old son || Spanish words when he can barely speak English?? Is Spanish going || to be on the SAT or LSAT or MCAT ??? | | Nope - but it may be needed to obtain a guest worker pass...
Sorry - that was a smartass response.
I've had some some experience indicating that people who learn to think in multiple languages gain some degree of advantage in solving problems - perhaps something to do with being able to bring different different cultural perspectives or though processes to bear. Whether it's ever tested or not, I would thing that maximizing the ability to communicate would be a plus for anyone.
-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA
Tue, Oct 3, 2006, 1:51am (EDT+4) snipped-for-privacy@nowhere.none (Clint) doth sayeth: there was a young couple just having a normal conversation in French. Still takes me by surprise after being here for 2 years.
No reason to be surprised, I've heard the same, in French, Dutch, Swedish, and I'm not sure what all, in my local post office. And I live just outside a small town in North Carolina.
JOAT It's not hard, if you get your mind right.
- Granny Weatherwax
Tue, Oct 3, 2006, 8:52am snipped-for-privacy@carolina.rr.com.crap (Mortimer=A0Schnerd,=A0RN) doth sayeth: Being bilingual is a very good thing in today's world.
I've heard that if you know four languages, English, Spanish, French, and Chinese, you can make yourself understood anywhere in the world. Don't know how accurate that is, but it does make me wish I knew all four.
Just remembered, the first time I was in Germany, one of the French NCOs (NATO assignment) was dating a German girl, and their common language was English.
JOAT It's not hard, if you get your mind right.
- Granny Weatherwax
My grand kids are learning spanish, too.. and I think it's great..
I don't know where you live, but here in Calif., people with 2 or 3 languages have far better employment and social opportunities, and the younger you learn something, the easier it is..
Mac
You ask, "Shouldn't he learn English first?"
Do you think that learning a little Spanish interferes with learning English? I don't think so, but certainly don't see any reason why you shouldn't look into it.
I am pretty sure that it has been well-established that the older a person is when they begin to learn a second language the less well they learn it. Functional MRIs show a neurological basis for this.
Learning languages sequentially is a poor way to learn them. I've been learnign English for half a century and am still learning now.
There is a learning disability that is associated with changing one's primary language at a certain age. But that depends on abandoning one and picking up another, not on being bilingual, so that is not somethign to worry about here. My ex was diagnosed with that when she switched back to English from Vietnamese, but it didn't last.
I suspect he is learning English faster than he is Spanish. Does he speak English as well as or better than other four year olds?
Heck, this is an opportunity for you to learn Spanish. I bet he'd get a blast from teaching you. That's the way a lot of immigrants learned English, they sent their kids to school and had their kids teach them when they got home.
There are countries, like Switzerland, that have multiple official languages. AFAIK, their people are not any less articulate than Americans.
What is really good here, is knowing that you care and are involved in his education. Good for you/
See also sci.lang and misc.kids.
There your questions will be on-topic and read by people with experience with the relevent issues.
OTOH, you probably don't want to ask them about wood finishes.
Because at that age he'll learn Spanish without even realising it. Leave it to 10 for starting another language and most kids will never manage it.
If you think Spanish is a bad choice, then that's one thing. But IMHO, _all_ kids should be exposed to a second language around this age - it's what four year olds are programmed for.
You don't know how true that is Pete, my sons school teaches french and German, with russian and manderin being optional extras.... At work we have had a massive influx of chinese students, to get the money in the uni has dropped the english requirement, one translates for the rest, the biggest issue is their attitude to safety or other instructions, anyone below the level of Dr. need not bother as they will be ignored. Give it 5 years and they'll dry up as an income source, they'll be teaching the subjects back at home!
Badger, on the South coast of England.
then give the kid a choice of what language they want to learn.
Comprende?
Gary
To my way of thinking it's nothing to get upset about. Knowing two languages does nobody any harm, children learn multiple languages far more easily than adults, and adults who know two languages generally have a lot less trouble with learning another than do those who only know one, so if he starts out with English and Spanish, later if he wants to learn Japanese or Russian or Aramaic or whatever he'll have a leg up.
In many localities the Catholic schools, which nobody has ever accused of being bastions of political correctness, start a second language in second or third grade--in Louisiana and Canada it's French, don't know what they do elsewhere.
Further, it's an odd thing about languages--different languages express things differently--something that one can say in a few words in one may take several paragraphs in another--knowing two gives you an alternative way of looking at things which can sometimes help with problem solving.
Further, in many parts of the US today, "yo hablo espanol" is a useful thing to have on a resume for just about any job that involves interacting with the public.
Rather than fighting it I'd say to encourage him at every opportunity.
Written Chinese is fairly standardized, spoken Chinese has region-specific "dialects" that are as different from each other as Spanish is from French. Mandarin, which was the language of the ruling class until the Communists came in (and may still be for all I know), has the most speakers--my impression is that an "educated" person learned Mandarin in addition to any regional dialect but I'm a long way from an expert on China.
Nice notion in an ideal world where all kids are sufficiently educated to have some notion what language will be useful to them and schools have unlimited budgets for language instruction.
I read the OP's post and quickly scanned through the FU's. Here are my quick and disjointed thoughts, as meaningless as they may be.
The OP finds it "unbelievable" for the very reasons, no doubt, that my initial reaction is.
It's Spanish.
He and his child were not given a choice. In the states we've been hearing a lot about bilingualism for many years. And I can't stand it. Why? Because bilingualism is semi-officially English/Spanish. It's ubiquitous: ATMs, on-line banking, phone help lines, ad nauseum give us the choice of English or Spanish. NotGerman, Swedish, Russian, etc. Why only Spanish?
We're a nation of immigrants. And many of us, if we were lucky enough to have parents who had the pride and forethought to teach us, learned another language (or more). But we were taught to keep it at home, not "demand" that "the state" and businesses conform to us. Because we're a nation of immigrants, we need a single common language to be used: English. No choices. It's either English only, or all. Why discriminate?
Before you go lambasting me, know that I am thoroughly convinced that bilingualism/multilingualism is a very good thing for individuals. I tell my immigrant friends that they should speak only their native language(s)--Spanish included!--to their kids at home. Offering Spanish in schools is good too: if there's a choice. I know that other than French, some elementary schools offered either German or Russian also. Many high schools no doubt did offer more than English, French, Spanish and the classics. But it seems that we've spiraled down to just English and Spanish. Why? (Even Latin, which I studied for 5 years, and classical Greek are less prominent in HSs than just a decade ago.)
I was borne and raised in the states, but did not speak English until I went to kindergarten. From the time my boys were borne, I've only communicated in Hungarian with them and their English language skills have obviously benefited from it. And when we have to pick either Spanish or French when they enter third grade, I'll push for French.
Lord knows, they're exposed to enough Spanish-no matter how informally-and they'll be "quad-lingual."
To keep on topic, here are your Hungarian words for the day: Fa - wood Tolgyfa - oak Nyirfa - birch Juharfa - maple Cseresznyefa -- cherry
I've wasted enough of your time...
-- regards, greg (non-hyphenated american)
That is because we have ZERO need to learn other languages. How about all the immigrants from Europe -- they adapted. Our strength is our COMMON language.
And when you go almost anywhere outside the USA, what is the common language?
ENGLISH!
I'm off my soapbox -- gonna try to go find some newsgroup that discusses woodworking!
You should learn to speak Chinese. That way, you will be able to talk to your boss in twenty years or so.
"J. Clarke" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news2.newsguy.com:
*snip**snip*
I'd like to point out that this is also true of machine programming languages. Something expressable in 3 Lines Of Code in one language may take 30 or 50 in another.
Puckdropper
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