Multilingual children have a lot of advantages over their monolingual peers – they tend to be more creative, perform better academically, can communicate with additional cultures, and have lower risk of diseases like Alzheimer’s. One of the ways I see this intelligence boost all the time with my daughter is when she mixes her languages. She just doesn’t mash languages together randomly, she does it in smart and complex ways that combine vocabulary and grammatical structures to produce meaning.
A common myth of children’s language learning in the US is that they somehow confuse languages, when the exact opposite is the case. They know exactly what they are saying and to whom. In fact, they are no different than adults. Having lived abroad for 10 years in several different countries, it becomes the norm to mix languages in your speech. Maybe it’s adding an inşallah in Turkey to a sentence indicating hope and uncertainty or using the word 包
My father was visiting us for the week, so my daughter got to spend a lot of time using some English. She’s always excited to practice English with others, because she knows all the people around her speak it. Since we don’t speak it at home, she takes every opportunity she can get to practice and learn some new words. One of the cutest things she kept saying was, “你 open”, mixing the English and the Chinese. Even in such a simple sentence, we can see that she puts the words in the right order to combine the grammar for both languages. Certainly not easy, but multilingual children do it all the time and, as she gets older, we’ll see her do it in more complex ways.
One of her favorite songs she found on Youtube is a finger song that goes, “Daddy finger, daddy finger, where are you?”. She was repeating the English for about a week and then she switched it out to be “爸
If you’re a parent raising a multilingual child, don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re children are confusing the languages. Mixing languages is a normal part of the learning process and is a perfect indicator of just how smart your child is.
Facebooking for the children! Language Learning tips and North Shore activities for parents who care – like my page at Where are We Going, Dad?
Do you like education and language-flavored tweets? Follow me @NBJaworski
How about awesome free printables, videos, and more education ideas. Check me out on Pinterest
If you’re like me, you don’t have a lot of time to try and remember this address or scroll through your unorganized bookmarks. Get new posts right to your inbox by clicking the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
Filed under: Debunking Myths, Multilingualism
Tags: Multilingualism, Myths