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From: figmo@tymix.UUCP (Lynn Gold)
Newsgroups: net.kids,net.nlang
Subject: Re: Teaching children to be bilingual
Message-ID: <290@tymix.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Oct-84 21:55:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: tymix.290
Posted: Wed Oct 10 21:55:14 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Oct-84 06:44:56 EDT
References: <1505@ucla-cs.ARPA>, <858@ihuxb.UUCP>
Organization: Tymshare Inc., Cupertino CA
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My maternal grandmother's mother was an American-born Slovak;
her father and most of her older relatives were from Austria-Hungary
(now Czechoslovakia).  She was sent to a slovak school (where both
English and Slovak were spoken and taught), and her parents spoke
Slovak to each other.  Her mother died when my grandmother was 11,
and my great-grandfather decided to only speak English to the children.

As a result, my grandmother was competent, but not fluent in Slovak.
She told me that her cousins were much more fluent, since they were
around Slovak-speaking people all the time, whereas HER father always
spoke English around the house.

In other words, when one parents speaks X, the other Y, and the country's
native language is X, the likelihood of the child picking up Y is mostly
a factor of whether or not Y is spoken around them enough.

--Lynn Gold
...hplabs!oliveb!tymix!figmo