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From: simon@psuvax1.UUCP (Janos Simon)
Newsgroups: net.kids,net.nlang
Subject: Re: Re: Teaching children to be bilingual
Message-ID: <1146@psuvax1.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Oct-84 21:32:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.1146
Posted: Sun Oct 14 21:32:10 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Oct-84 03:11:25 EDT
References: <1505@ucla-cs.ARPA> <858@ihuxb.UUCP> <1170@eosp1.UUCP> <186@scc.UUCP>
Organization: Pennsylvania State Univ.
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I have friends in Brazil who speak English at home. Their daughter is fully 
bilingual. They speak almost exclusively English at home. I also have friends
in the US with almost trilingual children: they speak Portuguese and Hungarian,
besides English. They were fully trilingual until about age three: now their 
Portuguese is adequate, but not equal to that of a native speaker, and their
Hungarian is marginal. This seems to be directly related to the amount of 
exposure to each language.
There seem to be three periods:
a)up to age ~3 (or until substantial contact with peers develops) they will
pick up languages with great ease, if they are required in a situation.
b)up to about age 10-11: language skills will be mantained only if exercised
(although relearning later is easier), and exercised a lot. When one language
skill falls behind the other, a strong pressure is needed to make the child
- who feels inadequate when using it - to speak it or even to listen.
c)older children, who have language skills. maintain them like adults (but
also have more difficulty learning new languages).
js