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From: vasudev@decvax.UUCP (Vasudev Bhandarkar)
Newsgroups: net.kids,net.nlang
Subject: Re: Re: Teaching children to be bilingual
Message-ID: <90@decvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Oct-84 18:15:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: decvax.90
Posted: Tue Oct 23 18:15:52 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Oct-84 08:17:55 EDT
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Organization: DEC UNIX Engineering Group
Lines: 45

While we're on the subject of bilingual children...

I must tell you something about kids in Indian cities....like
myself.  Well, my father was from the Karnataka state, where
the language (yes language, not dialect) was Kannada, my
mother was from Maharashtra, where the language was Marathi,
and they sent me to an English-medium school where the 
medium of instruction was English (it was generally believed
in the big Indian cities that if you dont know English, you're
not educated!).  That was not all.  The Indian government
has declared Hindi to be the national language, which means
that regardless of what school you go to, the second language
taught in the school is Hindi.

Now, if you think that's complicated, wait till you hear this:
My mother-tongue, the language both my parents speak (otherwise
they couldn't get married!!) is Konkani!!!!!

So by the time I was six, I could fluently speak four languages,
(In India they don't discuss politics, economics, law, etc when
they're six years old...gimme a break (-: )  Kids in the
big Indian cities (Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras) routinely
learn at least three languages by the time they're in 
grade school, particularly if they study in English-medium
schools.  States in India were formed on a linguistic basis,
every state has its own language  (all languages Sanskrit-bsd)
own script, own literature, own culture!!  There are twenty
states, and twenty "officially recognised" languages.

When I graduated from high-school, I had had six years of
education in French at the Alliance Franciase de Bombay.

From the multi-lingual fingers of,
decvax!vasudev

Where did I learn to speak English without an accent, you ask?
Hollywood, of course!  Seen lotsa movies, yeah!