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Path: utzoo!watmath!saquigley
From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.kids,net.nlang
Subject: Re: Teaching children to be bilingual
Message-ID: <9544@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Oct-84 14:12:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.9544
Posted: Tue Oct 23 14:12:49 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Oct-84 03:38:51 EDT
References: <1505@ucla-cs.ARPA> <858@ihuxb.UUCP>, <1327@pucc-h>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 32

>I had an interesting experience while vacationing in France
>a few years ago.  A mother, father, and daughter sat behind
>me in a stadium, and I listened to their conversations.  
>The mother spoke English, the father listened and replied
>in French (I speak a little myself), and the daughter listened
>to either one and spoke in English.  This was the normal
>mode of conversation for most of the evening.  Occassionally
>any one of the three would throw in a phrase or two from their
>"other" language.

Arguments in my family are conducted in a similar fashion: both my
mother and I do it in french, and my father does it in english
(so that he can use some of his favorite swearwords who have no
equivalent in french (like "bloody") or other good english
colloquiallisms).

I also had an english friend who went to french school with me and
is living with a french man.  She speaks much more french now even
though she is english, and I speak much more english now that I
live in english canada even though I am french, so we often have
discussions, her in french and me in english.

Another interesting tidbit I noticed:  somehow, somewhere the brain
differentiates between the main language and other languages.  I
noticed this when my parents and I went to spain a few years ago.
Both my parents learned spanish in school, but are not very fluent.
When it came time to speak spanish, my mother garbled it up with
english (her second language), and my father garbled it up with french
(his second language).

Sophie Quigley
...!{clyde,ihnp4,decvax}!watmath!saquigley