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Nyororin (Offline)
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06-02-2009, 12:42 AM

Whoa whoa - I hate to miss out on this one!!!!
Finally a time has come where I can actually flaunt the 3 year extensive study and all that time I spent studying Japanese - English acquisition in children!

Without some sort of box for the child to categorize a language into, they will be totally mixed. In general, this "box" comes from the language being used by different individuals. If those around the child are using both languages, then the child will parse the two languages as one. Much in the same way you can learn different words for the same object, and different ways of saying the same thing. The box may be there from day one or be acquired later.
But in most cases there is something for the child to base their distinction upon from the beginning. For example, one parent speaks one language to them while the other speaks another language. Or one language is spoken by family while another is spoken by non-family... Or one language is spoken inside the home with another spoken outside the home.
Even with a strongly set pattern, children will naturally pick up one of the languages more quickly than the other. It`s a matter of the level of exposure. In general, picking up the mother`s language first is the rule as the child usually spends the most time with the mother during the first few years.

There is nothing that presents an advantage to learning a second language after a certain age. It`s the set pattern that counts. Even if you wait until a child is 3 or 4 to begin the second language, if you cannot set and maintain a pattern for the exposure it will be no different than if you hadn`t set a pattern at birth. The only difference is that it will not be as visible, as the child will always have what they know in the first language to fall back upon.

As it is the pattern that counts, my son is monolingual Japanese. My husband does not speak English and we live in Japan, so all the tried and true patterns would not work for us - I am not going to lock my husband out of any communication so decided to ditch English. If we`d lived in the US the situation would be different as it would Japanese in the home, English outside.

The case of the child ending up monolingual Japanese is a very very easy one to explain - most time spent with Japanese speaking mother from birth. Limited exposure to English, with the more proficient language still being usable during the encounters with English. Language limited to Japanese outside the home... That puts maybe 5% of language exposure in English.
Not a whole lot to work with and not a whole lot of incentive to learn it.


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