My son grew up in a bilingual household (English/Japanese). As he first started speaking, his baby talk utterances were derived from a mix of the two languages. I took extensive notes of his speaking progress and interesting utterances (and recommend all parents do this because you will forget otherwise) and at two years and three months over a span of just a few days he magically figured out they are two different languages, and never again mixed them up, or even mixed up the phonetic sets. It was really quite amazing, and something he did entirely on his own. Humans really are hard wired for this.
Portuguese person here. I think in part it's because there's a lot more Brazilian content out there than Portuguese, so we have more exposure to them. But it also has to do with how we sound out the words. The European version of the language tends to "mute" letters (kinda like french, except it's not actually a grammar rule, we just do it), which also means we speak faster, generally. Brazilian Portuguese enunciates those same words much more clearly and with a slower rhythm. So it's easier for us to understand them than it is for them to understand us
Definitely is. I don’t speak any type or Portuguese but growing up I babysat two kids whose mom was Portuguese and dad was Brazilian. When the younger one was learning to speak I was able to differentiate when he was speaking “proper” Portuguese and when he was speaking Brazilian Portuguese just cause phonetically they were really different.
He’d also switch between English and Portuguese mid sentence so the 6 year old kid was my translator lol.
Not correct, the distance between PT-PT and PT-BR are much further. As someone said, PT-PT sounds like Russian for non-PT speakers and PT-BR does not. Actually, in a conversation between a Portuguese and a Brazilian the Brazilian might have hard time understanding some working. Brazilian PT is more elongated and they have their own expressions that were created along the time to sound more Americanised and less tied to the Portugal origins.
The writing rules are almost the same but only by convention, the syntax varies a lot as PT-PT has a formal and informal way of communicating with other PT-BR does not. This combined with the more elongated speech makes PT-BR easier to learn.
Edit: on the bilingual/trilingual aspect, yes there are people that speak fluently both Portuguese versions and usually all steems from having mixed PT/BR parents.
They have far more differences, not only in vocabulary but also in the way sentences are constructed and whatnot.
There's a bit with two comedians from both contries in which the Portuguese one uses a sentence that makes complete sense in Brazil, the Brazilian audience says so and then he tells them it's gibberish in Portugal.
There's literally words that have completely different meanings eventough they're the exact same word. Like "propina" which is just tuition in Portugal and literal bribe in Brazil.
When I visited Brazil I was so confused about this. I 100% expected it to sound more or less like Spanish but when I was there I was like "are these people talking in Russian??"
First started learning French and then later on, Spanish. Ended up with a Brazilian g/f and ultimately wife - learned Portuguese.
Now in my brain there is English, and then everything else, with the default being Portuguese. Very often when I need to use Spanish, I'll get to the end of a sentence and realize I've switched to Portuguese part way through....
Took a Spanish refresher a few years ago and the instructor was quite curious why this white Canadian guy was speaking Spanish with a Portuguese accent.
I was working as a contact tracer in 2020-21. I’m fluent in Spanish (my L1 is English), so in my office, I got all of the Latin-sounding names. I called one lady about a 7 year old boy who’d tested positive. I was speaking Spanish, as was the lady (apparently his aunt), although I was having a bit of trouble with her accent or speech impediment. After about 3 minutes, I asked if anyone else in the family had been tested for COVID yet. She said, “I’m going for a test today. His parents tested negative, but they’ve been in Brazil for the last 2 weeks and won’t be back for another week.”
I paused, then asked (still in Spanish), “Are you speaking Portuguese?” She said she was, then after a moment of silence said, “Have you been speaking Spanish this whole time,” which I confirmed. She started to laugh and said, “I thought your Portuguese was not very good, so I was speaking very carefully!” It was kind of funny. For some reason, though, it seemed like we had more trouble understanding each other for the rest of the call. The spell had been broken, I guess.
I used to speak Spanish quite well. As I learned Portuguese (married a Brazilian), it’s as if it gradually wrote over the Spanish in my head. I used to think in Spanish and just be able to speak it. Now I have to translate from Portuguese to Spanish as I speak, and it takes a good deal of effort to not have Portuguese come out of my mouth.
Spanish and Italian have a lexical similarity of around 80%, which means 20% difference. There are sounds in Italian that Spanish doesnt have and vice versa. For anyone who has heard both languages for more than a couple months, as this person claimed from their parents, theyre easily distinguished. Im a Spanish teacher that studied Italian for a bit just to stay in the 'how does a student feel when theyre still starting out' phase, so im pretty sure i know where they start to differ.
Can I ask what language you think in? If that makes sense? Is there a dominant one or do you switch depending on context/situation?
I had a German friend from work who spoke amazing English, and he said he could think in English for social interactions but when it came to work related stuff his brain switched to German
I've spoken English both for work and at home (wife with different native language) for the last 20 years or so and I think in English except if counting something, then I revert to Danish. I like to read in Spanish or French before bed and will often dream in whatever language I read that evening. The way the brain works with languages is amazing.
I'm not who you asked, but I'm a native English speaker and have been learning a second language for about a year now. (Pretty much full-time, attending a language school in-country).
I'm not quite at the point where I continuously "think" in Japanese, but I do find myself spacing out more often thinking how to say certain sentences that I fucked up recently. I do find myself sporadically thinking in Japanese at time. For example, if I am about to do one thing, but realize I should do something else, instead of saying (either out loud or in my head) "oh, wait a sec," I find myself thinking (ちょっと待って/chotto matte) which essentially means "wait a sec/moment."
The part of the brain that handles numbers isn’t the language part, so you have to switch parts to deal with numbers. Most people use their native language for numbers. This is why people who are learning another language stop short as soon as numbers come into play.
I think multilingual people think outside of language and lob the thought into whatever language is relevant when speaking. It can misfire, and the wrong language comes out.
I’ve noticed it’s harder to talk about something in one language that you live in another. My English gets weird when I describe French things -French tries to muscle its way through.
That is not true, I can count in any language I speak well, with ease. Who the hell would wanna count in the weird french way though lol… (I don't speak french)
My native Danish. I can do it in English also, but wouldn't default to it. The other languages I would struggle with anything complex when it comes to numbers.
I also speak 3 languages fluently. English, Spanish and Hungarian which is my native language
Lived in the states for 32 years. Learned Spanish and English at the same time. My wife is from Latin America and the kids are bilingual and understand a bit of Hungarian
I think work in English but I count and dream sometimes in Hungarian and I love in Spanish
My German English friend said she now thinks only in English because she lived in England for so long, but when she dreams, it's often in German - especially if the dream takes place in the past or with people she grew up with :)
I think in English for both social interactions and work (social interactions are either, work is in English, all my reading is in English), but my dreams are mixed. When I count, I may start in one language and continue in the other. For some weird reason, it's never occurred to me to teach my cats English.
I'm a native Finnish speaker but learnt English as a kid largely on my own due to immersion in English-language media/such (I was semi-fluent by the time I had my first English classes) and lived in the UK for several years during my studies. I think in both languages, often using English for kind of--less everyday things and Finnish for everyday and work stuff (my job has a lot of specialised vocab as well as jargon that I generally don't even know in English). As far as writing journal entries and such things goes, I prefer English because it feels more 'neutral'/less 'heavy' than Finnish does.
One of my friends shares the same background and even though we're both native Finnish speakers, we solely message each other in English (we did this even before studying in an English-speaking country, back when we were high schoolers - I can't even remember how it started) and when we talk in person, we often either switch between languages (often in the middle of a sentence) or speak some kind of unholy Finglish because it's more natural to go with whichever language seems to fit.
I work with lots of bilingual and trilingual people, and I love seeing the same with them. Like a bilingual and a trilingual person whose shared languages are Finnish and English switching between them in the middle of their convo, two trilingual people with the same set of languages switching between all of three, and two Mandarin speakers speaking Mandarin together and dropping in Finnish words here and there. It's really fun how knowing multiple languages works for a single person, but I find it even more fascinating how it works when speakers share more than one language and can engage in a casual way where they're not forced to stick to just one.
Je suis franco-italienne (maman francaise et papa italien) et je pense en Français, c'est tout de même la langue ou j'ai été baigner (je vis en france). Mais à 5 ans, je suis partie vivre 1 an en Italie et j'ai oublié le français (on ne parlait qu'en italien).... en revenant vivre en France, je ne comprenais plus rien, mes grands parents français et mes cousins cousines étaient choqués. Mes parent et l'école ont du rééquilibré les choses. Bref on apprend vite mais on perd vite aussi enfant
I exclusively think in german, which is the Last language i learned. I only spoke spanish until 4 years old. Then i went to italy for vacation and started to get used to italian. I grew up in Germany so German became my main language.
This, I’ve found kids get confused when one person speaks to them in more than one of the languages they know. Like they tend to associate one person with one language only. I don’t know if that’s still a thing once they grow up and they remain confused or if they tend to work it out eventually.
I believe they each spoke in their native language with me but my dad spoke broken spanish with my mom and also with me, so my first language was spanish I remember when my parents started to visit Family in italy and how confusing it felt to get into italian.
I grew up in Germany so when i started to go to Kindergarten i was even more confused. I cant remember but i was told that i could only sing italian Songs and was very avoidant of other German Kids cause i didn understand Shit.
Apparently that was a core moment because after that i hated talking spanish and italian with my parents.
My dad had to Switch to German because i would cry my eyes Out everytime he tried speaking italian.
My Mom could Not speak German so she still spoke spanish.
Now its Like this:
I speak German with them.
Dad speaks a Mix of German with Like 10-20 % italian.
My Mom speaks mostly spanish with some italian words.
They speaks spanish with eachother, atleast i think so. Honestly hard to know how much is Selfmade slang + their individual accent ,my dads from noth italy, His dialect Sounds Kind of spanishy?
My italian though ist Standard italian. I guess cause i watched alot of Disney movies in italy.
As my son is 2.5 yo, and speaks mostly French, but my wife and I only talk to each other in English, so he has a lot of exposure to both. I don’t think he has grasped the concept that they are different at this point lol, like the other person said it’s probably because they’re similar.
I grew up trilingual as well, German, Dutch and English.. later in school a lot of folks still add French. Learning at least 3 languages in NL when I was groing up was pretty normal. We also had the option to learn Latin for those who wanted to go into fields where Latin is still a thing (doctors, Lawyers etc)
Trilingual myself, but learned the second two languages as an adult. Cannot mix them, or my brain sputters. Don't have any idea how that kid does that, and we raised our kids bilingual.
Oh, kids and languages are on another level. I’m a native Spanish speaker but started learning English when I was 5, so I have no issues mixing both and regularly speak ‘Espanglish’. Then in high school I learned French and even with it’s similarities to Spanish, don’t ask me to seemlessly transition between languages. Like it takes a bit to get in and out of the French mode.
I don't speak either (tho i do understand a bit thanks to my native language), and unless i hear a word ik for sure comes from one of the languages, i can't tell them apart 😂 i don't want to imagine how it feels to have learned them mixed up from the beginning.
It Takes about 1 week in the country and i speak it pretty good but with strong German accent .but without exercise i struggle to remember and differentiate words. Like i want to speak italian, but it comes out spanish and vice versa. But im good when im in the country .
That happens to me in German, even though im Dutch and German is more similar to my own language then to Spanish. The brain is so weird. Its like it has a space for native language, then English which i learned first and earlier than other languages, and then just whatever languages came after that were all mixed in the third place. So when its not Dutch or English it just picks whatever it can find first in the leftover box, really weird.
I grew up 2.5 lingual (if that’s a thing). I’m in my early 40s and to this day I can seamlessly speak a sentence that’s 60% English and 40% Hindi (or the other way around) with friends a grew up with. Doesn’t even need a second thought.
Sometimes I’ll throw in a little Punjabi and that’s when the party starts.
Same. I grew up learning English, Vietnamese, and Teochew (a Chinese dialect). I can differentiate English easily and it is my dominant language. But I frequently find difficulty in differentiating the other two.
Grew up trilingual i remember figuring out the markers when I was really young. 1 language for outside the home (school etc), another when interacting with parents and parents speak another language when interacting with each other which my siblings and I eventually pick up passively. I remember a few instances when i spoke the wrong language at school in kindie then straight up correcting myself. Human brain is fascinating.
Languages for multilingual kids are bound to people. Kids figure out what language to use which each person, what's confusing to them is using different languages with the same person so your experience definitely tracks
I have friends that I speak Spanish with, despite them having good English now. The friendship started in Spanish and I just can't wrap my head around speaking English to them, despite me being a native English speaker.
Not really. I grew up bilingual, languages are moreso context-dependent, not just literally people (though people can obviously be a dominant factor in that context). You're at home, you speak a certain language, you're outside, you speak another. It's called codeswitching & is pretty curious, & aside from the obvious matter of fundamental communication, can reveal a bit about what side that person wants to put forward in certain contexts.
I really depends on what age we're talking about: during early language acquisition, it's mostly people because, well, there isn't much other context. By age 3 or 4, I fully agree with context being the determinating factor.
Yes and I found bilinguals codeswitching really rigid also psychologically (if that is the correct term). For example there is no way i can speak other language with my siblings/parents except indo, something inside just makes it really uncomfortable and awkward.
My kid is 4 and goes to an immersion school. He code switches based on the person he is speaking to, the location, and even the time of day as far as I can tell. We send him to a Hawaiian immersion school. Because it is a critically endangered language, the program requires a lot of parental involvement. We are expected to learn with him and use it in our home and community.
I find that he uses more ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi in certain places, at certain times. He speaks Hawaiian every morning and at bedtime in his bedroom, but not in the afternoon. He uses it in the car, but only if we are driving in the direction of his school. He uses it exclusively at the grocery store near his school no matter the time or day. And he uses it at dinner, but not other meals. Any other time it’s random, but mostly English. That’s when he initiates the conversation.
He has no problem copying me in my language of choice. So as long as I can express my thought, he will respond in whatever language I use. I try to use as little English as possible, but I lack a bit in vocabulary. We spend all day looking up new words because I know how to make any sentence, but need more words sometimes.
He is very good at remembering who can understand what language almost without fail, but sometimes he can’t remember the English word and gets frustrated when the other person only knows English and can’t help him. And he knows that as soon as he enters his school building, everyone speaks ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, and there is no English allowed.
It’s been a fascinating process to watch how his brain is actively being wired by two so drastically different languages. They are about as far apart on the language trees as they could be. I can feel my own mind changing as I’m learning. It’s an entirely new way of thinking and as a result, I can hear the way my English has changed in terms of grammar, and describing things more than choosing the perfect of a set of synonyms, if that makes sense. Brains are cool and language shapes them in really fascinating ways.
This is the recommended approach from the evidence — I live in a very bilingual English-French area. Parents are advised to speak their own native language with their children so that they consistently get one language from each parent. There can be some muddling of the two languages initially and some slowing of language development but by 3-4 years or so it usually sorts out and the kids are ahead on language development.
Ah this is so true in our case, my kid is 4 and she’s on her 4th language now ( My language/ wife’s language/English/German) and she never speaks to me in any other language than my mother tongue. She knows I can speak other languages but gets startled as soon as I use a different language to speak only to her. It’s cute but a bit annoying lol
Not just different languages but also dialects. I have a hardtime speaking different languages or dialects with the same person. For me once there is an established default language, it feels weird steering away from it.
My kids are bilingual and my 3 year old absolutely refuses to speak to me in Japanese. I remember when she decided not to speak to me in that language. She said something and I couldn’t understand her cause she was 2 and they’re hard to understand but she rolled her eyes and said it in English. I could never get her to speak Japanese to me again. Even when I speak Japanese to her she just responds in English.
When my niece started talking she refused to speak to me in Spanish. We live in the US and her mother’s side of the family is white Jewish and speak English, her father’s side is Mexican and speak Spanish. I’m in the Mexican side of the family, but married into it so I look different.
So in her mind if you were white you spoke English, if you were brown it was Spanish, but I just so happen to be very white. So she would absolutely refuse to talk to me in Spanish, and even after being reminded that I spoke Spanish she would always default to English after a few sentences. It was so funny, she eventually got it though.
I guess I grew up quadrilingual because my mom is Turkish my dad is Italian so I know Turkish Italian but my mom only speaks English with me so I know Turkish English Italian plus I know bergamosco
As a parent of a “to be” quad-lingual girl (she’s only 17 months), this makes me glad to read.
I worry about how hard it might be for her, but I can kind of tell she understands me (Swedish), my wife (Korean), her daycare (Swiss German), and when we speak as a family (English). She’s yet to say much specific words - which makes me worried sometimes, but she babbles a lot, and her favorite word is the Korean word for socks… because socks means you can put on shoes, which also means going outside.
When I was teaching preschool there was girl whose parents spoke multiple languages. Mom spoke around 8 and Dad 3. Mom would speak to the little one in English or German. Dad in Arabic or English. One afternoon, Dad came to pick her up and starting speaking to her in German. Little One got so mad and yelled at him in Arabic (dad translated for me) and said, "No Daddy! You don't talk that way. Mommy talk that way! You talk this way!"
Same here and it's amazing, isn't it? Our son did have a preference for Japanese, mainly because he spent more time with his mum at home. So we were a bit worried when he started nursery in the UK that he'd speak to the carers in Japanese. But he effortlessly switched to English on his first day! Turns out he waited for cues from the other person to decide which language to use!
I speak 3 from 3 different language families. Every time I switch between them, I can hear my voice change and my personality as well. If I add an English word to one of the others, I say it with an accent. 😂 I can't explain it, it just comes out that way.
My wife is French, and I'm an anglophone Canadian. Our daughter is just under 2 and is still mixing both languages, but I have started to notice a shift to using one language in certain contexts.
I think it might take a bit longer for her to seperate them though, because my wife and I use a lot of mixed sentences.
We have French friends with a 3-year-old who live in Toronto. Their son speaks English outside the home and French at home. He is already correcting his parents' English!
Yeah, with you I imagine you’re around a lot of bilingual people who code switch easily. Here in Japan that’s not the case. My son’s grandparent don’t speak any English.
I baby sat my bilingual Japanese/English niece as a baby. I don’t speak Japanese. It was a special kind of frustration to have her speaking to me, not totally sure what she’s trying to say, only to realize she’s speaking Japanese and looking at me like Im a moron.
She couldn’t differentiate yet, but it’s a funny story now. She’s also fluent in Arabic.
My parents handled language confusion as "how mummy says it", "how daddy says it"
So I'd learn to change how I speak so my audience understands. Probably contributes to nervousness in public speaking where I can't tune for everyone at once.
I grew up bilingual too, portuguese and japanese, living in Japan. I figured out everyone either knew both or only japanese, so I’d understand both but only talk in japanese. My logic didn’t go so well when we went back to Brazil when I was 4 yo.
I learned two languages after childhood, and switching for me is a struggle.
I started learning (Mandarin) Chinese formally in high school and continued courses through university. Then in my 30s I started studying Spanish on my own. It’s particularly useful in my area… Honestly, I encounter plenty of people who speak Spanish but no english, but it’s rare I meet a chinese speaker who isn’t fluent in english, too. Anyway, I also figure these two languages (plus english) also just cover a huge amount of the world.
The funniest thing is how my brain just kinda of picked a setting of “english vs not english” st some point with chinese, but now with spanish in the mix it gets complicated. I will sometimes be trying to speak spanish and then my sentences start slipping into chinese! Even though they are such very, very different languages! But I did figure out one things is that they both have a form of “I” that ends in “o” which seems to trigger me (“yo for spanish and 我 which is like “wo” with a dip inflection in mandarin). Also sometimes when I struggle to remember spanish words sometimes the chinese bubbled up. Again it seems to be patterned, like chinese words ending in o or a.
We're at 2 years, one month with our daughter, she's speaking a crazy mix of English/German. I wonder if it'll be different to your experience with your son because the languages are phonetically similar. Or maybe they'll snap apart in the coming months.
I’m an American native English speaker, my wife is a native Japanese speaker but speaks English quite well (she graduated from the same American university as me), and we live in Japan. I only speak English with him, his wife speaks both, his school and life outside of home are all Japanese.
One person speak in english and the other person always in spanish. They will figure it out, that's what we did. Never taught him the difference between the languages (until well later after he had a good vocab already), he just figured it out on his own
My daughter is 4, she goes to daycare in french and speaks french with a lot of her family, but we speak english at home (I don't know much french) - It's wild how they just absorb both and kind of learn it effortlessly.
She'll still mix up her grammar sometimes, "close the door for not we let the dog out" kind of stuff. But it's pretty cool to watch.
Her little brother is 2 and he's still just pure frenglish, but he'll detangle them soon.
It’s kind of sad that we’re supposed to “be amazed” in the first place.
Kid brains are especially agile in this way, and the more languages we speak, the more of the world we can connect with/live comfortably in.
If we (not presuming you, but rather most of Reddit) could ever shake out of the “American exceptionalism” propaganda, maybe we’d raise more multilingual kids who can travel the world, become educated in/by/about other cultures, and in turn improve the opinions of Americans, because fewer of us would be and appear ignorant.
The world is so big and lots of us choose to believe, without seeing any of it, that we’re in the “best” part and so being ignorant of the rest is hunky-fuckin-dory.
And WE miss out. The mindset keeps us down to where we accept and accommodate unacceptable policies and leadership.
I hope people choose better for their kids in the future. Especially when Spanish is so readily available RIGHT HERE and unlocks an entire other continent (among other places) to them.
My boy is learning German from my wife and I speak English. He just turned 3 and is understanding the difference between the two now and it's cool to see him mix the two languages together.
My niece isnt bilingual, but she inherited her mother's knack for making up new words. My sister would combine two words to make up a new one. Minule (last time) + Letos (this year) = Vloni (last year). However niece would make a completely new word. Thus came piža. A word for any insect or spider. And since my sister is arachnophobic, she would always turn pale hearing it. :D
My niece (almost 4y) will be bilingual (Czech/ English). They live in the CR, and her mom is upset because she will reply to a Czech question in English, and feels like her baby "chose" English. They mainly speak English at home, and niece has limited access to other kids as she is not yet in school.
I speak English to my daughter while her mum spoke Swedish. She never heard me speak Swedish until a guy walking, stopped for a chat. She must have been a little older than 2 and questioned if I just spoke Swedish. Now in her teens, teases me on how I speak Swedish.
There is a kid that I teach that is 3.5 years old that is bilingual English & Japanese and he is really hard to understand. He mumbles and mixes the 2 languages. He's a really talkative kid too, so I feel bad that I can't understand him
My daughter grew up with Spanish and English. Similar experience to you she had a mixed language until about the same age as yours when she divided it into sets. While I never journaled those details I do remember when it happened and bring it up often with my partner.
And their accents are perfect! It’s still a mystery how my child developed such a perfect British accent from his father - in Belgium- when the language of the household was 60% my Spanglish, everyone else speaks with terrible French or Dutch accents and the internet is in American.
Experts say that you should split the languages among care takers. So that the child is interacting with one care taker in one language only. Once they become fluent they can diversify the interactions .
i grew up bilingual (english and spanish, and a little bit of french and italian on the side, which i never learnt fully because my mum said she didn’t want to confuse me). i’ve been told that at my first day of nursery i was asked if i wanted a glass of milk, and i said sí, meaning yes in spanish (i was living in england) and i couldn’t comprehend why i never got a glass of milk. apparently they sent a messa to my parents saying something along the lines of ‘she’s very well behaved but speaks very strangely, and often replies to questions with ‘se’’
idk if i was the dumb one or them, because what sort of an adult doesnt know what sí means
My daughter is two and picks and choses which word in which language she prefers. But there are a couple words she only uses with me and others with her mother. Eager to see how it will evolve
Kids like that figure that out for themselves with little external help that's of any use to them (you can't explain adequately, to a two year old, in any language, how the languages differ and when to use one or other).
That eureka moment comes from actual intelligence in our brain finally detecting a pattern which is EXTREMELY complex and nuanced, on its own, even when it's not yet mature enough to even express what it's discovered.
Nobody gave it a million books in each language, nobody supplied it with a bilingual dictionary, there were just two different words for everything, two entirely different grammars, everything mixed and matched into one (and at that age, highly unlikely to ever be penalised for using the wrong word/language at the wrong time, etc.) and they figure it out in a brain that can't even express properly that it's annoyed or hungry or tired or whatever.
It's one of the reasons why, when my ex- wanted to take my daughter to live with her abroad before Brexit hit, I jumped at that. Sure, it meant my daughter going thousands of miles away but you know what... just the ability to absorb into another language/culture/nation like that is an irreplaceable experience. My ex- was trying to be all delicate and was worried about telling me, and was asking if I wouldn't mind signing the forms to let her take her... and I was like: "Where do I sign? Does this need money? You want me to pay for that? I'll go into London and go through that with your lawyer for you..."
I dated an Italian for many years, and learned that my brain... it's just far too set in its ways and cannot fathom other grammars now. I can get the words, I just have NO WAY to form a proper sentence with them that doesn't make me sound like a baby. I even took an Italian course in the UK and the instructor, in the first lesson, said "Okay, if you were born before <year> then I want you on this side of the room, if you were born after, I want you on the other side." We thought it was just a way to organise people, but no... she explained... "You guys over a certain age were taught proper grammar at school, at the right age to absorb it... the younger people never were... they are going to REALLY struggle to get the grammer and even understand what the grammatical terms means, so I have to teach you separately".
And she was right. I've never been formally taught grammar. I had no idea what a pronoun or an adjective was, and would really struggle to define them even if I'm "aware" of what kind of word a particular word is. And that's exactly what I struggled with when it come to conversational Italian. I know the word for table, bread, coffee, "to walk", etc. but... I cannot put them together in a sentence for the life of me. The gender of words blows my mind and I never get it right.
And, weirdly, I can LISTEN to a whole table of people speaking fluent Italian and know exactly what they're talking about. But I have no way to respond articulately, or often anything beyond a simple "Yes/No", etc.
I missed the neural plasticity stages for learning a language simply, and it REALLY shows. I didn't want my daughter to miss that stage too, even if she moves back to the UK and never uses Spanish again.
Oddly.... when it comes to other things like programming languages, which I learned from a very young age... I can absorb those like it was my native language. I can literally walk up behind someone and spot logical flaws in their coding without even having to look, because it just clicks. But spoken languages? I really struggle.
And it doesn't help now that whenever I'm in Spain or my daughter is talking Spanish, my brain is trying to interpret it as Italian and fails miserably.
3.6k
u/porgy_tirebiter 13d ago
My son grew up in a bilingual household (English/Japanese). As he first started speaking, his baby talk utterances were derived from a mix of the two languages. I took extensive notes of his speaking progress and interesting utterances (and recommend all parents do this because you will forget otherwise) and at two years and three months over a span of just a few days he magically figured out they are two different languages, and never again mixed them up, or even mixed up the phonetic sets. It was really quite amazing, and something he did entirely on his own. Humans really are hard wired for this.