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Early bilingualism effect on later LL? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| zecchino1991 Senior Member United States facebook.com/amyybur Joined 5070 days ago 778 posts - 885 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian | Message 1 of 5 13 January 2012 at 6:21am | IP Logged |
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I've been wondering today, how does bilingualism very early in life affect second
language acquisition in adulthood/adolescence? The reason I ask is that I was bilingual in Spanish and English until I was 3 years old, according to what my parents have told me (I don't remember it at all), but I forgot Spanish shortly thereafter. When I was in kindergarten my teacher always told me that I could get it back if I tried, so I rented some tapes from the library and whatnot, but I never really learned Spanish again until I was in 8th-12th grade. So I was wondering, in what ways does this kind of situation affect one's ability to learn languages later in life? I have always heard that it makes it easier, but to what extent is that true ? And does it have a general affect on language learning or only on the acquisition of the same language you used to know? I assume it's the former, but I guess it also would depend on how old you were when you stopped using the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6409 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 5 13 January 2012 at 8:52am | IP Logged |
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Only you can know what effect it's had:-) I'll be surprised if it's not affected your pronunciation/understanding of phonetics - do you have a noticeable accent? do you distinguish sounds easier than most native speakers of English?
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 5 13 January 2012 at 9:41am | IP Logged |
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The simple answer is that nobody really knows, but it would be contra-intuitive if it did NOT have en effect - in the sense that you probably have less trouble getting a good pronunciation and fluent speech in Spanish. However a simple glance at your language list shows that you study Italian and not Spanish, so the expected effect wouldn't be as direct -and in all cases smaller than if you had continued at least a couple of years more. If you studied both Spanish and Italian (now) any difference in learning speed might hint at an influence from those early years with Spanish.
The one case that has been studied profusely is the one of 1. or 2. generation immigrants, where the child use one language at home and another at kindergarten and school. And even here the so called experts can't agree - and the division line appears to have as much to do with politics as with pedagogical research. It would be logical to assume that learning a third language after the first two would be easier, but other the other hand schools with a high number of bilingual children seem to have problems with the average level of notes at exams. Is that a result of teaching children in another language than the one of their parents or rather of having a marginalized parent group? The answer is blowing in the wind.. Edited by Iversen on 13 January 2012 at 9:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zecchino1991 Senior Member United States facebook.com/amyybur Joined 5070 days ago 778 posts - 885 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian | Message 4 of 5 13 January 2012 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
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@Serpent: Well, even if I could distinguish sounds better than other people, how do I
know if it's because I used to know two languages, or if I just happen to pronounce things well, or if I have just studied phonetics more than other people? Basically, how do I know it's because of being bilingual when I was little and not something else? But anyway, to answer your question non-hypothetically, I guess maybe I have less of a problem with pronunciation than other people, but I really have always thought it's just because it is something I am very interested in and pay a lot of attention to. Not because I have some sort of natural ability. But like I said, who knows? @Iversen: Wow, I never noticed that Spanish is not in my list. It's kind of misleading, because I started studying Spanish long before Italian. Also, I studied it formally for 5 years, while with Italian I have kind of just been passively absorbing it for the past few years. My Spanish is a million times better than my Italian. Also, I've learned them in extremely different ways so I don't think I could really compare them anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5823 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 5 13 January 2012 at 12:08pm | IP Logged |
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Recent studies have suggested the advantage is minimal. You don't gain any analytical skills by it (because you didn't use analytical skills to learn it) so the only advantages are the obvious ones: you know more sounds to start off with; you have more established grammatical and lexical concepts.
So technically something that is unlike either of your native languages shouldn't be any easier for you to learn than for a monolingual in one of your native languages. This is in contrast to multiple adult-learned languages, which all get easier regardless of relationships between languages. My own experience: I learned to sing in French as an infant and started learning it properly at high school. There is something about the sounds of French that is easier and more natural to me than anything I have subsequently learned. The sound-system stuck, to an extent, and it's a shame I haven't got my French to a much higher standard.... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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