Bi-lingual kids - Delays in starting to speak (1 Viewer)

[São Paulo Punk]

Hey,

Just wondering if any parents whose kids are bi-lingual took a long time to start speaking. Our little lad is 3 now and he's still not stringing sentences together at all. He's coming out with new words all the time, but his pronunciation is quite unclear in both languages still, and I feel sorry for him sometimes cause all his little buddies in the creche are yapping away. He doesnt seem bothered by this, but me, being the worrier that I am, was wondering if anyone elses kids took this long, or if anyone has advice for helping your kid to start speaking.

We read to him every night before bed, I speak to him in English always and his mamae speaks Portuguese. He comprehends what we say, but makes little sense when he talks. He does a lot of pointing and dragging us towards whatever it is that he's talking about though.

Anyone?

 

[sarah]

having no sprog of my own I can only speak from observed experience, my mams best friend is a serb but brought up her kid in germany her husband is a croat, the kid at could understand all the languages fine, I think because there's more info going in sometimes the language aspect will be slower, don't worry about it too much, he'll definitely come along quickly.
English was my first language but my parents moved to germany when i was two when i learnt german within 7 or 8 months to a similar level as my english (according to the folks).

whereas my little bro didn't even begin to talk in any comprehensible way until he was around the same age as your little fella, and he only had to deal with one language.

all kids develop at their own rate. If he understands you guys and you get what he's saying then he's grand (in my uninformed opinion).

has he been in the creche for long? and does he spend a lot of time there?

 

[Super Dexta]

the two dominant theories among people who study such things seem to be that either biligualism makes no difference, or it slows down child language acquisition.

Evidence that the rate of language development is slowed down in BFL learners in comparison to monolingual learners would argue that the ability that all children have to learn language is compromised by the challenge of learning more than one language at the same time.

from
[SIZE=-1]http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/perpg/fac/genesee/HDBK%20BFLA%20FINAL.pdf

googling "bilingual language acquisition" should bring up some similar stuff.
[/SIZE]

 

[Super Dexta]

Divergent hypotheses exist concerning the types of knowledge underlying early bilingualism, with some portraying a troubled course marred by language delays and confusion, and others portraying one that is largely unremarkable. We studied the extraordinary case of bilingual acquisition across two modalities to examine these hypotheses.

from http://www.dartmouth.edu/~lpetitto/JCL.pdf
.. i didn't read any further than that, it's like 40 pages long..

 

[flashback]

He might just be a quiet chap... you know, nothing at all to do with not understanding or being able to speak.
He might just not be that pushed about speaking now.

A friend of mine had a sproglet there, 3 and a bit years ago. and she is rabbiting away in Armenian, Russian, English and the odd bit of French.

And she likes jazz.

And her parents are both theoretical physicists. Basically she is smarter than I am.

It's all very vague, in most cases child is doing X by time Y, but... you know, just because he is not doesn't really mean anything.
I didn't learn how to read till I was 8 or 9 or something. No one noticed at school for ages, cause I learned the books off by heart. It wasn't till I "read" the wrong page (ie not the page I was looking at, the next one) that they caught me. Basically, I was a bit thick, but sly enough to get around it.

I can remember suddenly being able to read things... f u n d e r l a n d... funder land... FUNDERLAND... DAAAAAD!! I couldn't remember numbers ever either, the order of them.

I am a research scientist in yankland at the moment.. so, I am grand. More or less.

Kids are all a little weird in there own way. Nothing to get really freaked out about is my point anyway.

 

[billygannon]

Sao Paulo Punk person...
Speaking from personal experience...
I didn't speak until I was three and a bit. I've now got a degree in English.

So yeah... don't worry about it. Your kid will be blabbering away in Portugese and English in their own good time. What's important is they are speaking words and they'll eventually make sense of making sentences.

 

[São Paulo Punk]

Thanks a lot people, I kind of knew this stuff already, just one of those parental panics I guess. Anyway, today is his birthday so maybe that had something to do with me getting worried; reaching another mile stone; charting his progress etc...

He went to Brazil with his ma for 2 weeks and has just come back toilet trained!!!

So, fuck you, pampers!!!

 

[Dromed]

Hey Sao Paulo Punk...you have a lucky three year old that will grow up bi-lingual! If you are worries about your kids developemnt you can probably get to meet with your district nurse (through a local GP) that will do some developmental checks with their speech etc. which might help put your mind at rest. As was said before some children just take a little longer to begin talking and some children are just a little quieter then others! My son started learning french when he was quite young - though he's no where near fluent. It would be easier for him if we spoke french at home. I think having one parent communicate in one language and the other in the second language is a far easier way for your child to differentiate and to learn both langauges simultaneously...stick with it and i'm sure it will start to break through over the next year or so. Good luck!

 

[egg_]

My uncle didn't speak until he was 3, and the first thing he ever said was "LET ME OUT". He was the second youngest in a family of 14 though, so maybe it was just no one was listening