Comments on: Bringing Up Baby Bilingual in English, Spanish, and Rubbish

By: paul gailey alburquerque

paul gailey alburquerque — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:07:09 +0000

a variant on bilingual rubbish is mid bilingual sentence spoonerisms (cucharismos?) which agobiates you no fin.

By: SarahHeartburn

SarahHeartburn — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:23:18 +0000

If we grownups learn our second language as best we can (in class, from friends, in the street, from books, Tv, etc, or a mix)why should the children be expected to follow formula. I think this is more of what they call in the states “helicopter parenting” – always hovering and worrying. It’s especially amusing to me because so many of us English-speaking foreigners are English teachers, and we should be aware of the fact that whatever we do as teachers, each person will have his/her learning style.

By: Justin in Spain

Justin in Spain — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:35:40 +0000

Being from Gibraltar I was brought up mixing English and Spanish. Everyone in Gib speaks like this. The funniest one for me is the word “molestar” and when my brother said to an English friend that we always liked coming to Spain because no one would molest us here!!

By: Arun

Arun — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:29:52 +0000

Thats interesting..

Not too different from the way we do things in India, where almost everyone necessarily speaks at least 3 languages, sometimes more. English words generously seep into other languages and manipulations are common. It is almost a new breed of English now..!

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:43:03 +0000

Thanks again for new comments.

@Espanglish – great, I’m glad there is a name for it!

By: Espanglish

Espanglish — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:52:55 +0000

What you and Marina are doing is a linguistic tactic called code-switching. It used to be thought to be a sub-standard use of a language, but it is now thought to be a sign of high fluency in two languages. There are even studies that show how the brain seeks the shortest most succinct way to say something and thus mixes words even in the same sentence. It happens between me and my Spanish-speaking friends frequently.

Here is a Wikipedia article on code switching:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

That said, that third, jumbly language has got to go. It is just horrible when Russian creeps into the Spanish-English thing I have going on.
Donna

By: Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:40:08 +0000

Hola Ben!
My American husband and I (Spanish) live in the US and have three kids 3 years old and under. We’ve never successfully been strictly OPOL, though we have “Spanish-only hours” and “Spanish-only environments.”
When they were smaller, we tried to be very hard-core, like the books recommend, and for us it was a recipe for total agobiacion!
We had to decide that we’d rather have our kids be exposed to two languages as best as possible, let their proficiencies be supplemented over the years, but put the majority of focus into being more laid back (it’s an effort with so many little ones) and keeping the stress and the stressful (for us) OPOL structure to a minimum.
It’s a journey. I’ve wrote a whole series of columns on the issues of our young multilingual, multi-culti family.
I’m sure you’ll find what works for you, just give it a little time!

By: ValenciaSon

ValenciaSon — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:45:33 +0000

Ben, you and Marina are intelligent, aware people so as Leo’s parents, you will be imprinting on Leo your penchant for curiosity and a need to expand awareness ever more. Genetically, Leo is no slouch either. So with the two, I believe the bilingual arrangement in Leo will be sorted out.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:53:24 +0000

@all_ thanks for all the comments. One thing it’s made me realise is that we will really have to work on the bilingual thing, and not just take it for granted!

By: xoanwahn

xoanwahn — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:20:16 +0000

I really wouldn’t worry too much about this, Ben. I grew up in a bilingual home where my mother and I spoke primarily Spanish and my father and I spoke primarily English. When we all got together, it was a load of rubbish and we loved it because the rubbish helped us understand how words from both languages relate to each other! The great thing about this is that it allowed me, living in an environment where Spanish was hardly used outisde of the home, to keep my Spanish strong. I never studied it formally and so I am weak when it comes to certain points (mostly grammar in writing) but had I not grown up like this, I wouldn’t be able to speak Spanish at all!

I would try to avoid things like “agobiated” though, just to be safe, lol.