Hacker News Reader

Comment by davedx | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. Our daughter is 2 months away from her 2nd birthday and just in the last month or so, her speech has started accelerating at quite a pace. Whereas from 8 months or so she was making noises and started to form her first words, these days it's almost one new word per day, and she's starting to make lots of 2 and even 3 word sentences.

Another interesting point: we're bringing her up to be bi-lingual (Dutch and English), and because her environment is primarily Dutch, almost all of the words she speaks are in Dutch, though she understands a decent share of English too, now. I wonder if because language development is a bit more prolonged with bi-lingual children, if this vulnerable phase is also then prolonged, or if the brain starts to be more resilient as soon as a "first language" is settled in?

I love this stuff!

View on HN

Somewhat related, I found my Son's bilingual exposure very interesting. From 3 months to 20 months he was in a bi-lingual montessori (english & spanish). Teachers and assistants always use both languages to work with children. We also reinforced at home wherever possible. Our limited spanish skills were mostly from the things he brought home and told us and a few books.

Then we moved and he was in another school, english only, from 21 months to 38 months. The decline of spanish skills was slow at first, even while we worked with him at home, then became very rapid. English skills continually improved, as would be expected.

At 39 months we moved back to the original bilingual montessori. He quickly learned/learns new spanish words and phrases, but the previous ones (colors, numbers, shapes, animals) are mostly gone. Even though I recall 90% of them, all learned as an adult, he doesn't.

The first three and a half years of my life I lived in Ghana and, apparently, spoke Dutch, English, Spanish (with the local nuns) and Fante (a dialect of Akan, a Ghanaian language). I no longer speak the latter two, although I've been told that I can "bluff" Spanish pronunciation very convincingly off the page.

I doubt there has been research specifically addressing your question.

However, growing up bilingually has been shown to be beneficial to mental development in multiple studies, and before that there has also been considerable debate over whether or not is good or bad for the child (the idea being that it might overload their developing mind). So if growing up bilingually would prolong the vulnerable phase, I would expect the negative consequences of that to have been observed statistically.

I'm interested in the trade-offs in growing up bilingual - what, if anything is being depressed to make up for the resources devoted to being bi-lingual?

I haven’t heard of any observed adverse effects. Most likely, the vast majority of resources is devoted to learning Language rather than any specific syntax or vocabulary; multiple languages may even help in this process.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com