it's almost as if they had a 'total lingistuic aptitude cap' and it was spread out among two languages. i bet if they chose to stick to one language, they'd speak it better.
it's almost as if they had a 'total lingistuic aptitude cap' and it was spread out among two languages. i bet if they chose to stick to one language, they'd speak it better.
I have two kids that we raised with two languages since birth. And now the interesting part: - daughter is fully bilingual, native speakers of both languages cannot tell she is not native, - son has some handicap in one of the languages.
I really think it goes the other way - having some cognitive advantage will allow you to be bilingual 100% and not the other way around. This is why my daughter can pull this stunt and my son not so much.
I grew up bilingual, mostly speaking Spanish at home and English at school. I think growing up with a different language can be a disadvantage if the children don't spend lots of time reading and learning English but fortunately my parents encouraged that heavily.
One thing being a bilingual speaker taught me and having older family members with differing grasps of the English language was not to ascribe too much value to 'correct' grammar or pronunciation. People who are well spoken English speakers have a way of seeming intelligent regardless of actual aptitude and it's easy to dismiss someone with syntax that is unusual or cobbled together from different languages.
I rarely if ever work with Latino engineers, but working with lots of Chinese nationals, it has been easy for me to ignore their grammar mistakes and diction choices and focus on the underlying message of what they are saying. For that I'm grateful. Grammar snarkiness is one of the most useless traits of English speakers I've encountered in my adult life.
It's funny when Americans claim that British people just 'sound smarter' when British people are just that: British. Same with bad grammar sounding less intelligent, it's not actually any less intelligent as long as it still communicates the message.
I'm not sure I agree that grammar proficiency is not an indicator for intelligence, however. In my mind it's an aspect of intelligence, but one that is irrelevant when talking about science, math, or a variety of other fields.
It's certainly possible to get by in STEM with poor grammar, but it is harder to excel that way. Grammar below a certain threshold impedes natural language communication, which is important even in technical fields.
"A language is a dialect with an Army and a Navy".
Sure, but this has little to do with perception of good grammar (in the US at least).
> Same with bad grammar sounding less intelligent, it's not actually any less intelligent as long as it still communicates the message.
Where do you draw the line, though? For example, using "bad" instead of "poor" seems acceptable and not an indication of low linguistic competence.
However, consider the sentence "dum talk no mean u dum". It communicates the message, but would you consider someone who said that to be as intelligence as someone phrased it "Same with bad grammar sounding less intelligent, it's not actually any less intelligent as long as it still communicates the message"? I wouldn't.
There is a line between being a snob and being someone who expects something above bare-minimum competence. I can understand the meaning of phrases like "dum talk no make u dum", but I find such speech unacceptable.
> It's funny when Americans claim that British people just 'sound smarter' when British people are just that: British.
That situation is indeed funny, but I think it's beneficial overall. Having a prestige dialect discourages the development of parochial dialects, and helps unify speakers of the language across different regions.
It's the same within the United States. My parents are both monolingual English speakers, but have heavy regional accents. My wife and I both have standard American ("CNN English") accents, and occasionally make fun of their accents between the two of us. As American English is to British English, so is regional English to standard American English.
We recently moved to another region of the country. Noone here speaks our parents' regional accent, and most of the locals also speak our standard American accent. I think we've met new friends easier than if we both had our parent's strong regional accent.
Anecdotes are just that. I know plenty of people that can dominate two languages fluently.
Recently read a study where a stroke patient can recover faster if multilingual or that dementia can be kept at bay longer.
1. Portocarrero et al. (2007). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887617707...
2. Gatt et al. (2015). http://ijb.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/13/136700691557...
how do you think i knew they had poor grammar in both languages?
most people can't even speak or write a single language well, of course a huge number of people of average intelligence/aptitude who are forced to speak two languages are going to be terrible at both.
how many people can 'dominate' their native tongue? not many.