Bilingual Child Quotes

L'union libre [Freedom of Love]" My wife with the hair of a wood fire With the thoughts of heat lightning With the waist of an hourglass With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes With the tongue of an unbelievable stone My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof And of steam on the panes My wife with shoulders of champagne And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice My wife with wrists of matches My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts With fingers of mown hay My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut And of Midsummer Night Of privet and of an angelfish nest With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill My wife with legs of flares With the movements of clockwork and despair My wife with calves of eldertree pith My wife with feet of initials With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking My wife with a neck of unpearled barley My wife with a throat of the valley of gold Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent With breasts of night My wife with breasts of a marine molehill My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days With the belly of a gigantic claw My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically With a back of quicksilver With a back of light With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking My wife with hips of a skiff With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers And of shafts of white peacock plumes Of an insensible pendulum My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos My wife with buttocks of swans' backs My wife with buttocks of spring With the sex of an iris My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat My wife with a sex of mirror My wife with eyes full of tears With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle My wife with savanna eyes My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire

Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat. Susan knew what that last rating meant. Like having a running chainsaw thrown at you

It seems obvious now: the child who spends school days in a fog of semi-comprehension has no way to know her problem is not that she is slow-witted.

Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country. Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. Polak never liked this. He thought I was spoiling their future. He contended, with all the vigour and love at his command, that, if children were to learn a universal language like English from their infancy, they would easily gain considerable advantage over others in the race of life. He failed to convince me. I do not now remember whether I convinced him of the correctness of my attitude, or whether he gave me up as too obstinate. This happened about twenty years ago, and my convictions have only deepened with experience. Though my sons have suffered for want of full literary education, the knowledge of the mother-tongue that they naturally acquired has been all to their and the country’s good, inasmuch as they do not appear the foreigners they would otherwise have appeared. They naturally became bilingual, speaking and writing English with fair ease, because of daily contact with a large circle of English friends, and because of their stay in a country where English was the chief language spoken.

sayings, folk tales, family history, and funny and important incidents told by previous generations and the extended family. A self-made, treasured family book can be jointly produced. The past is celebrated in the present; the contemporary is engraved in the history of the child.

Vary what the child writes in the home: for example, helping to compose a shopping list, writing and rewriting a favourite family story together, writing a recipe to cook together later, keeping a diary, writing in a photo album that records family experiences, poetry, imaginative or personal stories, and writing jokes and cartoons.

It is natural for a child or adult to have different identities in different contexts which change across time. Identities are about becoming rather than being. It is not only ‘who we are’ or ‘where we have come from’, but also ‘how we are represented’ and ‘what we might become’ and ‘what we cannot be’. Cultural, ethnic or language identity is often about making sense out of our past, present and future.

It is often important that the anchor language is retained. The home language gives assurance and a feeling of security when there are stormy seas. Even if the child is slow in sailing in that language with progress delayed, it is the boat known to the child. Being forced to switch to the majority language will not make the journey faster or less problematic. It is more important to learn to sail in a familiar boat (the home language) in minority language situations.

He had many formal qualifications. He was rated expert on all small arms. He had won an inter-service thousand-yard rifle competition with a record score. Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat. Susan knew what that last rating meant. Like having a running chain saw thrown at you.

Bilingualism and diglossia are different. Bilingualism is about two languages you know having essentially the same functions, such that it is easy to translate from one to the other. Simultaneous translators are bilingual, or even trilingual as the United Nations requires, because they need to be able to say exactly the same things in their different languages. With diglossia, however, what you find is a child first learning one language and speaking it at home, and then later on, maybe at school, transiting to another language which is used for less basic things. The end result is not two separate languages that exist in parallel, but a single competence, where ground-level things are done in the first language and things to do with school, or the modern sector, in another. And since each of these languages is bound to its context, translation is not easy.

More recently, scholars have used computers to model how the brain’s neural networks behave. These show that, when the condition of child bilingualism is modelled (where two languages are being acquired more or less simultaneously), the network is able to separate out the vocabularies of each language quite comfortably. However, where a second language is overlaid on top of an existing one, there is much less separation. It’s as if the first language ‘blocks’ or ‘overshadows’ the independent establishment of the second. Nick Ellis (2006: 185) sums up the findings: ‘Adult second language simulations show relatively little L1–L2 separation at a local level and maximal transfer and interference.’ This tends to confirm the view that, as one writer put it, ‘second language is looking into the windows cut out by the first language’ (Ushakova 1994: 154).

As parents read to the very young child, they can gently hold a child's finger and show the movement of the words across the page from left to right (or right to left in some languages), in a rhythmical sequence. As favourite books are read night after night, a child will begin to recognize certain words and begin to associate meaning and word form.

When children come from language minority backgrounds, working towards integration between their two cultures and languages may require more emphasis on the minority language, particularly in the early years. To counterbalance the effect of the dominant majority language, there may need to be two objectives. First, ensuring the child feels secure and confident in the minority language and culture. Second, to ensure that the child is taught the advantages of biculturalism (see Glossary), the value of harmony between cultures and languages, and not taught that conflicting competition is the inevitable outcome of two languages and cultures in contact.

To increase the chances of reversing the rejection of one language, parents can talk to the teenager in that language. The teenager may insist on responding in a different language, but at least ‘passive’ or ‘receptive’ bilingualism will be maintained by the child consistently hearing the other language. It makes it easier for them to speak that language again later in life.

When children are younger, one possible solution is to extend the range of language experiences in their less preferred language, for example, staying with grandparents or cousins, visits to enjoyable cultural festivals, a renewal in the language materials and other language stimuli in the home for that weaker language (e.g. videos, pop records, the visits of cousins). If both parents read to, or listen to the child reading before bedtime, or if the language of family conversation at the meal table is manipulated to advantage, then subtly the language balance of the home may be readjusted.

There may be occasional periods when the bilingual child seems a little behind the monolingual in learning a language. However, this lag is usually temporary. With sufficient exposure and practice, the bilingual child will go through the same language development stages as the monolingual child. Occasionally the speed of the journey may be slightly slower, but the route through the developmental stages is the same.

Keep in mind that the languages that you choose now will be the ones that you orchestrate mostly from home. There’s no reason that your child can’t take advantage of opportunities to learn a third language (or even more) in the future.

developed than another, it may be sensible to concentrate on developing the stronger language. When a child has severe educational needs or is severely cognitively challenged, then ensuring a solid foundation in one language first is important. This does not mean that the chance of bilingualism is lost forever. If, or when, language delay disappears, the other language can be reintroduced. If a child with emotional problems really detests using or even being spoken to in a particular language, the family may sensibly decide to accede to the child's preference. Again, once problems have been resolved, the ‘dropped’ language may be reintroduced, so long as it is immediately associated with pleasurable experiences.

C18: A child is autistic or has Asperger's syndrome. Should we use one language only with the child?

C18: A child is autistic or has Asperger's syndrome. Should we use one language only with the child? Children diagnosed with a specific autism spectrum disorder have a greater or lesser degree of impairment in language and communication skills, as well as repetitive or restrictive patterns of thought and behaviour, with delays in social and emotional development. Such children use language in restricted ways, expecting much consistency in language and communication, and are less likely to learn through language. However, such children may experience the social and cultural benefits of bilingualism when living in a dual language environment. For example, such children may understand and speak two languages of the local community at their own level. Like many parents of children with language impairment, bilingualism was frequently blamed by teachers and other professionals for the early signs of Asperger's, and a move to monolingualism was frequently regarded as an essential relief from the challenges. There is almost no research on autism and bilingualism or on Asperger's syndrome and bilingualism. However, a study by Susan Rubinyi of her son, who has Asperger's syndrome, provides insights. Someone with the challenge of Asperger's also has gifts and exceptional talents, including in language. Her son, Ben, became bilingual in English and French using the one parent–one language approach (OPOL). Susan Rubinyi sees definite advantages for a child who has challenges with flexibility and understanding the existence of different perspectives. Merely the fact that there are two different ways to describe the same object or concept in each language, enlarges the perception of the possible. Since a bilingual learns culture as well as language, the child sees alternative ways of approaching multiple areas of life (eating, recreation, transportation etc.) (p. 20). She argues that, because of bilingualism, her son's brain had a chance to partly rewire itself even before Asperger's syndrome became obvious. Also, the intense focus of Asperger's meant that Ben absorbed vocabulary at a very fast rate, with almost perfect native speaker intonation. Further Reading: Rubinyi, S. (2006) Natural Genius: The Gifts of Asperger's Syndrome . Philadelphia & London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

The advice too frequently given is that the home, minority language should be replaced by the majority language. Such an overnight switch may well have painful outcomes for the child. The mother tongue is denied, the language of the family is buried, and the child may feel as if thrown from a secure boat into strange waters. This solution is likely to exacerbate the problem.

There are other occasions where changing from bilingualism to monolingualism is unnecessary and wrong. If someone who has loved, cared for and played with the child in one language suddenly only uses another language, the emotional well-being of the child may well be negatively affected.

In teaching a child your native language, you are transmitting something about yourself, your heritage and the extended family.

Ensure the child has the opportunity to read and write in the minority or heritage language. Parents can write with their children the important wise

Parents can do three things to make reading active. (1) Elaborate and explain the text to the child. This extends and deepens the experience of the story. (2) Relate the story to the child's own experiences. An interest in reading and understanding the meaning of the text occur if there is ‘further information’ to personalize the text. (3) Ask questions to ensure the child understands the story, thinks about the characters and plot, and extends their imagination.

When language is separated along divisions of different people, different contexts, even different times of the week or day, a child is learning that language compartmentalisation exists. Mixing may still occur early on, but boundaries enable a smooth transition to a stage where children keep their languages relatively separate.

What enables a child not only to learn words, but to put them together in meaningful sentences? What pushes children to go on developing complex grammatical language even though their early simple communication is successful for most purposes? Does child language develop similarly around the world? How do bilingual children acquire more than one language?

If children start early in a monolingual preschool, they get the idea early—when their minority language is still not well established—that English is all that matters, so I do not recommend an English preschool at a time when you could be solidifying the child’s command of the minority language.

Trick 5: Use monolingual mode in your own speech. I can’t emphasize enough the need to monitor your own behavior. Children are sensitive to subtle differences in adults’ rate of switching between languages, and then they match their own rate with that of the adult. If you are constantly switching out of the minority language, it will not be a surprise that the child does, too.

In the early 1990s, Moon and colleagues showed that two-day-olds can distinguish the sounds of their language from those of an unfamiliar language if the overall rhythms of the sentences are different between languages. Their tiny subjects could tell English from French and Japanese because they have different rhythmic structures, but not English from Dutch, because the rhythmic structures are very similar. By five months, English-learning babies could distinguish English from Dutch, too. At that same age, bilingual Catalan-and Spanish-learning infants could distinguish both of their languages from other languages and from each other.

It’s true, the older I grow, the more conscious I seem to become of how brief our lives really are, but I know I can still do better at appreciating the people in my life while we have this fleeting chance to be together.

In the time of your life—live! —William Saroyan

Nowhere in all this elaborate brain circuitry, alas, is there the equivalent of the chip found in a five-dollar calculator. This deficiency can make learning that terrible quartet—“Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision,” as Lewis Carroll burlesqued them—a chore. It’s not so bad at first. Our number sense endows us with a crude feel for addition, so that, even before schooling, children can find simple recipes for adding numbers. If asked to compute 2 + 4, for example, a child might start with the first number and then count upward by the second number: “two, three is one, four is two, five is three, six is four, six.” But multiplication is another matter. It is an “unnatural practice,” Dehaene is fond of saying, and the reason is that our brains are wired the wrong way. Neither intuition nor counting is of much use, and multiplication facts must be stored in the brain verbally, as strings of words. The list of arithmetical facts to be memorized may be short, but it is fiendishly tricky: the same numbers occur over and over, in different orders, with partial overlaps and irrelevant rhymes. (Bilinguals, it has been found, revert to the language they used in school when doing multiplication.) The human memory, unlike that of a computer, has evolved to be associative, which makes it ill-suited to arithmetic, where bits of knowledge must be kept from interfering with one another: if you’re trying to retrieve the result of multiplying 7 X 6, the reflex activation of 7 + 6 and 7 X 5 can be disastrous. So multiplication is a double terror: not only is it remote from our intuitive sense of number; it has to be internalized in a form that clashes with the evolved organization of our memory. The result is that when adults multiply single-digit numbers they make mistakes ten to fifteen per cent of the time. For the hardest problems, like 7 X 8, the error rate can exceed twenty-five per cent. Our inbuilt ineptness when it comes to more complex mathematical processes has led Dehaene to question why we insist on drilling procedures like long division into our children at all. There is, after all, an alternative: the electronic calculator. “Give a calculator to a five-year-old, and you will teach him how to make friends with numbers instead of despising them,” he has written. By removing the need to spend hundreds of hours memorizing boring procedures, he says, calculators can free children to concentrate on the meaning of these procedures, which is neglected under the educational status quo.

Another area of thinking where bilinguals have been shown to excel is divergent thinking, the ability to come up with many different solutions rather than just one. Divergent thinking is considered to be one of the basic elements of creativity.

Many people, especially in countries like the U.S. with a monolingual mainstream culture, think that being monolingual is the most natural way to grow up. In fact, far from being the norm, monolingualism is the exception. There are very few, if any, places in the world where a society can exist in complete isolation from contact and interaction with people of other cultures.

how bilingualism has been shown to benefit • bilingual children’s precocious knowledge of language, • their enhanced cognitive development in general, and • the social and cultural growth they experience.

What do I write about? Basically, whatever happens to be bubbling in my mind at the time, but my short entries seem to be mostly about these three things: 1. Observations of their language development 2. Observations of their personal traits and interests 3. Noteworthy incidents and experiences

To become actively bilingual, the child must receive sufficient exposure to the minority language and feel a genuine need to use it expressively.

TV, as a supplement to other activities, can certainly be a helpful component, but in order to foster active ability, a significant amount of this exposure must be active. In other words, interaction with the language, involving flesh-and-blood human beings, is the key to effective language development.

the ideal formula for nurturing good bilingual ability in a child involves being both extremely serious about the aim, and yet extremely playful about the approach.

The more serious you are about the aim, and the more playful you are about the approach, the more progress you’ll likely make on your bilingual journey.

No matter what it is we want a child to acquire—and that includes developing active ability in another language—the most effective way forward involves inspiring joy in the experience of that area of knowledge or skill.

In my opinion, dual language education is a great public good that ought to be developed everywhere, as it can positively transform a child, a family, a school, a community, and even a country. It is with this belief and with the conviction that parents can make a difference that I share this book in the hope that more bilingual programs will sprout in schools around the world.

6 For a child is born to us,    a son is given to us.   The government will rest on his shoulders.    And he will be called:   Wonderful Counselor,[*] Mighty God,    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 6 Pues nos ha nacido un niño,    un hijo se nos ha dado;   el gobierno descansará sobre sus hombros,    y será llamado:   Consejero Maravilloso,[*] Dios Poderoso,    Padre Eterno, Príncipe de Paz. 7 His government and its peace    will never end.   He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David    for all eternity.   The passionate commitment of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies    will make this happen!