Any adult who has tried to learn a foreign language can attest to how complicated and confusing it is. Therefore, when a three-year-old child who has grown up in a bilingual home uses English words in his Spanish sentences, popular wisdom assumes he is confusing the two languages.
Science shows us that it is not the case. In fact, early childhood is the best possible time to learn a second language because children who experience two languages from birth normally become native speakers of both, while adults often have difficulties with learning a second language and they rarely achieve a fluency similar to that of their native language. But the question remains if it is confusing for babies to learn two languages at the same time.
When do babies learn the language?
Several studies have shown that babies begin to learn the sounds of language before they are even born. Already in the womb, the voice of a mother is one of the most prominent sounds that an unborn baby can hear. By the time they reach the world, newborns can not only differentiate their mother's language and another language, but also show an ability to distinguish between languages.
In Babies and more How children learn to speak: the development of language month by month in the first year of the baby Language learning depends on the processing of sounds and if we put together all the languages of the world there are approximately 800 different sounds. Each language only uses about 40 language sounds or "phonemes" that distinguish one language from another.
At birth, the baby's brain has an unusual gift: it can differentiate the 800 sounds. This means that at this stage babies can learn whatever language they are exposed to and little by little babies find out what sounds they are the most listening to.
Between six and 12 months, children who grow up in monolingual homes specialize more in the subset of sounds in their native language. In other words, they become "native language specialists." When they turn one year old, monolingual babies begin to lose their ability to differentiate the sounds of the foreign language.
Studying babies' brains
What about those babies who hear two languages from birth? Can a baby's brain specialize in two languages? If so, how does this process differ from specialization in one language?
Knowing the difference in the brain of a baby who learns one or two languages is important to understand the signs of development when learning to speak. For example, parents of bilingual children often wonder what is normal and what is rare or how different their children will be in relation to those children who are only learning one language.
Recently, my collaborators and I studied the cerebral processing of language sounds in 11-month-old babies from bilingual (Spanish-English) and monolingual (English only) homes. For this we use a non-invasive technology called magnetoencephalography (MEG) that clearly and precisely establishes the moment and location of brain activity when babies hear syllables in Spanish and English.
We found some key differences between children raised in monolingual homes versus bilinguals.
At 11 months of age, just before most babies began to say their first words, brain activity revealed that:
- Babies from monolingual English homes are specialized in processing the sounds of English and not the sounds of Spanish, an unfamiliar language.
- Babies from Spanish-English bilingual homes are specialized to process the sounds of both languages, Spanish and English.
Our research shows that babies' brains become attentive to any language or the languages they hear from their caregivers. A monolingual brain is tuned to the sounds of one language and a bilingual brain is tuned to the sounds of two languages. At 11 months of age, activity in the baby's brain reflects the language or languages to which it has been exposed.
Is it good to learn two languages?
This has important consequences because so many parents of monolingual and bilingual children are dying to hear the first words of their children. It is an exciting time to know more about what the baby is thinking. However, both parents, especially bilingual parents, are concerned that their child is not learning fast enough.
We realized that bilingual babies responded as intensely to the sounds of English as monolingual babies. This means that bilingual babies learned English at the same rate as monolingual babies. Parents of bilingual children are also concerned that their children do not know as many words as children who are raised with only one language.
To some extent, this concern is legitimate because bilingual babies divide their time between two languages and, therefore, on average, listen to words in each language. However, studies consistently show that bilingual children are not left behind when both languages are taken into account.
The vocabulary size of bilingual children, when both languages are combined, is equal to or larger than that of monolingual children. Another common concern is that bilingualism causes confusion. Part of this problem is due to "code change," a speech behavior in which bilingual babies mix the two languages.
For example, my four-year-old son, who speaks English, Spanish and Slovenian, uses Slovenian endings even in Spanish and English words. Research shows that bilingual children change code because bilingual adults around them do too. The code change in adults and in bilingual children is following certain rules and is not random.
In Babies and more Language development in children: nine signs that should put us on alertUnlike monolingual children, bilingual children have another language that they can use a term if the right word in a language does not come to their minds. Even two-year-olds adapt their language to match the language used by their interlocutor.
Researchers have shown that code change is part of the normal language development of a bilingual child and could even be the beginning of the extra cognitive ability known as the "bilingual advantage."
Bilingual children take advantage
The good news is that young children around the world can and should acquire two languages at the same time. In fact, in many parts of the world, being bilingual is the norm rather than the exception.
We now know that the constant need to switch between languages leads to several cognitive advantages. Research has found that bilingual adults and children show an improvement in the brain's executive function: that is, they are able to divert attention, change tasks and solve problems more easily. It has also been found that bilingual children can increase their metalinguistic abilities (the ability to think about the language itself, and understand how it works). There is evidence that being bilingual makes learning a third language easier and it is also believed that the effect of accumulating the experience of two languages translates into protective effects against cognitive deterioration with aging and the onset of disease Alzheimer's
So if you want your child to know more than one language, it is best to start at an early age, before he begins to speak his mother tongue. Your child will not feel confused and may even foster other cognitive abilities.
Author: Naja Ferjan Ramírez, researcher at the University of Washington
This article has originally been published in The Conversation. You can read the original article here.
Photos | iStock
