My Baby at 2 Years Talks Spanish Fluent but Not English

When discussing the language skills of children in multilingual families, yous occasionally come beyond the situation where a kid has learnt to empathize a language, merely is unable (or unwilling) to speak it. Quite often you volition find this described as passive bilingualism – I have used this expression myself, until Professor Grosjean pointed out to me that information technology is misleading and gives the wrong impression. The correct term is receptive bilingualism.

Agreement a language is annihilation just a passive process

To exist able to understand what someone says to you lot, your brain has had to do a lot of preparation work and it has to stay highly alert while the word is ongoing. It picks upwardly and processes the sound impulses and turns these random sequences of sounds into something nosotros tin encompass and put into context. It does all this in a thing of milliseconds. Yous can become here  for more than in-depth information on the process of understanding spoken linguistic communication.

How does receptive bilingualism occur?

It is sometimes the example that children in multilingual families learn the family unit languages and happily speak them when they are small, just then something slowly changes and in their teens the children no longer feel confident in using their minority language. This can happen very gradually, even without the parents really realising it.

Parents accept told me that one mean solar day they merely noticed that the majority language had crept in as theprimary language between them and the children, and that only the parents spoke the minority language betwixt them. When the parents tried to change the situation, they were met by resistance from the children and gave up. The children did not feel motivated in picking the linguistic communication up again.

The crucial phase for maintaining a minority language

The crucial phase seems to exist when kids showtime school and spend more time with their peers and become more than exposure to the majority language of the community and get used to it as their principal language of communication.

This is the fourth dimension when it is important for parents to stay warning and be persistent (and consistent) and continue speaking the languages they have used with their children since they were small. At this point children need a lot of back up from their parents to ensure that they volition retain their power to communicate in the family languages. It might not e'er be easy, but it will pay off and anybody volition exist pleased later in life that they made the effort.

Why receptive bilingualism tin can be something highly positive

The phrase passive bilingualism comes with a baggage of negative connotations. If a kid does not get enough interaction in one of the family languages, the linguistic communication can modify from being actively used to being simply understood. Hence, I suppose, the use of the discussion "passive" to depict it. It is even so important to emphasise that understanding a language is significantly improve than not having whatsoever knowledge at all of it!

If this has happened in your family, or to yourself, do keep in mind that a receptive language skill can be turned into a " productive" 1. I experienced this myself years ago, when during a visit to India, I convinced myself to brand use of the Panjabi skills I had picked upwardly by listening to my girl speaking it with her father and beginning speaking, little by little. I did not stay long enough in India to become anywhere near fluent, only I was able to brand myself understood. I was able to communicate the basics.

With enough motivation and opportunity to apply the language, it can exist revived!

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My Baby at 2 Years Talks Spanish Fluent but Not English

Source: https://multilingualparenting.com/receptive-bilingualism-understanding-but-not-speaking-a-language/

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