Cita:
Escrito originalmente por Josh
One of my driving forces for learning Spanish is because I have a 3-year-old and I would like to get him started on learning Spanish. I've heard that children may have an easier time learning foreign languages. That being said a buddy of mine who is a speech pathologist told me that teaching a child a foreign language after age 2 can lead to confusion for the child and make it difficult to separate the two languages as they continue to learn both languages.
I'm interested to know what others think about trying to teach a toddler a foreign language. Is it a good idea? Does anyone on this forum have experience with it?
|
Hi Josh, I think it is an excellent idea. I read this thread and pretty much all the pertinent answers you got here. Each of them valuable and useful. I can tell you that I started learning Catalonian (Catalán, very similar to Italian/Spanish/Portuguese) when I was 3 or 4, as people around me spoke Catalonian, although my parents spoke Spanish Castilian to me and I spoke Castilian. I started to speak Catalonian when I was 8 or 9, not very confidently, but I could understand everything. Never had a confusion. Started French at 11 and English at 20! Never studied Italian, but when I was 17 and travelled to Italy I quickly picked it up, as it is very similar to Spanish. Portuguese, I understand thanks to the similarity. I have seen kids from 7 or 8 years talking Spanish, English, French, German and Danish like nobody's business! Seriously. They would not mix these languages, and I honestly would feel 'retarded' being a grown-up and only being able to speak a bit of English... I am just telling you this because I have seen people with total command of English and Spanish and perfect accents in both languages... Bottom line, to make long story short, learn yourself and teach your kids, get them to learn by themselves, as long as you learn with a purpose, you will learn, you can go at your own pace and your kid at his, take it easy and ENJOY what you learn... using it...
I hope this is useful to you. ¡Buena suerte! [Good luck!]
