New research is showing just how children’s brains can become bilingual so easily, findings that scientists hope eventually could help the rest of us learn a new language a bit easier.

“We think the magic that kids apply to this learning situation, some of the principles, can be imported into learning programs for adults,” says Dr. Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington, who is part of an international team now trying to turn those lessons into more teachable technology.

Longtime readers of this blog will note that I’ve hit most of the phonological points discussed in this article, but nonetheless, it’s a good primer for how childhood bilingualism develops, and likewise why it can be so difficult later to learn a new language in life…

Bilingual people are more adept in picking up a foreign language than their monolingual counterparts, according to the latest research.

Their bilingual advantage persists even when the new language they study is completely different from the languages they already know.

“It’s often assumed that individuals who’ve learned multiple languages simply have a natural aptitude for learning languages,” said Viorica Marian, associate professor of communication sciences and disorders at Northwestern University (NU).

“While that is true in some cases, our research shows that the experience of becoming bilingual itself makes learning a new language easier,” said Marian.

Yes and no…  This, at first glance, appears to be a “duh, we knew that” issue.  As Dr. Marian states, the facility of L3 learning by bilinguals is often attributed to natural aptitude towards language learning, but it’s much more attributable to the greater linguistic awareness enjoyed by bilinguals.  Simply put, they have more resources (phonetically, grammatically, etc.) to pull from when learning the new language.  I’ve always told people that after about 3 languages, new ones become progressively easier…

However….

One cannot make the point blank assertion that bilingualism = improved language learning.  Bilinguals often first have to make a significant hurdle, depending upon how they first learned their L2.  I’ve noted that people who learn two or more languages as children can still struggle to learn a language as an adult.  This is largely due to the dramatic difference in learning styles between children and adults.  Children seem to literally absorb language.  They learn largely through observation, repetition, and deduction.  Adults learn (and are usually taught) in a much more analytical manner.  Studying a foreign language is a skill unto itself which child bilinguals won’t necessarily have learned, and thus, they are going to struggle in the same way as monolinguals studying their first language.  However, later in the course of study — once study habits develop — the natural advantages of bilinguals should start to kick in.

I believe I’ve told this story before on this blog, but honestly I can’t be bothered to troll through the old posts to look for it, but I saw this in action some years ago when I lived in Japan.  I observed two friends — a boy and a girl, both English/French bilinguals with no prior Japanese experience — struggling to learn Japanese.  While both were advancing slowly (Japanese is kindov tough!), the boy was (initially, at least) progressing much more quickly than the girl.  Given that they were putting roughly equal amounts of effort into learning, and that they had realtively equivalent amounts of input, it aroused my curiosity.  I started talking to them to get a handle on what the difference was, and in the end, what I determined was probably 99% to blame for the disparity was the fact that the boy had learned French (well!) largely as an adult (he had begun study in secondary school, but had only really sought mastery of the language in his twenties), whereas the girl had grown up speaking both (she had attended a French immersion school).  My discussions with them on what they were doing to learn Japanese revealed that the girl was floundering in trying to figure out how to learn a language, whereas the guy had immediately set about employing the same methods that he had put to the task of learning French.  Once the problem was identified, and some tips were laid out for the girl to facilitate adult language learning, her Japanese level started to progress markedly.  The point being that for every adult learner of a second language, the first task in language learning is learning “how to learn a foreign language…”

Via the San Fran Chronicle…  Dripping in hyperbole, yet interesting nonetheless…  It comes back to my old complaint that a small minority of people seem to think that once one arrives to the US, one should abandon ever speaking anything other than English…  Patently ridiculous…

Here’s what I don’t like. I don’t like it when busybody officials think that because they don’t like something, they have to outlaw it. I don’t like that language has become a proxy for the immigration debate and the anxiety that some people feel over a changing cultural landscape.

I don’t like it that some American teenagers barely speak proper English, much less a foreign language, and that they will eventually be outmatched in the global job market if they come up against someone from Europe, Asia or Latin America who speaks two or three languages. I don’t like that some of these same American kids resent the very notion of competition, and that English-only policies enable them by making everyone the same so that no one has a leg up because he knows more than one language.

I agree with the general sentiment, but the hyperbole tarnishes the facts in several areas.  First, language has not (in my opinion) become a proxy for the immigration debate, but has instead become one of its battlefields.  The vast bulk of immigration enforcement supporters are not simply mad because of multilingual “shoutouts” during graduation, or the whole “press 1 for English” thing, but rather they get upset because of the perception that we’re privileging one immigrant group over others by so widely accommodating them in their own language (you certainly don’t hear a “push 3 for Chinese”– though for my wife’s sake, I really wish we did), and while the author nails it on the head that research reveals that children are learning English and abandoning “the old language” at the same rate as any other time in U.S. history, the adult immigrants are not…  To be fair, we over-romanticize our own history.  Most G1 immigrants (i.e., “first-generation) have always had a less-than-perfect command of English — even after many years of U.S. residence.  Many immigrants, understandably nervous about their new surroundings, prefer to remain in “linguistic ghettos,” where they are surrounded by a community from their own country.  This was always been a natural inclination for many immigrants.  What some Americans worry is that, by providing so much home-language support at every facet of life, we inadvertently  ghetto-ize people by depriving them of the chance (and/or motivation) for full participation in society.  The road to upward-advancement in any country is not pretty…  It takes some hard work and you have to lay it on the line.  Immigrants have traditionally excelled in this regard, partly because it’s you’ve got to be pretty ballsy to start with to pick up your life and uproot to a foreign land.  Accommodation is usually undertaken out of an attempt to be nice and welcoming, but it can have the negative effect of depriving the immigrant of the motivation that he/she will need to attain the American dream…

Also, the author completely mischaracterizes the nature of all English-only initiatives.  None that I have ever seen have ever had anything bad to say about foreign language learning — in fact, most encourage such.  They also don’t discourage immigrants teaching their native language to their kids.  There is a conscious misportrayal of English-only advocates by their opponents as seeking to illegalize any sort of public — or even private — discourse in languages other than English.  That is simply slander of the first order, and is designed to equate English-only supporters to knuckle-dragging KKK-esque racists.  Aside from the David Duke faction, English-only supporters limit themselves to the arena of government services.  While some may disagree, there is a pretty strong argument to be made that there is no real reason for (non-emergency) government/civil services to have to be provided in any language other than English.  The most common (and most damning) example is ballots…  If general English proficiency is a requirement of citizenship, why, indeed, do municipalities have to spend such obscene amounts from the public coffers on FL ballots which largely go unused?  At root, the English-only supporters are making an economic argument (i.e., let’s save some money here!).

It’s only once they get into the arena of education that it becomes a cultural argument.  Here, the argument becomes a lot more tenuous, and thus more hostile, on both sides.  The problem: both immersion and bilingual education work — but on different populations and for different reasons.  English-only supporters will note that one of the primary goals of public schooling is to instill a common set of values and culture in children — i.e., the whole “E Pluribus Unum” thing…  Bilingual ed. supporters point out that research indicates that kids actually learn better if initially grounded in subject matter (particularly literacy concepts) in their own language before transitioning to English.  Both systems have their success stories — and their horror stories…  I always feel semi-idiotic in having to point this out, but it certainly seems that the major variables involved are not so much teaching methodology, but instead the individual learners and teachers themselves…  Simply put, different kids respond to different teaching styles…  Some teachers suck…  Some kids come from such horrible backgrounds that no type of education is going to yield results until their more basic needs are met.  Etc.  Until we can put some flexibility in the system, we’re going to remain at an impasse with two sides yelling at each other, and not much listening happening…

There are certainly those who think so…  (Fortunately for bilinguals, “Dear Abby” is in OUR corner )

I’ve heard variants of this, myself, and my wife and I certainly attract the evil eye (and even occasional snide comments) from people for conversing in Chinese.  This mainly stems from a slight paranoia, which is almost universal amongst humans, which convinces us that people must always be talking about US.  It’s irrational at its face, but it’s pretty common.  Think — if you’re at a restaurant, and you happen to catch the eye of someone at a table across the way, and then they start to laugh, most people will start brushing their face with napkin, worried to death that they have something stuck to their cheek.  If we think through it, it’s much more likely that the laugh was a reaction to something someone at the other person’s table said, but we humans tend towards such extreme egoism that one automatically assumes that “EVERYTHING IS ABOUT ME.”  Unfortunately, in the realm of the multilingualism, there is the same irrational fear that any foreign language conversation must be perceived as a personal slight (because, heaven knows, those people could be insulting my golf pants and plaid jacket!).  Hence, the commonly assumed rule that it is rude to switch languages in front of others.  Now, besides the fact that people are usually not switching languages just to insult your new beehive hairdo, the second letter makes a good point that often language switching is non-intentional, and just a natural part of the relationship between the speakers.  I honestly have a very hard time speaking only English to my wife.  Beyond mere communication issues (my wife gets along just fine in English), the language used is a faucet of the relationship between people.  I’ve often found that whatever language a relationship is formed in tends to be the main language of communication, even if the two speakers relative proficiency levels change.   Relationships always form a “language of intimacy” which, in the case of bilinguals, often means switching between languages.  Additional factors may be relative levels of language competency — if some friends are present who don’t completely understand things, one might try to facilitate their participation in the conversation, or if they don’t understand something someone else says, one might switch to tell them to prevent them from looking idiotic (my wife and I have done this for each other)…  There also may be in-house rules on what languages children may address parents in (for people aspiring to make their kids bilingual, the one-parent-one-language rule is fairly prevalent).  All this to say, don’t take offense when someone switches languages in front of you…  They usually mean no offense, and more likely than not, they’re simply following some version of “house rules” or trying to help a friend save face. Ultimately, you’ve got to admit: wouldn’t you switch languages if you could?