Subject: Re: [lojban] Teaching kids (was: Women in Lojban)

From: Jim Carter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 10:04:26 -0700 (PDT)

On Sun, 2 Sep 2001, Richard Curnow wrote:
> ...
> My son is 3 years old. I don't think I've ever had enough spoken
> fluency in Lojban to make a viable attempt at teaching it to him...

With the little ones, the way to teach language, as with most topics, is to
use it. What they see or hear used, they ``know'' is important, and they
copy it. Of course this includes a parent's bad habits too.

As Lojbab says often, being used is the most important aspect of a
language.

Among immigrant communities a common pattern is that children have
reasonable listening proficiency but poor speaking, because the parents
talk to the children in the non-English language, but the kids can get away
with answering in English, which the parents encourage because it's
important for the kids to be skilled in English. I have several nephews
(by chance, no nieces) who show this pattern. Do insist that a
conversation started in a particular language be finished in the same
language. Also avoid dropping random English words into the foreign
language. It sounds totally stupid, like "le parking" (stationnement)
which apparently has come into common use in France.

I read a report by a U.S. Army intelligence tech, stationed in Germany,
working on Russian communications, with an Italian wife. Wanting to bring
up their child to be multilingual, they mapped languages to territory, e.g.
the kitchen was Italian, the exterior was German; and when in that place
they only spoke the selected language to the kid.

James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555
Email: [email-masked] http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)