We have a 1.5 year-old baby and it’s very captivating to observe how she is learning Spanish and English simultaneously. For the most part I’m in charge of speaking English with her, and my wife takes care of speaking Spanish with her. And she’s learning. Right now she still does not use full sentences, but she uses many words to express herself.

One thing she does, that I find fascinating, is how she uses two words– one in English and one in Spanish– to describe the same thing. If we’re about to leave the house, and her mother says vámonos, the baby’s reply is ámono, but then if I reply yeah, let’s go, she responds again, in kind, ss go or go go go. The mouths of babes are interesting places. Indeed that was going to be the title of this post and, although intriguing, I don’t know if it conveys the same meaning as the current title.

Here’s a small sampling of some of the words she uses in both languages. I need a refresher course in transcribing in IPA, so I can write out exactly how she pronounces things.

awa (agua) – wawa (water)
pato (zapato) – choo (shoe)
bujo (jugo) – dju (juice)
djio (adiós) – bye (bye)
ámono (vámonos) – ss go (let’s go)

It appears that right now she’s using the Spanish and English terms as synonyms. I don’t think she makes the distinction that they belong to two different languages at the moment. If I recall correctly, linguistic research supports the idea that a baby or child can learn multiple languages at the same time, and a bit down the road the child figures out that the words and grammatical structures belong to two or more separate languages, and separates them out in his or her mind.

I am waiting anxiously to see evidence supporting or refuting the idea that at the beginning of language acquisition there is just “one” language in the mind of the acquirer, which is later separated into the constituent languages.

23 February 2007 11:44 am
Cats: Bilingualism, English, Language Acquisition, Spanish
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