Learn Spanish with Tomísimo! » Bilingualism http://www.tomisimo.org All about learning Spanish and English and the Tomísimo bilingual dictionary Thu, 12 Feb 2009 04:59:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.3 en hourly 1 Hear Native and Non-native English Speakers from around the World and Improve your Accent http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/hear-native-and-non-native-english-speakers-from-around-the-world-and-improve-your-accent/ http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/hear-native-and-non-native-english-speakers-from-around-the-world-and-improve-your-accent/#comments Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:43:08 +0000 David http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/hear-native-and-non-native-english-speakers-from-around-the-world-and-improve-your-accent/ The Speech Accent ArchiveThe speech accent archive is a collection of speech samples in English. A sample text is read by native and non-native speakers alike from all parts of the globe. This is a great resource for those of you who are learning English to hear sample speech and improve your own accent as a result.

Along with the recording of each speaker, there is a IPA transcription of their pronunciation as well as demographic information about the speaker.

To me it’s interesting to hear how English pronunciation varies from place to place, and depending on native language. For example, here’s some native Spanish speakers reading the sample text, or use the map to see how people from different areas speak.

From the about page:

Everyone who speaks a language, speaks it with an accent. A particular accent essentially reflects a person’s linguistic background. When people listen to someone speak with a different accent from their own, they notice the difference, and they may even make certain biased social judgments about the speaker.

The speech accent archive is established to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded.1 The archive is constructed as a teaching tool and as a research tool. It is meant to be used by linguists as well as other people who simply wish to listen to and compare the accents of different English speakers.

So go check out this site, and if you’re feeling brave, you can even record and upload your own speech sample.

]]> http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/hear-native-and-non-native-english-speakers-from-around-the-world-and-improve-your-accent/feed/ 0 Books on raising bilingual children http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/books-on-raising-bilingual-children/ http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/books-on-raising-bilingual-children/#comments Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:02:52 +0000 David http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/books-on-raising-bilingual-children/ Books on raising bilingual childrenAfter posting a couple of days ago about my daughter’s bilingual escapades, I thought I’d share some of the material I’ve read in my quest to learn about raising bilingual children.

I’ve been researching and looking for materials to help with raising our daughter bilingual in Spanish and English. If any of you are doing– or planning to do something similar, these books have helped us and they just might help you. Each book has the title, author and ISBN so you can easily find them or order them through your local bookstore. I’ve also put a link to buy them via Amazon, if you’re into that. Added benefit– you’re supporting Tomisimo if you buy them through the link to Amazon.

Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children
Author: Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa
Publisher/Year: Bergin & Garvey, 2000
ISBN-10: 0897897501
ISBN-13: 978-0897897501
This is an up-to-date book written by a English/Spanish bilingual teacher. A rich resource with methods for achieving the best results when trying to raise bilingual children, either through language learning or language acquisition.
Buy/View on Amazon.com

A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism 2nd Edition
Author: Colin Baker
Publisher/Year: Multilingual Matters, 2000
ISBN-10: 1853594555
ISBN-13: 978-1853594557
A very useful book. Formatted as a QandA, where people have sent in questions and the author answers them. Lots of practical questions and answers including the topic of language mixing and code switching where your child switches back and forth between languages, or mixes the two together.
Buy/View on Amazon.com

Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
Authors/Editors: Colin Baker and Sylvia Prys Jones
Publisher/Year: Multilingual Matters, 1998
ISBN-10: 1853593621
ISBN-13: 978-1853593628
This is a *huge* book, an encyclopedia in fact. It’s really expensive, but if you’re interested in the subject it’s literally a treasure trove of information. You might try to find it in a local university library in the linguistics section if you don’t want to fork over the moolah.
Buy/View on Amazon.com

The Bilingual Family
Authors: Edith Harding and Philip Riley
Publisher/Year: Cambridge University Press, 1986
ISBN-10: 0521311942
ISBN-13: 978-0521311946
This book is interesting because it has a number of case studies of families who raised children bilingually in an array of different languages. It’s sort of a “yes you can do it” by giving examples of other who have done it.
Buy/View on Amazon.com

Growing Up with Two Languages: A Practical Guide
Authors: Una Cunningham-Andersson and Staffan Andersson
Publisher/Year: Routledge, 1999
ISBN-10: 041521257X
ISBN-13: 978-0415212571
This is a personal account of a Swedish family with four children who grew up speaking English and Swedish, but includes some information from other families who have raised their children bilingually.
Buy/View on Amazon.com

One Child, Two Languages: A Guide for Preschool Educators of Children Learning English As a Second Language
Author: Patton O. Tabors
Publisher/Year: Brookes Publishing Company, 1997
ISBN-10: 155766272X
ISBN-13: 978-1557662729
While primarily targeted at educators in bilingual classrooms, it is an interesting read and offers many resources for parents who desire to raise bilingual children.
Buy/View on Amazon.com

Of course these are just a few of many, many great books on the subject, but they are a few I have read, looked at or own. I hope they help you as much as they’ve helped me.

]]> http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/books-on-raising-bilingual-children/feed/ 1 Bilingual babyspeak in Spanish and English http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/bilingual-babyspeak-in-spanish-and-english/ http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/bilingual-babyspeak-in-spanish-and-english/#comments Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:44:23 +0000 David http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/bilingual-babyspeak-in-spanish-and-english/ Baby girl’s dressWe 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.

]]> http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/2007/bilingualism/bilingual-babyspeak-in-spanish-and-english/feed/ 3