Ce Moment When You Start Penser En Deux Languages At The Same Temps
In today's schools, children are learning mutiple languages at a young age. Some of them pay attention, while others do not. When I was growing up as a home-schooled kid, my mom started to teach us French that she had learned in high school and college. When I got to high school, I continued with French for two years and then stopped learning languages until this past Fall when I took an intro to Italian class. I was surprised to find that I picked it up pretty easily. What suprises me even more is the number of times I confused Italian words with French ones. If you asked me how to say something in French, I probably couldn't tell you. But if you gave me something in French to read, nine times out of ten I would be able to (albeit very roughly) translate it for you. Why is that?
I think it's like the opposite of getting a vaccine. They give you a little bit of the virus so your body recognizes it the next time it tries to infect you and can kill it. When you learn a language as a child, your brain squirrels the concepts away for you to remember and use as a base for learning languages in the future. My brain also happens to do this for books and movies (which makes it very hard to re-read things because I always remember the ending).
Not only does reading spark my brain to remember languages, but so do memories. The other day my co-worker asked me a question, but instead of saying "I don't know", my brain came up with "Je ne sais pas" - a phrase I used time and time again as I was growing up and learning French. I didn't even notice that I had switched languages until he gave me a weird look. The thing is, he took French in highschool too. But while he doesn't remember any of it, I still find myself blurting out things in a language I thought I didn't know and explaning what the phrases mean. The only possible explanation is that the learning I did as a child has affected my brain functionality somehow, allowing me to retain the language studying I did in highschool.
What do you think? Should people learn multiple languages as children? How early should you start? Let me know on Twitter @CurioStreetGirl.
Until next time,
Amanda
Photo Credit: LookHuman.com
