(ELI5) when babies are raised with bilingual families, are they learning it as just one jumbled language, or as two separate languages?

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Also would it become difficult to discern and seperate them when they join school for example, and interact with people that only speak one

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Two languages, but they might speak one in the other. My kids are Spanish speakers living and getting educated in France, they know it’s two languages but given the closeness of the languages, they can confuse some false friends. They use “amar” in Spanish (to love) as “aimer” is used in French (to like). So when speaking in Spanish they love or don’t love a lot of stuff.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I routinely mix up words in 4 separate languages. Other than my parents, wife… no one would ever understand me 100%

Anonymous 0 Comments

When i was growing up in hongkong i spoke 4 languages, i didnt realize they were different languages. I just spoke to my Aiee in one way (Tagalog) my parents in another way (English) my teachers in one way (Mandrin) and strangers in one way (Cantonese)

In my head it was more about the person i was talking too, rather than the words themselves, like saying “cat” casually, “kitty” to little kids, or “feline” academically. The words are different, but the meaning is the same, you just use the different word depending on who youre talking to.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It depends on how they hear it and how often.
My 2 daughters 5 and 9 have grown with us talking to them in “Spanglish” (English with some Spanish thrown in). They would have conversations with us and each other in the same way. When they would go visit their grandparents they were spoken to in Spanish only. It wasn’t until my youngest was about 4 when she began to understand some of the words she used were Spanish and some were English. Not the best way to teach a child to be bilingual pero nimodo. So in our case they learned both languages as 1 and learned to separate it later.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In my experience the parent doing the raising favors heavily into how a kid will absorb a language. Mom was home with us and dad (Argentine) worked and never spoke Spanish to me or my brother. We heard him on the phone with family and talking to his workers but that never helped

Anonymous 0 Comments

I became quad-lingual.. Gujarati, Hindi, Swahili and English but it’s now a “jack of all languages and master of none” type of situation.. born to Gujarati parents in Tanzania, sent to school in India till 4th grade where I learnt to read and write in Gujarati and Hindi along with English. Then moved back to Tanzania to pick up Swahili. Now I can only read Gujarati and Hindi but can’t write after not writing it for years and my English speaking lacks fluency

Anonymous 0 Comments

They are learning to recognize the phonemes (the sounds) of each language, and will eventually be able to put it together as far as understanding meaning and speaking goes. They are learning 2 separate languages, and they will be able to think in 2 languages. Bilingual/multilingual children have serious advantages:)

Anonymous 0 Comments

So from my personal experience: when raising a child billingual it’s important to seperate the languages. My mother only talked Hungarian with me, my dad only German. I am pretty sure that I could seperate the languages pretty early so I would guess they realize pretty fast that these are two different languages.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Two languages, Almost every one in Indian cities is raise bilingual/trilingual, Hind/English/local-state-language.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Is this a psychological or philosophical distinction?