How do children in multilingual households differentiate between the two (or more) languages they’re being taught?
In: Other
When they learn more than one word for something, they clue in pretty fast to who they’re supposed to use which word with. My son at only 20 months old knows to ask us for “wuh-wuh” (water), but he asks his uncle for “ah-wah” (agua).
As they get bigger and start talking in full sentences, they naturally group words of the same language together, because they associate those words with the person they’re talking to. If the parents have different native languages, the kid knows to speak one language with mom and the other with dad. When they meet someone new, they’ll ask, “Do they talk like mommy or like daddy?” Or “like teacher?” if that’s where they’re learning English.
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