How do children in multilingual households differentiate between the two (or more) languages they’re being taught?
In: Other
I’m brazilian and my parents are from Taiwan. In other words, I’m taiwanese ethnicity and born in Brazil. Well, that meant that when I went to school or interact with other kids I spoke in portuguese, but my mother tried her best to get us to use Taiwanese and Chinese between us. That was how I knew that I was talking different languages.
Afterwards, we always talk with a mixture between Taiwanese and portuguese. It’s…admittedly, weird lol, and my friends pointed out how funny it was from an outside perspective. For them it was like “*taiwanese words* *taiwanese words* that paper *taiwanese words* There.”
My nephew while he mostly speak portuguese, we do try to teach him some taiwanese words. Back when he was months old, I guess he didn’t know the difference. He still calls my parents grandad and grandma in Taiwanese instead of Portuguese. But once he learned his main language portuguese, he quickly understood that there’s more than one language. Youtube videos helped, since most of them are English based. He also grew up listening to chinese folk music, and understood that it’s a different language, since he corrected his friends whenever they were singing along.
Latest Answers