For example, you have both parents speaking Polish and English. If a baby was born, what will his or her language be? Does it depend on the location of your birth?
Will the child be bilingual? How does it work?
In: Biology
No child speaks a language upon birth. Children learn language by listening to the languages that are spoken around them as they grow. So if the parents are bilingual AND they speak in both languages around the baby the baby will learn both languages as it learns to speak. This is why a lot of children’s shows for young children actually focus on being multilingual.
They will end up speaking whatever language(s) is/are spoken around them. If both are spoken to the child they will be bilingual. But they aren’t born speaking or knowing any language, they learn language as they hear people talk and people talking to them.
Baggies and young children would absorb anything that is presented to them. If parent teacher kid to speak Spanish, then child will speak Spanish m. If parent teaches Arabic, then child learns Arabic. Some parents choose to teach their own ethnic language to child, others don’t. The environment that child lives in also teachers them. I seen a Japanese kid start talking Texas twang cause her babysitter was from Texas. Many US army brats whose American parent stationed in Japan would know Japanese, even if parent doesn’t
Babies don’t speak when they are born, they are likely to mimic the language(s) they are most often subjected too. Once at the age of being able to speak, they will likely be able to develop an understanding of and be able to speak the languages that are around them.
The location will not matter directly; however, there may be a correlation with the prevalence of what languages are most spoken in a specific area, which would then increase the likelihood of exposure to those languages.
There is an interesting phenomenon where younger children are basically language sponges, and able to comprehend/speak many, yet they can quickly lose these proficiencies is their frequent exposure to that language ends. This is sometimes witnessed when like a grandparent who speaks primarily in a different tongue dies/stops interacting with a child frequently. Adults have a harder time learning additional languages, but it is not impossible. So theoretically, if you want someone to be proficient in multiple (or many) languages, then an early and constant exposure until around teenage years is a good place to start. Really, a never ending exposure is best, but there are certain age thresholds where a language proficiency seems to remain at a much higher rate than other ages.
I may have gotten some of this wrong, or oversimplified. If so, please correct me so we get good (accurate & detailed) information out there.
I hope this helped.
The child will speak the language of where they live, and whether or not the child learns both languages depends on the effort of the parents.
A child doesn’t speak any language when it’s born, it only learns the language spoken around it. So if the father speaks spanish and spends more time with the child than the mother, the child might prefer to speak spanish. If the parents gave the child up for adoption immediately after birth, and it got adopted to Japan, it would start speaking japanese.
It depends on what language the children comprehend better or which language the parents speak to them in. My parents are both English/Spanish speakers and their/my “at home” language was Spanish, but I went to public school where I was put in English classes and although my parents were far better in Spanish, I am an English speaker with okay Spanish, but my Spanish grammar is horrible. I could get by very easily in a Spanish conversation but my sentences would not be the best grammatically.
Main thing though is just what language they choose to use to speak to their children. I don’t believe it’s genetic but like you thought, where a child is born has an impact. If I was born in a Spanish speaking country, I’d probably be a better Spanish speaker with bad or no English.
>For example, you have both parents speaking Polish and English. If a baby was born, what will his or her language be? Does it depend on the location of your birth?
>Will the child be bilingual? How does it work?
Being able to speak a language is an acquired skill that builds over months, years and decades. It does not depend on the birthplace of the child or the birthplace of the parents.
If the child is taught Polish, it will be able to speak Polish. If the child is taught Chinese, it will be able to speak Chinese. If the child is taught to speak Chinese and Polish, it will be able to speak Chinese and Polish.
Babies learn by the languages they hear spoken, not by the languages their genetic parents speak. Languages are passed on via learning, not genes. So to answer your question, any and all languages the baby regularly heard spoken.
Language needs to be learned, it isn’t inherently known when a baby is born and grows up. So it will speak whatever language is likely most dominant in the home because it learns through observation of parents speaking.
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