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Originally Posted by Sun_Sparkz
It would be great to teach kids english.. and sign language and maybe french or japanse when they are young.. so that they are multilingual. i would love to be multilingual now.
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While it's true young kids can pick up languages relatively easily, there is usually a delay in speaking in general when the toddler is trying to get a handle on multiple languages, especially if they are vastly different, like an Asian language and a Romance language.
One of my mother's coworkers lived in a house with several relatives where English, Spanish, Basque, and Chinese were spoken frequently by various members of the household. The coworker and her husband had a baby, and the little boy did not speak at all. His comprehension was obviously fine, and the doctors had told her he was just going to be mute, for unknown reasons. Then one day when he was four--just as they were looking into special education classes to put him in for kindergarten--they were playing one day and his mother said, "Jose, close that door," and he turned to her and said quite clearly, "No, I want it open." From that moment on, he spoke all four languages fluently, and the doctors decided that he had just been taking the time to sort them all out in his head.