Hao Mama 好妈妈

Via the Chinese Lessons blog, here is an interesting article from the Economist on the benefits of raising children bilingually:

A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences may help resolve this question by getting to the nub of what is going on in a bilingual child’s brain, how a second language affects the way he thinks, and thus in what circumstances being bilingual may be helpful. Agnes Kovacs and Jacques Mehler at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste say that some aspects of the cognitive development of infants raised in a bilingual household must be undergoing acceleration in order to manage which of the two languages they are dealing with.

The aspect of cognition in question is part of what is termed the brain’s “executive function”. This allows people to organise, plan, prioritise activity, shift their attention from one thing to another and suppress habitual responses. Bilingualism is common in Trieste which, though Italian, is almost surrounded by Slovenia. So Dr Kovacs and Dr Mehler looked at 40 “preverbal” seven-month-olds, half raised in monolingual and half in bilingual households, and compared their performances in a task that needs control of executive function.

T is now ten months old and entering that amazing stage when she is beginning to understand words and trying to communicate. It’s also the stage I remember well with L when they piece together what they know in a mish-mash of language, gesture, and random sounds. When L was one, before he really talked, he had a Cantonese-speaking babysitter, from whom he learned that shoes were “hai-hai.” Being obsessed with anything with wheels, he also called the color green “go” and red “stop,” though he pronounced it “bop.” So for a long while in our home his favorite red shoes were called his “bop hai-hai.” We knew exactly what he was talking about, even if no-one else did. Eventually he began to sort out the words and languages into different channels. For now, T responds in whatever way comes easiest for her: When Baba says “再见” she waves and says “Bye-bye!” And when he says, “拍拍手” she enthusiastically claps her hands, just as she does when I say the same in English, or when she hears recorded applause on a CD. It will all come together in time.