re: #65 Obdicut

Kids of immigrants always learn English. It’ll happen naturally. They’re going to pick it up. It’s better if we teach them it thoroughly when their kids, but there’s nothing at all wrong with being bilingual. There’s nothing wrong with teaching a kid who speaks Spanish and only a little English, teaching him math in Spanish until his English can catch up. In fact, it is what you have to do.

Bills mandating instruction only in English cheat children out of a good education. We have kids entering our system every year who aren’t fluent yet. It benefits all of us if we educate them.

Yes and no. First, I certainly never suggested that being multilingual was a bad thing, and by illustration I refer to national spelling bees, in English, that are almost always won by bilingual children.

When we have essentially homogeneous communities speaking only another language under normal circumstances they, children mainly, will indeed absorb English eventually, but unless it is more than accidental their language level will be poor and limit their prospect both within and outside their communities. Part of the education process should be to make that point clear to parents as well.

As to the difficulties of learning a language, they are vastly overblown by those who have not tried, at least for the young, and immersion is the best way to do so. Any child can learn a language in less than a year if they have to and are given some help.

I have done it, in fact with more than English, and I am no linguist or otherwise gifted in that regard.