From: Olga Bourlin (fauxever@sprynet.com)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 21:17:40 MDT
From: "Dossy" <dossy@panoptic.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Cc: "J. W. Harris" <index@cox.net>
> > What age should I start teaching my son a second language?
>
> Birth. Totally serious. The sooner you start, the sooner they'll
> learn it. There is no such thing as too early.
Buy why? There may be advantages to learning languages as a child (as
calisthenics exercises for soppy young neurons), but unless one practices
and uses those languages actively, atrophy will set in (... and fast!). I
learned 4 languages by the time I was 10: Russian at home (from birth on),
Mandarin in the streets of Taiwan (age 2-almost 7), Portuguese when I moved
to Rio de Janeiro and for first and second grade there (ages 7-8), and
American-English when I moved (at age almost-8) to San Francisco,
California. Took Spanish and French in school, as well (but only after the
cement block brain of early adolescence set in). How many of all those
languages do I speak now? Only one language: English (because I use it).
Even my native Russian can be declared clinically dead. What little I
remember is being kept barely alive because of my predilection of watching
the History Channel, where some Russian dignitary or other is bound to come
on and vituperate from time to time.
Olga
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