Re: A DISTURBING proposal! (was Re: Personal langs and converse ofaux)

Lots of emotion here...... but......

If my understanding is correct... there have been people that have taught
their children Esperanto as a first or "family" language.  I don't have
much information on this, however, if it had been a disaster it would
probably be on the news or something.  :-)

I am an American with a German wife. We have five kids and we have lived
in both Germany and the US.  (currently in the US)  We both speak each
others native language fluently as well as a couple of other languages.

Our kids are have been raised tri-lingual.  They speak English, German and
French.  At home we always speak the language of the country that we are
not in - when in Germany or language is English - when in Germany our
language English.  French they learned from a friend that was sort of a
nanny or adopted aunt.

The kids sorted all of this out and seemed to know what language to speak
to who and when - even at an earlier.  The only difference we have noticed
is that they started speaking at a later age - about six months later than
noraml.

For a while we were good friends with a family from Holand that had
several kids about the age of ours.  One day while the kids were playing
we noticed that our kids were speaking Dutch with the neighbor kids when
at their house.  When at our house the neighbor's kids had picked up
English. (This was in Germany.)

Kids seem to have flexiable minds.  The seem to catagorize and
compartmentalize things.  I believe that the best time to learn language
skills is at this very young age.  Our kids are now perfectly fluent in
German and English (accent free).  French they understand and can speak
when necessary.  ;-)

I someone wants to design a language and use it as a family language I can
only say "let me watch please."  If there is consistancy you may end up
with kids that have better than average ability with languages.  As for
the local languages - don't worry they will pick them up on their own.  It
is just how a kid's mind works.

Levi

Spirit Bear (ShinZui Guma)

===============================================
Naturally of course... as our Creator intended!

Levi Caddell
levica@one.net
w3.one.net/~levica
ICQ: 19541914 (PapaBare)

On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
> > Brian Phillips <deepbluehalo@...> writes:
> >
> > >   The PPC to me would be a "anti-IAL" in that it would have similarities to
> > > natlangs, but it's designed not to be easy for native speakers of those
> > > languages to learn, but rather to include most or many of the common
> > > features of as many languages as possible so that the kids are familar with
> > > them.
> >
> > I seriously doubt that this would work out.  This sounds like a *VERY*
> > dangerous and unethical experiment.
> >
> > >       This way they won't be in the position of an English speaker trying
> > > to master use of tones found in the Asian langs when they try to learn a new
> > > language.
> >
> > Chances are rather that the lack of people other than their siblings or
> > parents to talk to will throw your children so badly off the track that
> > their talent for learning foreign languages (which is doubtful to
> > actually arise from such an experiment) won't help them.  They will be
> > so thoroughly alienated from the world around them that they will be
> > unable to lead normal lives.  They are likely do develop severe forms of
> > paranoia, "Caspar Hauser" syndrome, or whatever.  A one-way ticket to
> > psychiatric ward, I'd call this.
> >
> > >   The PPC would also be an "anti-IAL" in that it would (likely) be the exclusive > tongue
> > > of a family group (not even a micro-community!).
> >
> > What is your intention behind isolating your children from the rest of
> > humanity by having them grow up with a first language no-one else
> > speaks?
> >
> > >   Similarly I would include Sign/gestural components into the PPC,
> > > infant-signing/gesture being one of those things that fascinate me, and it
> > > would prep them for mastering ASL.  I would try to include as many
> > > "developmentally-enriching" traits as possible.  Has anyone else thought
> > > about this sort of thing?
> >
> > Yes.  The Nazis, Scientology, various "transhumanists"/"posthumanists"
> > and similar sociopaths that ought to be turned in, drugged silly and
> > safely stowed away from humanity.  This is what forensic psychiatry is
> > for.
> >
> > If that boggard already has children, they should be taken away from him
> > and cleared for adoption, for the sake of the children.  If he has none
> > yet, he ought to be castrated and NEVER ever allowed to adopt any!
> >
> > This is really disturbing.  But even more disturbing to me is that I am
> > apparently the first on this list to point it out how monstrous it is,
> > while the rest of the list happily replies giving that monster ideas
> > what kinds of difficult sounds to build into his Mengelean experiment.
> > I am ALARMED by the apparent obliviousness of the conlang community
> > towards such wickedness.  It was people like YOU, fellow conlangers, who
> > made Auschwitz possible!  Sorry to offend you, but this must be said.
> >
> > That guy deserves to be locked away, sedated and securely strapped down.
>
> I think you're misunderstanding his intentions. The author of the email you're
> quoting said *nothing*
> whatsoever about locking up his children and forbidding them from talking to anyone
> outside the family.
> Unless he were to physically isolate his children from their peers, and/or punish
> them for speaking anything
> other than his conlang (which *would* be child abuse), then I don't see how they
> could be adversely affected
> by his 'experiment'. If they are exposed to the language of the larger
> community, they will *inevitably*
> acquire it.  It's completely unavoidable.
>
> The set-up he is proposing sounds a bit like the linguistic situation found in
> the households of recent
> immigrants: The children hear one language (his conlang) at home, and another language
> in the wider
> community (English). Probably what would happen in such a case is the children would
> acquire the ability to
> passively understand his conlang, but would not use it much (if at all), preferring
> English instead. This is
> generally what happens in families where the language used at home is different from
> the language used by the
> child's playmates and in the mass media.
>
> My opinion as a linguist is that his conlang experiment is doomed to failure:
> His children would probably
> resist speaking his conlang, and learning it would certainly not help them acquire
> other languages (better to
> expose them directly to those other languages instead). But as long as he does not
> propose to raise his
> children in a linguistic vacuum, I would hardly characterise his proposal as sociopathic.
>
> Matt.
>
>