Re: Teaching children conlangs

Yitzik wrote:
>
> Ghu forbid! Not a monolingual one!
> Anyway, my 5-y.o. boy is loaded well enough with Ukrainian as L1,
> Russian he hears everyday from TV and one of his babushkas, English we
> often use for private talks and Hebrew we pray... Which does not prevent
> him from trying to pick up some Kuman words I'm constructing now - is it
> due to his playing with that Azeri girl from the 8th floor?
Quite probably.  The other kids at kindergarten picked up some German
from me when I was a kid (I sometimes refused to understand Swedish!),
and I picked up some Croatian from a girl.
BTW I once heard an anecdote about Turkish and Finnish immigrant
children at a kindergarten having created a mixed language.  Maybe the
two languages *are* structurally close enough to make it possible!


makeenan wrote:
> I have met French Canadian parents where one parent speaks french exclusively
> and the other speaks English. The children, I'm told, have no problem
> switching back and forth and do not mix the languages either.
>
> The only ethical problem I can foresee, is if the child is brought up using
> the conlang exclusively. That would be a disservice to the child.
>
> -Duke Keenan
That, and the fear of creating an unatural, eclusive bond between me and
my child was what stopped me from teachin my son Quenya.  I guess his
mother would have had opinions about it too, of course.

--

/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)