Don children get confused learning more than one language at a time?
NOPE – The minds of children are “wired” to acquire language automatically (undergoing exactly the same stages, no matter what the language is). From ages 1-5, kids can acquire any possible language (from English to Chinese to Hawaiian), and acquiring multiple languages is no problem, provided children have enough exposure. From 5-10, kids still have an easy time, but once adolescence hits, most people lose the ability to pick up languages easily. Ironically, that is just when most U.S. schools start offering foreign language courses. During the language acquisition process, children may confuse the two languages, and bilingual speakers may switch between them all their lives (that’s called code switching), but these speakers in fact DO have competency in both languages. On an interesting side note, pop singer Marc Anthony is bilingual in both Spanish and English even though he has lived in New York City most of his life. How did he do it? Anthony told interviewers that his Puerto Rica
