(This indicates the use of French and English words in one sentence)

 

A house pink — A pink house 

(This indicates the use of English words joined with a French syntax)

 

a)     Compound bilingual — an act of developing two language systems in a simultaneous way with a single context. 

b)    Coordinate bilingual — an act of acquiring two different languages in distinctively separate contexts.

c)     Sub-coordinate bilingual — an act of learning the secondary language by filtering the mother tongue language. 

 

 

a)     How is it possible for a child to learn two languages at the same time? 

b)    Doesn’t the child get confused when learning and using two languages? 

c)     Does bilingualism acquisition take longer than monolingual acquisition? 

d)    Does being bilingual either help or hinder the cognitive and academic development of the child? 

e)    How much exposure to each language is necessary for a child to become bilingual? 

 

During the early studies of bilingualism, many would perceive bilingual children as confused or having difficulty using two languages. Some parents would also take advices from educators or psychologists to avoid letting their children become bilingual. However, with more research done on this topic, it is proven to be normal to include some amount of language mixing in early childhood language acquisition. 

 

In fact, a handful of researches also propose the fact that the act of language mixing is almost similar to the act of code-switching among adults. However, code-switching too, is definitely not ‘bad grammar’ or ‘broken English’ as others might perceive it. Instead, it is just an act of adapting the use of more than one language among bilinguals when conversing.