Speech development in other languages

[muminlondon]

I'm not bilingual (although I speak other languages to a certain level) but I'm fascinated with speech development at the moment because dd is 20 months and starting to put words together ('mummy sit down', etc.). I found this site about Brown's stages of English language development. So how and in what order do toddlers learn grammar in other languages, especially such as Czech or Polish where there are so many noun declensions as well as verb forms? If anyone can point me to other linguistic sites I'd be very grateful.

I remember (vaguely) studying Brown's stages at university, but had forgotten about it. Now I think about it, dd doesn't really fit the pattern. She is bilingual though, so i wouldn't expect her to fit the pattern exactly.

In English she uses many of the type I phrases, but often with a Spanish word order: she says things like "nap no" and "daddy [friend's name]" for [friend's name]'s daddy.

She also uses several type II and type III utterances but for some reason seems to have a better grasp of those. Some of them (I think) are set phrases rather than individual words so it's hard to tell.

In Spanish, she's mastered lots of words, but she occasionally astounds everyone by coming out with a full sentence (which she doesn't do in English). The other day, she said "eso es una manzana" (that's an apple) - not sure if this is because of the structure of Spanish (they don't contract the verb "to be" so perhaps it's clearer for her) or because of the fact that she's learning Spanish at nursery and English at home.

If I find any more info I'll let you know!

5{y interesting, thanks for replying. How old is she? Is her vocabulary in Spanish the same as in English? My dd seems to be following the textbook - lots of 'in bed', 'sock off', and now 'mummy writing', etc. But still lots of single words too.

How did that first word get in there??!!

She's 2.6, so should be stage 3 - she does some, but not all of those, but they do say bilingual children learn more slowly (not surprising really!)

Foe a long time she had some words in Spanish and some in English. Words that were particularly useful at nursery - "mine", get out of the way (one word in Spanish) - were in Spanish, others in English. Some words, like "yes" were a few weeks in English then a few in Spanish. I did think she was choosing the easiest one (si is easier than yes) but it didn't continue like that.

Now words will be in whatever language she learns them in first for a week or so, then in the right language for the context. Pretty impressive I think! Today for example she came home from nursery saying "birthday cake" - she hasn't heard the word birthday in English for 6 months, but managed to translate it alright.

Also now I remember, Spanish words that change for gender are in whatever gender she learns them in - "mine" is always femenine, for example. It's difficult for me to tell though because she speaks most of her Spanish at nursery: I must talk to them about it.

Do you think it's usual for Spanish children to get the gender wrong? In English children confuse pronouns so it sounds logical.

I heard recently that bilingual children actually have greater brain development (more brain cells or connections). Something else I remember hearing was that they tend to learn more slowly and at milestones have, say, 75% of the vocabulary expected for their age, but in each language - making 150% of the vocabulary of a monolingual child.

I have been speaking Spanish for 34 years and still confuse the gender (saying nosotros instead of nosotras when talking about my sisters and me, etc. etc) as a consequence I also confuse them in English when I'm distracted.

Ds is 21m now and he says please, gracies (thank you in catalan), mas (more in Spanish), noughty (which makes me think I should speak to the nursery as we don't use negative adjectives at home), etc, etc. The few phrases he has said are normally in English. I didn't realise he was already able to speak some English until one day I was changing him and when I finished he said "good boy" -he was 17m at the time. I asked at the nursery if they have heard other words and phrases and they mentioned about 10. But out of calling me good girl from time to time and say please, he doesn't use English words at home. I think he has been able to diferentiate the contexts.

I'm bilingual spanish /English and remember having dreadful trouble at school, as i use to get things mixed up. The school even told my parents not to talk to me in spanish, as it was too much. My parents ignored this and carried on as they would normaly. I must have been about 6/7 years old when it all made sense. I speak spanish to my kids and they seem to cope.

I speak English to my kids, my husband German, and at school/daycare they get pure Spanish (we currently live in South America). While I struggle daily to survive in another language, the little ones seem to have no problems. My 5- and 4-year-olds regularly (and with great glee) correct my Spanish pronunciation and grammar. Mix-ups are common for all the kids: my 2-year-old recently said 'ya tengo mi socks on'. Brilliant!

I like the sound of 'ya tengo mi socks on'!

I speak German to dd (2.10) and DH English. At the cm dd hears mainly English and some pakistani dialect as well as some pidgeon German from the 'man of the house'. So DD mainly speaks English with some German words thrown in which confuses the hell out of cm. Really have to make up a list of words she uses with translations . Her speech development has been a bit slower as she's got a huge vocab but has a tendency not to pronounce very clearly. Also having problems with words that have 2 consonants in them like bridge would be bidge etc. In the last month she has started to differentiate though whether she's speaking to a German speaker (me) or English speaker (everybody else) as she uses more German words when talking to me, unless of course she wants to tease DH as he doesn't speak German...

So in German when did your children start using German grammar (noun endings, the correct article - das, dem, etc.) and what grammatical forms came first?

Am afraid we're not quite there yet. Though when my father was visiting dd was using more 2 word sentences with him than with me... she probably knows that I understand english...

She's been throwing in German nouns since she's started talking slightly more intelligibly at around 1.5 years, the first word having been 'Hund' (dog).

Anyhow her German vocab at 2.10 has 5-10 of each, nouns, adjectives, verbs etc. when speaking, though she does understand almost everything said to her in German. Sometimes if it's a word out of content, e.g. Drachen, which could be kite or dragon I do have to tell her in English as well, unless I've got a picture to show her. Then from that point on she'll identify it correctly. Saying that she's got one rather strange trend... DH is teaching her fish names etc as we have an aquarium, and if I tell her to show me the 'Seestern' (starfish) she corrects me and tells me that it is a Starfish. So I'll have my work cut out there!
Anyhow, German grammar hasn't made it into her little brain yet. She's still mixing e.g. we go da lang (which is : we go that way)

So it sounds like she is using English word order and substituting German words she knows. Is she using English grammar - even just '-ing' forms of the verb?

tjat's it exactly . She mainly speaks English as I'm the only German influence

some sentences she's using with 'germish' are:

Baby is sleeping or schlafen (depending whether she's talking to me or dh)
I want to go baden (want to have a bath)
I'm not cold /kalt (that's when I'm trying to get clothes on here...)
I want a decke (which is I want a blanket)

It's really very cute sometimes especially if dh looks at here in a rather befuddled manner as he doesn't know what she's on about

Otherwise if she's speaking pure English I get sentences like
go away I'm trying to play
you do it
I can't find it
etc.

Not sure how much and how many words she should be able to put into one sentence but I think she's developing quite nicely

My DS doesn't seem to mix up the languages at all, he speaks 3 (English, Portuguese and Italian) and will only use the word in a different language if he doesn't know it in the language in which he is speaking at the time IYSWIM. He does have a problem with genders though in Portuguese (according to DH, my Portuguese is not good enough to know). I imagine it's the same a school with the Italian. I don't think being multilingual has delayed his language ability in English in anyway, he's way up to Browns stage V and has been for quite some time (hes 4.5 years BTW). DH says his Potuguese is not as good as he would expect a native child to be but DH is always way off with what he thinks is normal so I'm not sure. He's only been learning Italian for 18 months but has no problem at school but I can't comment on the accuracy of it, it's heaps better than mine though!

hausfrau, i cat'd you, dunno if it's been passed to you yet, just wondering how your ds is getting on? Does he get extra help in the Kindergarten (eg special assistance, a German lesson on top of or during normal kindergarten day?)