For today’s three-generation family, it is probably the most common situation for grandparents and grandparents to help with the children.
Asking the old man to help take care of the children often requires all kinds of running-in. Take teaching the baby to speak as an example, which makes some parents rather disconsolate.
The older generation is used to speaking the dialect of their hometown. Some of them do not speak Mandarin very well, and even some do not speak Mandarin at all. Naturally, they can only speak dialect when taking care of their babies.
Although young parents basically speak Mandarin now, there is basically no problem in understanding dialects. However, babies are different. Some adults speak Mandarin and some speak dialects. Will they confuse babies?
This is both dialect and Putonghua. Can the baby understand it? Will it affect the baby’s speaking ability?
Does multilingual environment affect baby’s speech?
Whether multilingual environment will affect the baby’s speech ability is not only concerned by parents, but also by researchers.
There was once a view that multilingual environment would make children feel confused, more easily confused, increase the difficulty of language learning, and lead to the baby speaking late.
However, with the discovery of research in recent ten years, Bilingual (multilingual) learning will not affect the speed of baby’s language development. Different children’s language development speed is different, but it will not slow down or lag behind the language development because they learn more than one language. Even some studies have found that the common learning of the two languages can also play a certain role in promoting each other.
Some studies have even found that children in a bilingual environment have certain advantages in social understanding and cognitive ability over children growing up in a monolingual environment.
Babies are born with the ability to recognize different languages. When learning multiple languages at the same time, they can also understand and understand the differences between different languages.
Are dialects and Mandarin bilingual?
Speaking of the bilingual environment, I believe parents cannot help asking [is dialect and Putonghua bilingual? ].
In fact, on the question of whether dialects and Putonghua are bilingual, we first need to understand how bilingualism is defined.
Through consulting linguistic materials, I found that when defining whether dialects are bilingual or not, there is a very important concept called [mutual intelligence], which means how well people who speak one language understand another.
For example, Also in English, People in Texas and California may have slightly different accents, But they can reach almost 90% mutual understanding. Although sometimes for the same object, Different places may have different expressions, such as Coke. Some places in the United States are called Coke, and some places (such as Iowa) prefer to use Pop. However, people who move from California to Texas do not have language communication barriers and survival difficulties.
However, in some countries and regions, such as China, because of its vast territory, various dialects coexist, and even there may be a situation of [ten miles with different sounds and a hundred miles with different customs], and the mutual understanding between these dialects or between these dialects and Putonghua is sometimes not very good.
For example, when I first went to college, I had two roommates, one from Guangxi and the other from Hainan. When I heard them call home to report safety, I could not understand them at all except the first name [Mom].
Another example is a friend of mine who lives in a remote mountain village. He said that his family never watches the Spring Festival gala during the Spring Festival, but only the local Taiwan gala. Why? Because his parents can’t speak Mandarin, can’t read or understand Mandarin.
Therefore, if there is a great difference between dialects and Putonghua, and the [mutual understanding] between them is not good, then to some extent, it is in line with the [bilingual] standard.
Can dialect, as a second language, promote the cognitive development of babies?
At present, the research on dialect as a second language is not too much, but it is also in full swing. There is a specific name called [bi-dialectalism]. I don’t know how to translate it properly, so let’s call it [bi-dialectalism] for the time being.
A study from Cambridge University found that people who speak two dialects or a standard language, one dialect or multiple languages have similar cognitive development characteristics to those who speak bilinguals in the general sense.
In other words, like people who speak Chinese and English, their memory, attention and cognitive flexibility have certain advantages over monolingual people.
Another study from Norway also showed that after excluding socio-economic factors, children who spoke [both languages] performed better in reading, mathematics and English proficiency tests.
In other words, speaking dialects together with standard languages, or two dialects together, is also beneficial to our language development and brain development.
What about dialects that are acceptable?
The formation of vocabulary in any language is based on its background culture and knowledge. Even if mutual understanding is acceptable, the dialect is [dialect], which includes not only accent but also local cultural characteristics, both culture and inheritance.
In some places, the dialect accent is relatively strong, or some phonemes are not divided (for example, N and L are not divided), so parents will inevitably worry about what their children will do with their accents in the future.
The formation of a child’s accent must be that the language of this accent accounts for the largest proportion in his life. Under normal circumstances, if parents communicate enough with the child in Putonghua, the dialect accent of the elderly will not have a dominant influence.
Many studies have shown that infants can recognize phoneme pronunciation differences in all languages in the world, and this ability will gradually weaken as children are more and more exposed to a specific language.
If when the child was young, He lived only in dialect, Or his parents said the same n, Indiscriminate [Putonghua], Then when the child grows up, After the phoneme recognition ability is weakened, it is also more likely that N and L will not be distinguished, because the child may only learn one of L and N pronunciation, which is more common in the case that the child has always been brought by the elderly in his hometown, the kindergarten teacher in the place where he is located also has this pronunciation, or the Putonghua of all adults in the family is not standard.
However, if someone in your family speaks standard Putonghua, which can distinguish N from L, then if the child has the ability to recognize these two pronunciations, it is unlikely that N and L will be separated.
Moreover, even when I was a child, N and L were not divided. If I came into contact with standard Putonghua when I grew up, I could correct it through conscious correction.
Therefore, parents really don’t have to worry about the elderly interacting with their children in dialects or teaching them to speak dialects when they take care of their children, which will not affect their children’s language development.
In fact, parents might as well think about themselves. When they were young, they spoke dialect to their families and Mandarin to their school teachers. Now they can switch between dialect and Mandarin without barrier. There is really no need to worry ~