Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 June 2

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June 2

Children learning multiple languages

Are there any studies about how many languages it is possible for a young child to learn more or less as "cradle tongues"? I know of two children who have spoken three languages (French with their mother, Spanish with their father, Tagalog with their nanny) and then who learned English at nursery school. Is there a known record for children up to, say, 5 years of age? Bielle (talk) 02:00, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Charles Berlitz supposedly spoke eight languages by the time he was an adolescent, due to his father's instructions that everyone in his family speak to Charles in a different language. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 05:51, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Your question intrigues me very much, but I am not ready to spend much time in searching for answers on the World Wide Web at this time. Nevertheless, I recommend the following result from my Google search for "multilingual children record": The #1 Language Ingredient For Raising Multilingual Children | Multilingual Living. If you ask again after a few months, I might make a more thorough search or I might have already found the desired information. -- Wavelength (talk) 06:06, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

See Multilingualism and Category:Multilingualism and Alexander Arguelles. -- Wavelength (talk) 06:14, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

See also bilingualism and intelligence. There was a scientific study that showed that infants can recognise the differences between languages they haven't learned, but toddlers lose this ability. ~AH1^(TCU) 23:29, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Why is there not a word "firmen"?

There is harden, straighten, tighten...Why not "firmen", to make something firm?

I really need to use it in Scrabble.

Keepscases (talk) 17:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Bit of a guess here, but "hard" "straight" and "tight" are all from Old English, "firm" is from French. The "en" suffix is Old English in origin, so may not "want" to associate with a foreign word. BTW, there is "firman" - a decree, which is handy in Scrabble. DuncanHill (talk) 17:39, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

That is correct. Straighten, harden, tighten all entered the language when Old English and Old French were still somewhat separate languages. "Harden" entered the language about 1200CE, but the other two were later. "Tighten" entered in 1727CE. In general, Germanic and Latinate roots tend to use their respective affixes. See List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English. - Andrew Keenan Richardson 05:46, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, good to know, but I don't have an A  :) Keepscases (talk) 17:45, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

That and your opponent would be quite annoyed with you for waiting 20 minutes for an answer from us. Googlemeister (talk) 18:28, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

The word "firm" (wikt:firm) is also a verb (without a suffix added) like "narrow" and "yellow". -- Wavelength (talk) 19:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

A better comparison is to the word "warm". -- Wavelength (talk) 20:03, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 20:44, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

"Affirm" also means, in one sense, "to make firm", no? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

There's the word hymen which ends in en as well. --TylerDurdenn (talk) 21:31, 4 June 2010 (UTC)