Learning two (or more) languages in early childhood, your questions answered!
Raising children in a bilingual home, parents often have questions around bilingualism such as: Will two languages confuse my child? Why is my toddler using words from both languages in the same sentence? Research supports that from infancy, bilingual infants begin to distinguish two separate languages by the language’s acoustic features without confusion. Bilingual infants have the capability to attend to perceptual language features between the two languages such as differences in rhythm, tone, and prosody. Mixing two languages in the same sentence: Oftentimes, code switching can be mistaken for confusion in young bilingual children. Code switching is when children mix or “borrow” words from two languages in the same sentence or utterance. Research supports that code switching is a component