It is amazing that at the age of two most children can say about a 100 words, but about six months later their capacity to speak not only doubles but triples to a vocabulary of 300 words. My godchild, Hannah, just turned two this month, and speaks English fluently, along with bits and pieces of three other languages. Let me explain. Hannah watches two shows that contribute to her knowledge of language: Dora the Explorer (Spanish) and Ni Hao Kai-Lan (Mandarin), and her grandparents who speak Malayalam- this leaves Hannah speaking a mix of languages- everything jumbled up. For instance, the other day she said: “help me, help me, ayudame (‘help me’ in Spanish)”, to which her grandparents had no idea how to help her from ayudame. Hannah knows how to count in four different languages up to ten, and speaks them interchangeably.
Another example I recall of a child switching languages in conversation is of my cousin Cynthia, when she was four. Cynthia and all of our cousins were (in English) joking around when my grandmother, who only speaks our native language Malayalam, interjects with a comment. Cynthia responded to her in Malayalam and then resumed speaking to us in English.
What is striking to me in both situations is how Hannah mumbles and jumbles her languages, but Cynthia differentiates between the two. Which brings me to the question: when do kids who speak more than one language understand when they are speaking a different language?
After consulting various sources including my mother who says “the child just knows”. I have come to the conclusion that I child recognizes the syllables’ of the language or the grammatical tones. My theory is based of the data shown in the YouTube film the linguistics genius of babies by Patricia Kuhl
I feel as if Children probably understand the tones that others are using with whichever language they are speaking, and likewise reciprocate the sounds they hear with the language they know. Although it is possible, since tone differentiation happens at such a young age, for us to assume that children can naturally distinguish the difference between languages and choose which language they can communicate (depending on their knowledge of the language). But then you might wonder why Hannah says “ayudame” when we were speaking English? There are three reasons I come up with in regards to this. Either the grammatical tones are similar between the two languages (English and Spanish), Hannah is imitating what she has witnessed (in this case on Dora The Explorer) or she has no other way to convey/express what she is feeling and reverts back to the language she feels comfortable to express this idea.
Overall, the idea of language is complex, and many theories may never fully be developed because of the lack of substantial evidence.
