Now you know why I use the word "yo" so often. There are five dialects of Thai: - gutter thai (what you speak on the street) - familiar thai (what you speak amongst friends) - conversational thai (what you speak amongst equals) - royal thai (what you speak when discussing official government business) - Holy thai (what the Monks speak to each other) English officially has one register. Much like English has only one gender, it provides for a lot of confusion and presents a real challenge to mastery. My daughter is currently in a daycare that uses a lot of spanish - and as a consequence, she has a smaller English vocabulary than a lot of her peers. She's also more likely to ask for more milk by saying "Mas?" I speak one language well and maybe two I can muddle through enough to embarrass myself. I think - and this is an educated guess - that a foreign vocabulary takes up the same space as a native vocabulary and that if you hold everything else equal, I'll know more words in my one language than you will in that same language for the simple fact that you have another language taking up space.
Thus one of my favorite aspects of Tolkien's writing -- the point has correctly been made that the English in which he wrote covered at least three such registers, probably more. A conscious decision to write the Hobbit in a 'low' dialect, the trilogy at a happy medium, and the Silmarillion among others in the classic high fantasy manner.English officially has one register.
Is human memory analogous to a hard drive, though? In regards to long-term memory, I don't believe we really have a limited amount of 'space' that we can fill up (short-term memory could be a different thing entirely). Everything I've read lately has suggested that memory has less to do with individual cells holding data, and more with memory being a process that arises from the interactions between cells. With this in mind, I think how many words you can "store" has more to do with the techniques you use to memorize them than how much of your total memory has been used up. Of course, all things equal, if you're putting the same amount of resources into memorizing two different languages then I'd assume you'd know less of each. However, I don't think this is as much due to an inherent limitation of the brain as it is due to a limitation of time and resources.I think - and this is an educated guess - that a foreign vocabulary takes up the same space as a native vocabulary and that if you hold everything else equal, I'll know more words in my one language than you will in that same language for the simple fact that you have another language taking up space.
Misses the point. So let's say Bob and Sue each spend sixteen hours a day in conversational English. They're exactly as intelligent and exactly as apt as each other. If you test them, you'll get the same scores. Now let's switch Sue to French for two hours a day. Same amount of effort, all else held equal. Bob is going to get fourteen more hours a week speaking English than Sue is. Sue is going to know a lot more French than Bob - but Bob will have an advantage. Obviously, there's a lot of variables here. Obviously, education isn't linear. If Bob and Sue are graduate students, you likely won't see a difference - but if Bob and Sue are toddlers, you will. If your vocabulary is in the tens of thousands of words, the expansion is going to be barely visible. If your vocabulary is in the hundreds of words, however, it makes a difference. Never mind the spinning platters - the bus has limited bandwidth.Is human memory analogous to a hard drive, though?
It sounds like you agree with the second part of my comment:Of course, all things equal, if you're putting the same amount of resources into memorizing two different languages then I'd assume you'd know less of each. However, I don't think this is as much due to an inherent limitation of the brain as it is due to a limitation of time and resources.
Depends, I think. Knowledge of another language could give one the ability to think more creatively in one's own language (speculating, as my novice appreciation for German and Spanish doesn't at all qualify me on this topic). It seems to me that diversity of words one knows is complementary to the ways in which the words are used. I would like to think that if I could master another language, I'd be able to apply some of the concepts that are currently foreign to me to English.
I think we've descended out of the fuzzy world of supposition and into the nasty empirical land of testable theories. I'm not going to pretend I have any more insight into this than what I've already typed - but I will say that my pediatrician mentioned that bilingual babies generally have smaller vocabularies in both languages and start talking later, but that these setbacks are offset quickly by other gains. A brief perusal of the web seems to bear out his arguments.
I've read that, as well. Do you plan to have your daughter continue to learn Spanish? One of my regrets is quitting German lessons when I was a kid, much to my father's protest. If/when I have a child, I think the things I'll be that parent about are music, sports and learning a second language (my dad, in retrospect, was way too forgiving). Of course, with the proliferation of immersion schools, I think the language thing is comparatively easier now than it was in the 80s.
Don't forget that child-rearing books in the 1980's advised against bilingualism or multilingualism, as language acquisition was not as well understood. What people could see was that bilingual kids took longer to speak and that they'd often respond in the other language, as they hadn't yet figured out when it was appropriate to do so.
We aren't actively teaching her Spanish. We're having her spend her days at a daycare in Venice where the two main workers speak to each other in Spanish and much of the discussion is in Spanish. As such, certain words she knows in English and certain words she knows in Spanish. For example, we've been trying to get her to say "all done" for six months now and her rendition is "rearrgh." Last night, however, she turned down milk by saying "no mas."
My educated guess is different from yours. English is my second language and I dare say I'm good at it. Over the years, I grew up slowly and steadily learning English, reading articles and English websites on a daily basis since what you guys call middle school. I don't think I would have made the same amount of progress in Dutch if I never learned English. Granted, I'm never winning awards for my writing in my native language, but I don't think it takes up the same space, just a bit of the space. I find this a really interesting topic. English is so ingrained in my language that I often prefer to explain something using English words. It is really common for me to throw English words into conversations with my friends. Sometimes I know the English word or expression and not the Dutch one, which is really weird.I think - and this is an educated guess - that a foreign vocabulary takes up the same space as a native vocabulary and that if you hold everything else equal, I'll know more words in my one language than you will in that same language for the simple fact that you have another language taking up space.