Does Learning two Languages Confuse Children?

Unfortunately, many people think that there is only room enough in a child’s brain for one language. However, if we look around at other countries, we can easily see that in many places, children grow up learning two, three, and sometimes more languages without any cost to their educational development. For example, in Switzerland, the home language may be French, Swiss-German, Italian, or Romansh, but most children learn one additional language very early, and by the time they graduate from secondary school, the majority of students are trilingual. Another good example is India.

Contrary to the idea that two languages confuse people, there is evidence that well-developed bilingualism actually enhances one’s “cognitive flexibility” — that is, bilingual people (including children) are better able to see things from two or more perspectives and to understand how other people think. (Hakuta, 1986). Bilinguals also have better auditory language skills (i.e., they can discriminate sounds of a language more finely) than monolinguals, and they mature earlier than monolinguals in terms of linguistic abstraction (i.e., ability to think and talk about language). (Albert and Obler, 1978, cited in Cummins, 1994).

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