Saturday, August 13, 2011

Multilingual skills finding favor in US homes

Our country is one of the few where most people only speak one language, these parents are changing that. Their children will benefit. - - Donna Poisl

PARENTS ARE ENCOURAGING BROADER FLUENCY FOR KIDS

by WILFREDO LEE

MIAMI - One-year-old Alice Di Giovanni asks for "banane," not banana, when she's in the mood for one. She'll bid you farewell with a "ciao." And if she wants more, she says "mas."

The Miami toddler is one of an increasing number of Americans living in homes where a language other than English is spoken, and her parents want her to learn as many languages as she can. So her Polish-Canadian mother speaks to her in French, her father in Italian and her Honduran nanny in Spanish.

"She kind of mixes these things, but I know she understands all three languages," says mom Anna Manikowska.
Click on the headline above to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.

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