You're talking my language.

25. The classic example of a child being exposed to many languages at once is the actor-comedian Peter Ustinov, who learned English, Russian, German, French and possibly Spanish and Italian, as a small child, because each of the adults in his extended household exclusively spoke a different language at home, specifically to teach him. As an adult he said his reaction as a child was (understandably) wondering why he didn't have his own language.

24. There is, of course, a limit to the number of languages a small child can learn in that each of the different language speakers must have immediate access to the child all the time, and that those people must all understand most if not all of the other languages, so the child has some kind of on-going referent to the babel, as the adults react to each other. ( Read more... )