{"id":2306,"date":"2021-02-12T09:03:49","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T08:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/blog\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/"},"modified":"2024-01-23T12:25:16","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T11:25:16","slug":"child-bilingualism-pros-cons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/","title":{"rendered":"Pros and Cons of bilingualism in kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is bilingualism in children a hot topic at the moment? Oh absolutely, but it\u2019s by no means a new concept in the history of the world, Italy included.<\/p>\n<p>Up until a few decades ago, <strong>almost all Italian citizens were bilingual<\/strong>. In fact, Italian was an \u2018extra\u2019 language taught at school in addition to the <strong>regional dialect <\/strong>children spoke at home.<\/p>\n<p>Today, the situation is not all that different. <strong>Generations of bilingual children are growing up in Italy<\/strong> and \u2018adding\u2019 Italian to their mother tongues, which sometimes originate from places very far away from Italy.<\/p>\n<p>These children have non-Italian parents but were born or raised in Italy from early childhood, making them<strong> \u2018early bilinguals\u2019<\/strong> and allowing their minds to work completely differently to those of other people who speak two or more languages.<\/p>\n<h2>How does the brain of a bilingual child work?<\/h2>\n<p>When we talk about <strong>early simultaneous bilingualism<\/strong>, we\u2019re referring to<strong> children who learn two languages simultaneously<\/strong>, using them with the same frequency and with the same level of skill.<\/p>\n<p>When we talk about<strong> successive bilingualism<\/strong>, we\u2019re referring to people who grew up with one mother tongue and then learned a second language at a later date.<\/p>\n<p>When children grow up as<strong> early simultaneous bilinguals,<\/strong> they use both sides of their brains to develop two different learning and usage strategies: one for each of the languages to which they are exposed.<\/p>\n<p>This essentially means that <strong>s<\/strong><strong>imultaneous bilinguals do not translate<\/strong> from one language to another, but are simply just able to speak both.<\/p>\n<p>If two languages are <strong>learned successively<\/strong>, however, children (and adults) tend to use the structures of their mother tongue to learn how to speak their second language, thus limiting themselves to the use of the <strong>left side <\/strong>of their brain, which helps them to create a series of<strong> matches<\/strong> between words in their mother tongue and their second language.<\/p>\n<h2>The advantages and disadvantages of being a bilingual child<\/h2>\n<p>Simultaneous bilingual children don\u2019t have to make the same leap that adults do when learning a second language, i.e., performing mechanical translation from one language to another.<\/p>\n<p><strong>As such, simultaneous and early bilingual children<\/strong> have a huge <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/interpreting\/\">advantage when it comes to interpreting<\/a>. They don\u2019t have to make the same mental effort required when switching from one language to another as they\u2019ve mastered both languages as mother tongues. What\u2019s more, they\u2019re able to effortlessly and immediately translate complex sentence structures.<\/p>\n<p>The disadvantages of being bilingual only really relate to successive bilinguals. It\u2019s not uncommon for the<strong> skills developed in a second language<\/strong> to be<strong> much weaker<\/strong> than those developed in a mother tongue. Mother tongues also tend to <strong>infere <\/strong>in the construction of sentences in <strong>second languages. Successive bilinguals <\/strong>tend to restrict themselves to \u2018copying\u2019 sentences from their mother tongue, without fully respecting the structures and syntactics of their second language.<\/p>\n<h2><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is bilingualism in children a hot topic at the moment? Oh absolutely, but it\u2019s by no means a new concept in the history of the world, Italy included. Up until a few decades ago, almost all Italian citizens were bilingual. In fact, Italian was an \u2018extra\u2019 language taught at school in addition to the regional dialect children spoke at home. Today, the situation is not all that different. Generations of bilingual children are growing up in Italy and \u2018adding\u2019 Italian to their mother tongues, which&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":828,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Child bilingualism: pros and cons | Eurotrad<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Bilingual children are often considered very lucky: but what are the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism, both simultaneous and consecutive?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Child bilingualism: pros and cons | Eurotrad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bilingual children are often considered very lucky: but what are the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism, both simultaneous and consecutive?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Eurotrad: Agenzia di Traduzioni\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-02-12T08:03:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-01-23T11:25:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Redazione Eurotrad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Redazione Eurotrad\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":[\"Article\",\"BlogPosting\"],\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Redazione Eurotrad\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/4bf8140ef38680af40179d65fae3d143\"},\"headline\":\"Pros and Cons of bilingualism in kids\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-02-12T08:03:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-01-23T11:25:16+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/\"},\"wordCount\":490,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Curiosities\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/\",\"name\":\"Child bilingualism: pros and cons | Eurotrad\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-02-12T08:03:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-01-23T11:25:16+00:00\",\"description\":\"Bilingual children are often considered very lucky: but what are the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism, both simultaneous and consecutive?\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg\",\"width\":900,\"height\":600},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Magazine\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"Curiosities\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/curiosities\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":4,\"name\":\"Pros and Cons of bilingualism in kids\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/\",\"name\":\"Eurotrad\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#organization\",\"name\":\"EUROTRAD SRL\",\"alternateName\":\"Eurotrad\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/eurotrad-logo-2024.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/eurotrad-logo-2024.png\",\"width\":500,\"height\":106,\"caption\":\"EUROTRAD SRL\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/eurotrad-interpreti-e-traduttori-snc\/\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/4bf8140ef38680af40179d65fae3d143\",\"name\":\"Redazione Eurotrad\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7f137db53a67f2d79ce99bd128d906d1?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7f137db53a67f2d79ce99bd128d906d1?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Redazione Eurotrad\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Child bilingualism: pros and cons | Eurotrad","description":"Bilingual children are often considered very lucky: but what are the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism, both simultaneous and consecutive?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Child bilingualism: pros and cons | Eurotrad","og_description":"Bilingual children are often considered very lucky: but what are the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism, both simultaneous and consecutive?","og_url":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/","og_site_name":"Eurotrad: Agenzia di Traduzioni","article_published_time":"2021-02-12T08:03:49+00:00","article_modified_time":"2024-01-23T11:25:16+00:00","og_image":[{"width":900,"height":600,"url":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Redazione Eurotrad","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Redazione Eurotrad","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":["Article","BlogPosting"],"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/"},"author":{"name":"Redazione Eurotrad","@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/4bf8140ef38680af40179d65fae3d143"},"headline":"Pros and Cons of bilingualism in kids","datePublished":"2021-02-12T08:03:49+00:00","dateModified":"2024-01-23T11:25:16+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/"},"wordCount":490,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg","articleSection":["Curiosities"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/","url":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/","name":"Child bilingualism: pros and cons | Eurotrad","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg","datePublished":"2021-02-12T08:03:49+00:00","dateModified":"2024-01-23T11:25:16+00:00","description":"Bilingual children are often considered very lucky: but what are the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism, both simultaneous and consecutive?","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/PWC_Eurotrad_Bilinguismo-infantile_interna.jpg","width":900,"height":600},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/child-bilingualism-pros-cons\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Magazine","item":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Curiosities","item":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/curiosities\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"Pros and Cons of bilingualism in kids"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/","name":"Eurotrad","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#organization","name":"EUROTRAD SRL","alternateName":"Eurotrad","url":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/eurotrad-logo-2024.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/eurotrad-logo-2024.png","width":500,"height":106,"caption":"EUROTRAD SRL"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/eurotrad-interpreti-e-traduttori-snc\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/4bf8140ef38680af40179d65fae3d143","name":"Redazione Eurotrad","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7f137db53a67f2d79ce99bd128d906d1?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7f137db53a67f2d79ce99bd128d906d1?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Redazione Eurotrad"}}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6170,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306\/revisions\/6170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}