But you are demonstrating the will to learn. THAT is the crux of the issue. If you say WGAS, why should I put more than the minimum into you? Take the $5 I gave you and show me what you do with it. If you are buying pencils, rulers and pens, I might decide that you are worth a further investment. OTOH, if all you do is spend it on Bubble Gum, I pissed away $5 and won't put forward more.

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One of my kids began life with a Cajun-French speaking nanny then transitioned to standard French k-8 French immersion schools. She is academically bilingual and after having spent a year of university study in Paris thinks in both languages. 30-40 years ago I was bilingual spanish/english. My spanish command is now at a pre-k level and it sucks. One of the things I hope to do post-retirement is go to a spanish immersion program in Costa Rica. Then maybe an Arabic immersion in Morocco. Both programs are well regarded by gov & industry for teaching execs enough language to function.

Execs, yes. When their highest ambition is to be a teenage mom, no

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Okay, I was once a teenager.

But I have never been pregnant. Nor do I have the intent or ability to become thus.

Obviously you achieved something in your life. I'm not opposed to giving kids the option. However, making it a necessity just because it is a good thing to have and the potential exists but the basic stuff is not present is throwing good money after bad.

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I'm with you on that -- I HATE the gov making anything a legal necessity -- it is anti-liberty, I'm just saying it worked well for my kid, whom we entered in immersion voluntarily. It was more than worth the taxes we paid.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that most of us here have a decent command of English.

I'm maybe a third fluent in Spanish - no way to accurately quantify it - I do know the Latinos I've worked with and hired tell me that my command of Spanish is much better than the average gringo patron (boss).

Yo quiero hablar Espnaol mas bien porque mas dinero para hombres que hablan a Espanol.

That and the expanding of the mind thingy.

Where are you getting this stuff? You've jumped off on puzzling tangents at every turn in this thread (unlike all the other threads).

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As Aklim said - you need full command of your first language to actually learn another. Half attempts dont work.

I speak multiple languages but to learn them I had to master my mother tongue and keep it in practice without which it would be impossible to get into the finer details of other languages which for me includes English.

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Really? How does that explain children who learn two languages simultaneously? Sure, there is the magic of the flexible mind of a child at work but I think very few of us have achieved perfection with our native tongue. Some bilingual people can't read or write either language. They were perfect in their mother tongue before they learned the second?

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

With children it's a developmental window that opens and closes in the first few years. The lucky little bastards learn languages organically.

For the rest of us, it's a long, hard slog to learn a 2nd language. I understand that it is easier to learn a third language (even if unrelated to the first two) if one has a command of the first two.

I expect it's related to the different ways that children and adults learn language, I dunno.

On this board, you can make that case. Look at the kids in HS.

Again, that is not a bad thing to accomplish. However, I can scrape by without further expansion of the mind with being able to do the 3Rs. Life without the 3Rs is going to be difficult.

Point is this. All of the ideas are good. However, before I go beyond the 3Rs, expand the mind, make more prospects for myself, etc, etc, I need to get the basics first. If I am not even willing to get my basics, why do you think extra expenditure to expand my mind when I am not willing to put forth the effort is a good expense? A lot of the kids in HS aren't even able to grasp what they should. As an example, I was doing math and physics in my 3rd and 4th year of HS that we did in my college freshman year.

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One swallow does not a spring make. Sure, there is a Mozart or Einstein out there. But to assume everyone is and trying to craft the that way is kinda silly as a way to spend money.

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To what end? If their job is "Would you like fries with that?", who cares? You can dispute that it is harder to learn later on. However, that is assuming a willing student in both cases. This is like grad school. People are willing to learn. Freshman year in college, I'm still looking for my next buzz and classes are somewhere when I am getting over my hangover.

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11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

When in kollege it was a tortured PITA to learn French. But along the way I found that it was fairly easy to understand and even speak a little Spanish and Italian, and even a little Portuguese as I continued my studies. They are all Romance languages and that helped a lot.

In a manner similar to what’s stated above I studied linguistics in both French and English for a year, each. I agree one can go further with linguistics and language once one has studied another language.

Since my kollege days, I never once used the foreign language skills I so painfully acquired. OTOH, I’ve published a few times so my training in English definitely brought dividends.

To learn a language just for the sake of it is torture. Worse, failing an opportunity to use it regurlarly, for most it will vanish like sand through a sieve. Personally, I’d rather learn another musical instrument rather than another language.

Damned if I can answer that question for you. "To what end" is a question everybody needs to ask himself of every choice and endeavor of life.