I had a chance to quickly flip through People's Most Beeyotiful Man issue in the supermarket today, and, yum. Robert Pattinson aside, some really delicious choices. One of my favourite years to date, with bonus Jerry from Sliders in a Speedo.

In the shit I didn't say (twice) file:

No, I didn't tell you I would be gone next week because, if you had met your DEADLINE, it wouldn't be relevant.

Don't f*ck with my much-needed vacation, people!

it was the limited vocab + the fact that everyone else around the kid spoke English

From what I've read, you really want at least 20% or so of the kid's interactions to involve the second language if they're to pick it up properly.

Seeing your father and mother talk in English can't help either.

This one I don't think would matter much. Kids seem pretty good at learning context with language, and they pay far more attention to conversation directed to them than stuff between others. (Related point, CDs and DVDs are pretty useless for language development; they need direct interpersonal communication.)

Little kids can even learn second languages spoken by neither of their parents, as long as they get enough direct interaction in it.

OMG, I feel so gross. I should not have eaten that whole burger and fries. There were too many fries, but they were delicious! The burger was mediocre.

This one I don't think would matter much

But if only one person talks to you in boring language, and you know he doesn't have to, isn't it more likely to get you to rebel? Even if you're two?

One of my cousins grew up bilingual because half his daycare were his japanese grandparents who weren't comfortable in english. (The other half were his english speaking grandparents, my aunt and uncle.) My cousin and her ex didn't speak japanese at home, but it was enough.

He even had a different baby babble depending on which set of grandparents he was with. It was fascinating.

My little sister picked up a good bit of Italian from the neighbors she would play with.

At Christmas Mom told her to show our friend Joe what she'd learned and he blushed scarlet. Turns out it wasn't the sort of thing you'd expect from a three year old girl.

I had a teacher who spoke multiple languages, as did her spouse. If they wanted to talk as adults, they'd speak in something other than English. Unfortunately for them, they had smart kids who quickly picked the additional languages up from context. (Their eldest went on to a perfect SAT score. )

Yeah, my dad and his friends were never taught swedish, but learned enough to follow the adults' private conversation. He's lost most of it, though was surprised to find that he was unconsciously able to follow some swedish tourists' conversation one time. The minute he realized it and actively tried to follow, he couldn't. Weird.

But if only one person talks to you in boring language, and you know he doesn't have to, isn't it more likely to get you to rebel? Even if you're two?

Research suggests no. My feeling is, if you're two, how do you even work out he doesn't have to? It's not going to be the only way your dad treats you differently from everyone else.

There's a related thing here, it's common advice for parents raising a bilingual child that (assuming this is practical) each parent should speak to them exclusively in one language (so, for instance, I should speak to Ryan in English and Wallybee should speak to him in Chinese). The idea is for them to pick up that they're separate languages and learn them distinctly. However, while it makes sense, the research suggests it's unnecessary. Kids will experiment with mixing the languages anyway, and they will also work out the differences anyway.

We may still do something like that. It's an easy way for us to be sure we're giving him enough exposure in each language.