Some families are obliged in a way or another to expose their children to more than one language due to the diversity of the parent’s mother tongue of the community they live in. Sometimes those children do not have a one native language and can be called bi-lingual or sometimes tri-lingual. Do you think this will influence their abilities in having one language at the early ages (1-6 years age)?
I think kids get confused specially in the first two years of their lives.
In general, multilingualism is considered an asset. Think of learning English as a language of wider communication. In Europe, knowledge of French, German, Italian or Spanish in addition to English definitely enhance the chances of individuals from smaller countries to find better jobs. As a personal opinion, multilingualism is a means of understanding and accepting others and thus to avoid conflicts.
I think it's helping the babies to do new brain connections and thus enhance the whole of their abilities. It's not about if they understand or not. New sounds provoke new brain connections. It's so definitively helping I think babies in primary schools should be exposed to as many languages as possible.
If the kids parents are from different diverse socities then they have to have learn 2-3 languages at the same time, otherwise kids should not be forced to learn multiple languages.
They say you are as rich as many languages you speak. And it is quite easy to learn languages at young age. And if parents have different mother languages it is fair to them that the child is exposed to both, not only languages, but also cultures.
yes, exposure to more than language in one's earliest years is excellent not only for the learning of the language but also for stimulating the brain. i speak from experience, having learned english and german simultaneously.
and did Noam Chomsky not maintain that syntactic knowledge is at least partially inborn?
the world is full of so much of interest, languages as expression of cultures are so rich and broadening of one's outlook - why not start early?
There is a lot of research on early bilingualism. Such as this summmary - Article Bilingualism in the Early Years: What the Science Says
Many factors may play both positive and negative roles, therefore the answers must be case-based.
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