Babies prefer native tongue
"Children as young as 5 months old exhibit preferences for their family's unaccented native language, researchers reported this week, suggesting that speech makes a powerful first impression even very early in life."
"Babies want to interact with somebody who speaks the language they are familiar with, even though the babies themselves don't speak yet," said Katherine Kinzler, an author of the paper being published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Full article at:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/health/chi-babytalk_17jul17,0,5167306.story
There is a tradition of purposeful bilingual families. One method is to use the minority language at home all the time. After all, the rest of the immediate world will push the majority language on them.
http://www.nethelp.no/cindy/fut.html (main link: http://www.nethelp.no/cindy/biling-fam.html)
The other unfortunate lesson is that xenophobia starts young. And some never get over their animal nature.
