Why parents should expose their children to as many languages as possible

Vocabulary is a predictor of how well children do in school, and exposing them to more than one language expands their vocabulary. — Photos: 123rf.com

IN LOCAL context, a “banana” among Malaysian Chinese is often used in jest to describe a person who can speak English, but doesn’t know how to speak Mandarin, Cantonese or Hokkien. “Bananas” are Chinese on the outside, but “white”, or Western, on the inside.

And while there is yet a term for Malays who can speak English fluently but lack language skills in his or her own native language, it is now fairly common to see urban Malay children more comfortable speaking in English than Bahasa Malaysia.