There is a common belief that if children are exposed to more than one language during early childhood, their language skills will suffer. They might have difficulty in recalling words needed in a particular language conversation, for example. A kind of language contamination is believed to occur affecting mastery of any language.
Researchers at Dartmouth College, USA, studied childen who were exposed to different combinations of languages from early childhood. They found that the children “grow as if there were two mono-linguals housed in one brain.” This apparently means that the cbildren master both languages as if these were their primary languages.
The researchers looked at 15 bilingual children exposed to two languages from varying ages. There were four groups depending on when intensive exposure to the second language began: at birth, between the ages of two to three, four to six years, and seven to nine years. The children spoke various combinations of languages, including Spanish and French, French and English, Russian and French and sign language and French.
