On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 12:36 PM, Jim Grisanzio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Brian Behlendorf wrote: > > > If I had kids today, I'd try to get them enrolled in the Chinese immersion > schools here in San Francisco, or perhaps hire a Chinese tutor. How cool > would it have been, as a kid, to know a language your parents don't know, > but your friends do? That would have been awesome.
But Brian...almost all of us DID do that....I am sure you, too, spoke that invert-the-syllables, or shorten-the-last-syllable kind of language with your friends and cousins....the lingo that children pick up so easily, and speak very fast to one another so that the parents do not understand. It *was* fantastic, in a room full of grown-up relatives, to convey news, warnings and so on, and be sure that it was not comprehended by those aliens...I feel that this is common across all cultures. And when our child was young, we both learnt German, and it was fun communicating in a language that our daughter wouldn't understand,particularly stuff like "shall we buy her that toy now?" and "when does she have to go to the dentist?" Language is as much fun in avoiding communication as in communication itself. Deepa. > > >
