| Bicultural children hear (and speak) two different languages during language acquisition. This results in reduced input in each of the languages. Furthermore, the world’s languages differ in many ways. Simple illustrative examples are the following. Languages differ in how many consonants (sounds) they use to form words: There are languages that get by with 6 consonants (Rokotas) while others use 122 different consonants (!Xóõ). The amount of information in a word also differs: Languages like German or English combine 2-3 different pieces of information in one word (person, tense, number) while languages like Chintang mark 7 more pieces of information in addition to these 3 (e.g., clusivity, mood, aspect, polarity). For intercultural children, learning two languages might not be equally easy with every language combination. |
