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The Languages in Hmong-English Bilingual Children
When a young child learns a language (e.g., Hmong) from birth, he/she receives a set of language inputs within a particular social and cultural context. The language input has a particular set of components. For example, a child, who is in an environment where a tonal language (such as Hmong) is spoken, receives the tonal signals which are used to distinguish meanings. (E.g., paj with a high falling tone means flower, while pam with a low tone means blanket ). When the child starts to learn a second language (e.g., English), he/she starts to receive another, different set of input signals in another social and cultural context. The child, then, needs to continue to learn the two languages within these two different contexts. We would like, first, to display the bigger picture of the two different languages (Hmong and English) within a Hmong-English bilingual child.
We, then, take a closer look at the specific components in White Hmong.
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The Languages: Hmong (L1) & English (L2) |