d’Armond Speers isn’t really a huge Star Trek fan. The reason he spoke only in Klingon during his son’s first three years of life was to learn about the language acquisition process. Yeah, sure. What a petaQ.
Yes, I think That Speers is such a horrid person that I had to learn how to say so in Klingon from our intern Don. It just baffles me that Speers actually sounds genuinely proud of his personal pseudo-academic project:
I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language. He was definitely starting to learn it.”
It’s great that he wanted to see how languages are picked up, but did he not think that there’s potential that he hindered his son’s social development by keeping focus away from a real language? I’m all for teaching foreign languages early on, but lets make it ones that are spoken on this planet, please. [Citypages viaGeekologie]
Photo by Star Wars Blog, probably not d’Armond Speers.
productred
November 19, 2009 at 4:59 PM
From the country I come from, kids learn at least 3 languages at the same time. The local dialect, the national language and English. This is at least from birth to 5 years old.
Report PermalinkSam Brady
November 20, 2009 at 1:12 AM
This man did not teach him Klingon in addition to English. He only spoke Klingon at home and hence played a useless and confusing in developing the child’s language skills.
Report PermalinkAlan Anderson
November 23, 2009 at 6:24 AM
Sam, you’re wrong. It was only the father who spoke Klingon. Everyone else the kid interacted with spoke English. This sort of native bilingualism is unfortunately rare in the US, but it happens all the time in many cultures.
Report Permalinkpan.sapiens
November 19, 2009 at 6:17 PM
As a research student in a language-related area, I am constantly reading about how we don’t know X, Y or Z becuase the obvious experiments rearing children in ways like this are so clearly and deeply unethical. E.g. we know LOTS about visual development from depriving cats of different types of early visual experience, but cats don’t talk, so when it comes to language we are out of luck. We would all secretly love to be able to toss ethics aside and sacrifice just a few children to the greater good, though ;p.
Report PermalinkOwen
November 19, 2009 at 6:57 PM
Klingon is a real language you petaq!! Cayliss would be rolling in his grave right now if he heard you say that
Report PermalinkTravis New
November 19, 2009 at 7:33 PM
Well when we/he finally meets some Klingon’s we got our selves a ambassador haha
Report PermalinkBill Chapman
November 20, 2009 at 12:16 AM
Why Klingon? I’ve met a number of native speakers of Esperanto, who acquired the language with little difficulty.
Report PermalinkAlan Anderson
November 23, 2009 at 6:27 AM
Why Klingon instead of Esperanto? Perhaps because Dr. Speers does not speak Esperanto. And because the point of the effort was to see how well his son would learn a constructed language that was not intended to be similar to any natural language.
Report PermalinkMichael Brine
November 20, 2009 at 9:25 AM
Actually Klingon is considered an official spoken and written language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon#Language
Report PermalinkAJ Lazaro
November 20, 2009 at 2:43 PM
I lol’d
Report PermalinkCarol
November 22, 2009 at 11:31 AM
I have an advantage over Rosa Golijan: I know Dr. Speers, his wife, and his son. They all speak English. The son was never spoken to “only” in Klingon when a toddler. A misplaced modifier can raise pseudo-ethical questions when one doesn’t know the facts, nor English grammar well enough, nor possess the intellectual curiousity to ask for an interview or fact check before offering up condemnations.
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