I learnt two languages as a child because my parents felt it was important to be bilingual in a country with 11 official languages. I wish I’d learnt more. I did my honours in 2nd language acquisition (I work in educational materials development) to ensure that my books are usable. South African children learn…

Not at all. The muddle is to be expected when they are little but that’s just because they’ve absorbed the grammatical structures already and it’s now almost raw data as it were. If you can allow children the opportunity to be multilingual I think you’re doing them a great service and giving them countless…

Sorry Mandarin not Chinese duh! :)

But don’t they offer Spanish in US schools? There are many benefits to being bilingual, especially in the workplace. With globalisation even more so. Some private schools in South Africa are teaching Chinese. If you want to do business in the East you need to have it. Or at least enough to be respected in business…