second language acquisition in 2 1/2-year-old

From: Marc Adler (marc.adler_at_gmail.com)
Date: 11/05/04 

Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 05:27:18 GMT

My daughter is 2 1/2 years old and speaks only Japanese, as my wife and
I only speak Japanese at home and all my daughter's friends are children
of Japanese people living here in Hawaii.

We've just put our daughter in pre-school here (a regular, all-English
preschool), and were wondering how long it would take for her English to
reach the level of her Japanese.

Are there any statistics on this kind of thing? For reference, my
daughter speaks about as much as her other friends do - whole sentences,
questions, present and non-past tenses, etc. She can't count, and she
often gets mixed up in the middle of long sentences. There's also a lot
of things she says that only my wife and I, and some close friends who
have a lot of contact with her, can understand. (I don't know the
specific linguistic term to describe her level.)

Thanks,
Marc

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