S. to speak English at school or work and another language at home. Children can also become bilingual if their parents speak more than one language to them, or if some other significant person in their life (such as a grandparent or caretaker) speaks to them consistently in another language. Sometimes a child wit[ grow up in a household in which each parent speaks a different language; in that case, the child may learn to speak to each parent in that parent's language. In short, a young child who is regularly exposed to two languages from an early age will most likely become a fluent native speaker of both languages. The exposure must involve interaction; a child growing up in an English-speaking household who is exposed to Spanish only through Spanish-language television won't become a Spanish-English bilingual, but a child who is regularly spoken to in both English and Spanish will. .
It is also possible to learn a second language sometime after early childhood, but the older you get, the harder it is to learn to speak a new language as well as a native speaker. Many linguists believe there is a 'critical period' (lasting roughly from birth until puberty) during which a child can easily acquire any language that he or she is regularly exposed to. Under this view, the structure of the brain changes at puberty, and after that it becomes harder to learn a new language. This means that it is much easier to learn a second language during childhood than as an adult. .
In some countries, nearly everybody is bilingual or multilingual. In parts of India, for example, a small child usually knows several languages. In many European countries, children are encouraged to learn a second language - typically English. In fact, the U.S. is quite unusual among the countries of the world in that many of its citizens speak only English, and they are rarely encouraged to become fluent in any other language.
