Hei! 你好! !مرحبا: Language acquisition in a multilingual world

Last week Kate Crowe was a keynote speaker at the European Cochlear Implant Users Symposium in Helsinki. Details of the conference are here: http://www.euro-ciu2017.fi/en/
The title of her presentation was: Hei! 你好! !مرحبا: Language acquisition in a multilingual world
The link to her presentation is: here
Here is the abstract:

The growing diversity of D/deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) learners creates challenges for educators and clinicians. With close to 8,000 language spoken in the world and increasing levels of mobility, the linguistic diversity of DHH learners accessing education and therapy services has never been greater. This presentation will describe parental and professional perspectives on choices about communication mode and language use for DHH children. Current perspectives on multilingualism, focusing on spoken language multilingualism, will be described and related to DHH learners and their families, and the educators and clinicians who work with them. The available research describing the speech and language outcomes for DHH children living and learning in multilingual environments will also be summarized. The need for interdisciplinary collaboration for supporting, assessing, and monitoring the speech and language development of DHH multilingual learners will be discussed.

Papers were presented in either spoken Finnish, spoken English or Finnish Sign Language (there was also a short presentation in spoken Spanish). There was simultaneous interpreting into spoken Finnish, spoken English, Finnish Sign Language, with captioning in written Finnish and English!

Kate presenting her keynote speech

 Kate also met up with Sari Kunnari and Taina Välimaa at the University of Oulu.

Taina Välimaa, Sari Kunnari and Kate Crowe

A multilingual world

Over the past month I have visited Stockholm (Sweden), Reykjavik (Iceland), Helsinki (Finland), and stopped over in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) and Singapore. I am constantly amazed by the multilingual dexterity of the people I interact with in each country. The people I have talked with have switched to converse with me in English as soon as I have opened my mouth (and sometimes before I do). In contrast, I have only learned a few simple words:

• Swedish: hej (hello), tack (thank you)
• Icelandic: halló (hello), takk (thank you), Þetta reddast (she'll be right mate)
• Finnish: hei (hello), kiitos (thank you)

A sign in downtown Reykjavik

 Code switching is such a regular part of life for the Nordic countries. Children learn other Nordic languages in school, as well as English. For example, children in Iceland learn Danish and English. Children in Finland learn Swedish and English. Russian is also seen in the streets of Finland.

Herkullissia marjoja (the delicious berries) of Suomi (Finland)

It is said that one of the reasons these Nordic languages have survived and remained distinct was due to the translation of the Bible. For example, in Iceland, the New Testament was translated in 1540 and the entire Bible in 1584. The first Finnish translation was in 1548. I also learned about the importance of the translation of the Bible for the Irish people when I saw the Book of Kells earlier this year.

Helsingin tuomiokirkko, Suurkirkko in Helsinki