It’s never too early to learn a second language. Being able to converse in a number of languages is a usseful skill. We Malaysians, for the most part, are largely bilingual, perhaps passably trilingual. To ensure that our children continue to have this advantage, many second-generation parents employ all sorts of methods to start the kids on the multi-linguistic path: sending them to Grandma, hiring a foreign maid, packing them off to language centres and tuition classes are some of the usual ones.

It’s commonly known that children pick up languages much faster than aduls do. A baby has an astouding number of words in his vocabulary in the short two to fours years he spends listening and playing with his parents or primary caregivers. It is difficult for an adult or even a teenager to duplicate such results with equal ease or speed.

Research has shown that infants who play and interact with people who speak foreign languages may learn and develop better language skills. Children who learn to speak two languagest once sound like native in both tongues. And their learning moves at the same pace as kids who learn only a single language. The earlier a child is exposed to a second language, the better he will be at it. A child will not be confused by a second language or delayed in learning his primary language.

Studies have shown that infants can tell the difference between the phonetic units of all languages, including both foreign-and native-language sounds, at an ealy age. But between 6 and 12 months of age, this ability begins to decline. It’s now known, however, that social interaction with foreign speakers can help prevent the natural decline.

Experiments involving two groups of 9-month old America infants showed that the babies who had spent time with native Mandarin speakers were able to discriminate between two very similar Chinese phonetic sounds that so not occur in English. The group of babies who had spent time with English speakers (their mother tongue), were not able to distinguish any difference.

There is also an extra advantage besides added fluency: billingual children are better than single-language children in attention-switching. Because they are constantly switching attention between two languages, a side benefit of this ability is that they are better a areas of thinking or in activities that use this attention-switching skill.

Why Mandarin, specifically? Because it gives your child the ability to order food from hawkers, give directions to cab drivers, haggle over prices at the wet market or pasar malam, and know when a salesperson is ripping hime of. Seriously, though, Mandarin is a useful second language to have for an number of reasons, not least of which has to do with China’s grown; economic power.

So if you’re thinking of sending your child for Mandarin classes, our review of three centres for young children should serve as a good starting point.