Lyka and Kylie were watching a local channel today that featured Dora the Explorer. Dora and her friends were singing in English as usual. But what made me double take was she spoke in conversational Tagalog right after singing. It made me think then about whether or not is it advisable to Tagalize these kinds of shows. Dora was a bilingual children show where she teaches kids to speak in English and Spanish. It would seem hard enough for children to learn both English and Spanish at the same time, why add a third language in the mix?

    Then I remembered a June 2006 article from Reader’s Digest where former Miss Universe Sushmita Sen’s daughter Renee was able to speak four fluent languages – Marathi, English, Bengali and Tamil. This came about not because Renee was doing intensive language lessons, but because Renee was spoken to by different people in different languages, from the time she wakes up till she sleeps. Mind, this was done eight years ago, when Renee was still very, very young. If a child could learn four languages at that age, might that mean that watching a Tagalized version of Dora be beneficial to my child?

    The answer is “no, not really.” My daughter Lyka likes watching the original English versions of Dora’s shows. She practically grew up with the Hispanic cartoon girl as her surrogate best friend. Now, Lyka speaks fluent English, understands Tagalog but barely speaks it, and she only knows a handful of Spanish words. The thing is, Lyka is mostly spoken to in English and Taglish (a mash-up of two languages). Also, though she watches TV, we rarely watch any Tagalog shows so she only gets to hear Tagalog spoken among adults.

    I guess, if you want a child to learn a new language, you have to have a native speaker, or at the very least, someone fluent enough in the language to take time and talk to the child in straight sentences. She may not understand anything, but eventually, she will soak it up and learn the language itself. The problem begins when you have no knowledge of the new language your child is learning and you might end up in a fix where you’re child id saying something to you that you can’t understand. Still, it would be fun! You could learn the new language together.

    Anyway, it really doesn’t matter if kids would watch a trilingual Dora the Explorer. Just don’t listen, if you can help it. Though the kids are learning from it, you might get a nose bleed.

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