Development of language as a baby.

>>8544021

Isn't this an everyday thing?

Yeah those babies grow up bilingual.
Accent has more to do with peers though.

>>8544021
>but both possess the knowledge to understand each other's language
They would end up talking either in a common language, or in an interlingue made up of Spanish and Mandarin. It's extremely difficult to switch languages on the go.

The baby would pick up the language most spoken, and then learn the other the "normal" way.
His accent would be the one of the main language he heard.

>>8544021
In my experience, you learn both but choose one to talk in.

>>8544034
>I know nothing about linguistics, but let me spout random bullshit about language acquisition in this thread

>Would the baby learn both languages?
Without factoring in chaotic and random shit we can't possibly know, you could say that the baby would learn both languages just as well. He probably would use whichever he notices is the one people actually use in their daily lives where he lives. Assuming he only has contact with his parents, he would most likely answer each in their own language once he started talking.

>What would the accent be like when learning English at a later age?
Probably a mix of both, since both languages are native to him, but that's supposing he is a prisoner in a basement that only talks to his parents, and that both languages are shown to him at equal complexities and frequency. Your example is just too fucking far-fetched to build practical implication on.

>>8544034
>It's extremely difficult to switch languages on the go.
Not when you're bilingual. What does happen though is that bilingual people tend to forget words they don't often use (you'll only use each language under certain contexts so large portions of each dictionary will go unused). As a result people when speaking to other bilingual people and needing a word they can't remember it's common and easy to instead use a word (possibly some modified/mangled variant) from the other language.

It's also not uncommon to borrow words from the other language simply because they don't exist in the one you're currently using.

>>8544021
Such children tend to be bilingual, nothing unusual here. Another scenario is when both parents speak one language and the family lives in a country speaking a different language. Children easily speak and switch easily between both. I know, I have been there.

It gets more interesting when parents speak separate languages and live in a country with a third language. Some children become trilingual but often children will not accept the situation and will then speak only one or two, not all three. They will however understand all three.

>>8544021
This happened to me growing up, and I learned both languages.

>>8545975
So I'm not going crazy! I sometimes find myself forgetting some mundane word in one language while remembering it in 3 others I know. That's so annoying.

>>8544021
people say it's harder to learn another language as you get older. i'm starting to learn russian and while it's hard i'm picking it up better than i thought

>>8547683
Puberty seems to be the transition. Before that you just soak up languages but you also forget them quickly. Apparently I have spoken Spanish and Swedish but cannot do that today.
After, you have to learn languages analytically, but then again you do not forget that easily. I learned Japanese when I was 30, reasonably well, and 10 years later I could travel the country alone with only a few mishaps.

>>8544021
lived in a spanish/english speaking family, at 4 years i said fuck spanish and became proficient in english, now i can barely communicate with spanish speaking people