Is Baby Sign Language Helpful to Second Language Acquisition?
I am a high school Spanish teacher who is trying to do the one parent-one language method with my six month old son. I was wondering if baby sign language would hinder, help, or otherwise, Spanish language acquisition? Dear Jason, You can rest assured: teaching your child baby sign language will not hinder his Spanish-English bilingual development. In fact, it might help it. First of all, baby sign language is not like regular sign language in that it is incomplete. You are not signing to your child in full sentences, but you are only teaching him basic words that he may need to communicate, such as “hungry”, “thirsty”, “more”, “please”, and “thank you.” These signs are from the American Sign Language dictionary but they have no morphology attached to it – no affixes or inflections as found in ASL – so they are simple enough for a child to imitate. In addition, hand gestures are much easier for a baby to pick up than spoken words, which require precise tongue and lip movements, so chil
