It is interesting to hear about how you do it in Texas. Over here, games are not translated into our language, danish, so children often know their first english words at age 4-5, and continue to learn english as they grow up. When they reach the age of 10, they start learning english in school, and at age 12, they start learning their third language. At age 16 or 17 they start learning their fourth language, if they reach high school level.
Typically, danish children learn office software and teenage games first. We do not have censorship on games, and there are many children down to 10-12 years playing shoot-'em-up games at internet cafés in town. They are incredibly fast thinking, so they can often easily win over the 15-year old kids, to their big annoyance.
The market is not big enough for big amounts of good quality, danish language childrens software. Even Corel Draw only exists in danish in some versions, and NT Terminal Server and most Microsoft Games do not exist in danish versions. We are only 5.5 million.
One of my nephiews was born 1990, and before he started in school, he could start a DOS computer and use Quattro Pro/DOS (UK version) for simple calculations. I was quite amazed at that time, but later found out, that many children use Word, Publisher, scanners etc. But they use adult software.
Since our children use adult software, and normally don't install software, Linux is an alternative for children over here. |
