Part of the reason this myth persists is that bilingual children sometimes switch back and forth between languages (“bilingual code-switching”). The truth is, b ilingual kids have two language systems represented in their minds from the very beginning of the time they can speak, and possibly even earlier than that. This myth lives on today despite having been debunked by research of the past few decades. Decades ago, researchers (mistakenly) thought that bilingual children under the age of three years have one language system in their minds too, composed of a hodgepodge of bits and pieces of two languages jumbled together at random. Monolingual people have one language system represented in their minds.
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