And that’s how my infantilization fetish made me a polyglot.
Linguists are still divided on this topic, called the “Critical Period” hypothesis - the question of whether there is a “Critical Period” during childhood when children naturally acquire language better than adults.
The data in favor cited in pop articles often comes from “feral children” like Genie, but as Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world mentioned, how much of this inability is due to natural brain development and how much is due to years of unimaginable trauma is hard to know.
Other research has cited brain plasticity differences and brain matter changes that occur during puberty that seems like it may be linked to language acquisition.
Again, however, the counterpoint of “It takes ten-ish years of pure immersion for children to learn a language, and how many adults actually do that” is pretty frequent.
I’m still undecided about what I think - maybe something in the middle, like “humans do lose some neuroplasticity during puberty that may inhibit language acquisition a bit, but adults acquiring native-like fluency is still possible with enough immersion”.
There was an old study showing that London taxi drivers develop enlarged hippocampi, the part of the brain used for navigation, to deal with the labyrinthian London streets. The growth continued over several years even in mature adults as they used those navigation and memorization abilities. I’d like to see a study of the brain of an adult prospective language learner over a long period to see if any similar plasticity exists for the brain’s language centers.
(I’ll admit I’m horribly biased. I was exceptional at picking up new languages as a teen, but let that knowledge decay into nothingness as an adult. I’d hate to have wasted such a useful talent.)
There is a pretty famous research paper called “Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life” by Werker and Tees that shows that infants are better at picking up subtleties of phonemes and they start focusing on the most heard language at around 9 to 12 months of age.
The paper is pretty old, published in 1984, but it was very influential at that time. Janet Werker has several other studies about language acquisition, so she might be a good name to start checking when you’re interested in that topic.
Language acquisition happens different in young children than in adults or older children. Linguists are not divided on this topic.
I think most immigrants I know have an accent when they speak my language, even if they have good grammar and vocabulary, and have been living here a long time.
My dad has been in the US far longer than his birth country of Japan, having moved in his 20s. His English is excellent in terms of vocabulary and grammar, but his accent is very strong. I, on the other hand, having been exposed to the language when young and living in Japan for just one year, have a much better Japanese accent than he does English but am far worse in all other aspects.
Hard disagree. I am not a linguist, but did study language acquisition a bit in the context of childhood development and unless the science on the topic has changed dramatically in the last decade, it seems pretty clear that there are physiological differences between child and adult brains that dramatically impacts language learning.
For example, there is a critical age period for being able to distinguish different sounds, something that if not learned during this period may be impossible to ever pick up. This age period is shockingly young; I don’t remember exactly but iirc it’s less than one year old.
The most well-known example is that in Japanese, R and L are the same letter (their R/L letter sounds like a cross between the two, with a bit of D thrown in). Thus Japanese people have difficulty distinguishing between R and L in English; I personally verified this with a bunch of my Japanese friends (including a number who spoke English very well) and they could not distinguish between “election” and “erection,” no matter how clearly I enunciated. However this is far from the only example out there; native English speakers similarly struggle differentiating various sounds in languages from countries like India and China that are clear as day to those speakers. This is not a matter of will or attention or even practice, it’s a brain issue.
Given this, I find it highly unlikely that there aren’t other elements of language learning that are harder (or even impossible) to properly learn outside the critical window.
This should be taken with a grain of salt, just as yours and op, but neuroplasticity makes arguments like yours shaky (well well well if this isn’t gonna turn out to be our old friend dialectics). If children just had a special environment, you’d find the physiological countepart. So unless it’s controlled for otherwise, you can’t make a one directional proof out of it
Random addition to your post…
There’s early/limited studies suggesting the drug valproate, which is used for bipolar and epilepsy sometimes, can re-open the perfect pitch acquisition capabilities of the human brain even if the individual is no longer an infant and has aged past the language acquisition stage of childhood development.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/
Different use of it in an 8 year old girl with language regression: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11230735/
This age period is shockingly young; I don’t remember exactly but iirc it’s less than one year old.
Anecdotally, that sounds hard to believe to me, because I moved from South Korea (which has the same sound ambiguity) to the US at the age of 11 and have no problem at all distinguishing between the two sounds. All of my Korean friends that I had back in middle school also had no issues, even though none of them were born in the US. On the contrary, I’ve been told at times that I speak Korean with an obvious western accent.
I think the age was around 9 months where some where the majority of neurons get discarded since they’re not useful and babies can use them to identify different lemurs for example.
I still think this is not the whole picture. People in their 60s learn languages faster than teenagers because they have more “surface area for knowledge to stick to” if you know where I’m going.
Not to take anything away from babies learning languages. They have to learn to use their tongue, vocal chords and identify sounds at the same time so them being able to use grammar at 2y with vocabulary is as insane feet. Babies also have dedicated regions of the brain for speech but then again, so do adults.
I feel the post makes a valid point. It’s harder for the baby to learn a language since they don’t know any. An adult in the same situation would most likely be faster because majority of the skills needed to speak a language are already there.
About the accuracy of sounds it’ll take some very careful training of the adult like people do with babies. On top of that, I wouldn’t underestimate the brain, over a long time such as a year of full immersion the brain is capable of picking up on a lot of things as long as the adult pays attention.
It really amazed me to learn that Spanish uses “b” and “v” somewhat interchangeably.
Personally, I find myself struggling with the difference between the g and ğ sounds, even after somebody with a native language that has both explained it to me.
It really amazed me to learn that Spanish uses “b” and “v” somewhat interchangeably.
I’m not sure that’s the same scenario, they just have very soft ‘b’ sounds that aren’t plosive like they are in English.
I don’t think native Spanish speakers can generally differentiate between them either except by context.
Barely related fun fact about DharmaCurious: there are dozens of videos of my family members holding me up to mirrors as a baby and saying “what’s that?” And me replying “that’s my erection!” Because I couldn’t distinguish l/r as a kid. I couldn’t do rs well in general. Took speech therapy classes
This is easily one of the most interesting comments I have run across on Lemmy. Got any other interesting bits of info for those of us who only speak one language?
but can’t adults learn a second language much faster than a child learns its first? I assume with dedication an adult can reach a fluency of a 10 year old in just a couple of years - where it took the child… …10 years.
You’d have to be somewhat intensely studying and immersing yourself for two years to speak like a native 10-year old.
I’m not saying if you moved to another country with good motivation to learn the language that it couldn’t be done, but I do think you would need to at least immerse yourself in an environment which has the language. Doing duolingo for a couple of years will not net someone the fluency of a native 10-year old.
My parents said I was already speaking when I was one. Not well, but I was. Much sooner than my siblings. So by the age of two-three I could’ve had some rudimentary conversations, had that language proficiency not been in the underdeveloped mind of my toddler-aged self. I think that’s more like the language skill you’d get with two years of not-super-intense studying.
I just did a Google- depending on language, student and other factors, between 600-2500 hours.
If I’m remembering correctly there is an age (younger) where we are more receptive to patterns in regards to LA, but we don’t differentiate the language received. “All” input in this stage is valid input that kid brain associates meaning to, which slowly gets weeded out (lost) if you don’t use it into adulthood. However, we are all generally speaking, on an even playing field developmentally as we age after that point in regards to learning a new language. Adults just tend to have less free time to devote to learning a new language as a young adult, etc.
That’s why no one learns French. Because if you try to speak French to a native they roll their eyes and start speaking English to you.
Zero appreciation of the efforts.
As I’ve been told, they* tend to be more polite to you if you make an attempt at least, considering it a gesture of respect for the country you’re in. They may roll their eyes at how bad an attempt it is, but it’s still a credit.
There is a similar phenomenon in Germany, where we may switch to English, not necessarily because we’re annoyed at your bad German, but simply because we consider it more efficient or courteous to engage with people in English. Maybe the French have similar reasons.
I’ve caught myself in that reflex too: I learned English from the start of primary school, consume a lot of English media, speak English with international colleagues and consider myself fairly fluent. If you struggle with German, I’ll be quick to offer using a language we’re both good at because it makes things easier for you. That’s not a lack of appreciation, it’s an offer of convenience.
On the other hand, if you wish to practice your German, I’m more than happy to help. I get the impression that many generally are willing to humour you, provided we have the time for it. If you’re ordering at a restaurant or asking for directions, odds are we’ll switch to English to speed things up. But if I have the time, I’ll gladly listen to your German and offer corrections and explanations.
*Possibly just a specific subset of localities or businesses; I can’t give a first-hand account nor obviously make a blanket statement about a country of ~68 million people (1.66 times the population of california, for comparison).
The stressful thing about speaking French in France is that the French’s attitude towards the French language is a lot like Brit’s attitude towards English. I’ve definitely found it way more difficult than speaking German in Germany, or Spanish in Spain.
Tangential funny story: My parents used to live in Germany, and my dad dropped the car off at a local garage for servicing and the guy there spoke way better English than my dad’s German, so they conversed in English. In the time that the car was in the shop, there was a football match between England and Germany that was a big deal, to the extent that when my dad picked up the car, the guy there pretended he could only speak German.
Germans tend to say ‘ah, our language is difficult but I think you mean to say…’ or ‘we pronounce it…’ the French on the other hand are far more likely to say ‘I don’t understand what you are saying at all’ or ‘it sounds disgusting when you speak’
My friend that’s French born but lived in the UK a decade went back and got the same treatment, the shop keeper literally ten minutes from where he was born did the whole pretending not to understand and acting superior thing - I’ve never known anyone in germany do that. Spain you might get scolded for not speaking the correct dialect especially in Catalan but it’s rare.
France is beautiful and the people can be wonderful but they have some weird issues too especially around language and identity.
no, fuck the fr*nch, they’re the worst. they’re all like “oh you vizeet a cunt-khe yueh shued mek zee effokht tueh speek zee longuage” meanwhile they can’t speak any other language in a comprehensible manner and when you make an effort they hate that their precious disgusting sounding language is slightly altered by someone who normally speaks an objectively better language that makes more sense.
meanwhile nearly everywhere else if you try to string up a sentence in their language or even use like short phrases for hello thanks and goodbye they’ll smile and look pleased you’re at least trying. in a lot of places people help you without question if you speak English and respond in English or try signing if they’re not fluent. being a decent human is not that hard.
and their food is overrated. not bad for europe i guess.
their only good contribution to the world was guillotines for the ruling class, and now they’re even fucking that up.
Yes because you’ve obviously met every single person in France and have been in every single region…
I learned French in France. French rudeness is overstated. In Paris, in high-stress situations, yeah, they don’t have time to listen to you stumble through a communication that could be completed in a fraction of the time with greater accuracy in English. But outside of Paris, or in more working class neighborhoods, in mom-and-pop shops, you can get all the practice you need. Stay away from Franprix, and go to the corner bodega, and you can strike up a friendly convo.
I also found that French people express appreciation by correcting you. They assume if you’re putting in the effort to learn, you want to know when you make a mistake, and how you should improve. Constant correction can be mildly discouraging to me, but once I learned to take it in the spirit it was delivered, my emotions stopped hindering my communications.
I have fairly severe social anxiety; when I went to France, the negative response to the French I was able to stutter out ensured I’d never try to speak French again. (I read it fairly well, because Candide was good enough to read ten times)
In high school, I had an assignment to go to a local Chinese restaurant and order in Chinese. The response to my “我要broccoli 牛肉” was so enthusiastic that I still do a set of Chinese flash cards everyday.
There has to be a motivating force for you to learn something. Whether that is social approval/encouragement, needing to be able to ask for certain things… Some people can be motivated by an intrinsic love of learning things, but for most I think this is confined to specific topics.
For language, I think you need a show that you want to watch, a space you can navigate by only using that language, something that gives you meaningful feedback and places to go that a grade simply doesn’t.
Same story here with Spanish. I was in South America for all of two weeks. But the smiles and help when I tried to use Spanish for anything more than beer and bathrooms keeps me going back to Duolingo.
I speak Spanish, I have a fairly basic level of fluency but don’t live there. People understand me and I can hold conversations but they call me gringo and they are not “nice” or welcoming about it.
I have very little attachments to where I’m from so that was the last straw for me. I don’t identify culturally with where I’m from anymore.
I had a similar positive experience in Spain and Morocco. Tangier is very close to Spain so most of the locals know Spanish.
I would always start conversations in Spanish. Most of the time the person I was talking to would appreciate my attempt and switch to English. In Tangier I talked to a street peddler for over 15 minutes while friends were in a store. I attempted to speak in Spanish but he preferred English. He just wanted to chat.