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11-30-2010, 12:16 AM
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New languages, particularly ones that differ a lot from L1, seem to particularly require new neural-connections, so that's why people seem to slow down with their learning as they age. You can see it somewhat with computer/tech-use and the older generations. They don't take to it as fluidly for some reason as children, even if given the same amount of exposure. Language differs in that learners tend to fully internalize knowledge before they can physically produce it as well; it's not like say, surfing, where you can just get the 'feel' for it before you understand the technicalities of what you're actually doing. And there's pretty strong evidence for a point of no return as well; children who are never exposed to language at all and reach pre-teen age pretty much never learn to speak with normal clarity or use grammar correctly. You get more broken word-strings of concepts; "girl chair cookie there want. girl fall. sad.", similar to certain aphasia's. If language learning was simply environmental, we wouldn't expect this to happen; they should still be able to learn, but sadly, it seems that there's some physical reason stopping them from absorbing language skills. So older people CAN learn a second language, because they have ~some~ of the pathways they need having learnt L1, but they'll struggle to be as fluent as quickly as younger people learning a second language. I guess one reason why this isn't more evident is that language teaching in schools is pretty artificial. 
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11-30-2010, 03:16 AM
Wow, thanks for that breakdown. What you're saying makes a lot of sense to me.
However, I have a question about this: "And there's pretty strong evidence for a point of no return as well; children who are never exposed to language at all and reach pre-teen age pretty much never learn to speak with normal clarity or use grammar correctly..." By this do you mean that it's a point of no return for an L2 or a point of no return for language aquisition alltogether (as in an L1 is never completely formed)? Edit: In my experience, course outlines state way more than what actually gets accomplished. In other words, the course may be designed to have all the students pass 2級 for the Japanese efficiency test, but it seemed like everyone was more suited for level 3. And they say you'll learn 500 words or 2000 words or whatever... when in actuality you are exposed to them. So unless you have a 100% rate of remembering what's taught to you, you will not know that many words. Besides, even if you "know" a word, you might not be familiar with most of its usages- and while most of those alternate usages might seem obvious to a native they can be quite challenging to a learner. I agree with Columbine's notion that most courses are very "artificial". That's a very good way of putting it. No matter how good something looks on paper it's not a guarantee that it will work in the real world. Japanese courses seem to be a great example of that in my opinion.
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11-30-2010, 03:29 AM
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But there's generally a point of no return for attaining native fluency in an L2 as well. You can get good, but not perfect. And eventually it will become pretty unrealistic to acquire it with any decent level as you age. An 80 year old is not going to be able to attain fluency in a totally foreign language no matter how hard he tries. Quote:
Regardless, if you get As in my alma mater's Japanese classes, after four years you will be conversant.
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11-30-2010, 07:24 AM
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1000 kanji by year 4 feels about right, 250 a year is a university pace I think.
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11-30-2010, 07:51 AM
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 . I will admit that my high school's Japanese program was a mess. The book was bad and the teachers were bad. Once I got to college, however, things were looking up, but the gaps between the levels were huge. I remember many people complaining about it and a very distinct reason given for this: second+ generation Japanese. It's almost like taking a course for native speakers (they pretty much are native... just without some cultural stuff). Getting A's in those courses would definitely make you fluent! Beign fluent to begin with was almost a prerequisite though (which is an interesting prerequisite when you'd think the course would go in some kind of linear stages). On the bright side, though, I think I got a lot more focused study on culture, which I am very thankful for. I had plenty of opportunities to interact with study abroad students (extracuricular activities included) and it was when I started doing that that I decided to just "immerse" myself, which was a concept given to me by my first college level Japanese teacher. I'll admit that I was completely ignorant of all things language-learning before I decided to study Japanese. So some of the most basic concepts really resonated with me when I first heard them in college. At any rate, that "Wild Child" thing your talking about is fascinating. I am going to do some studying on that. A lot of the research I've read seems to come from the 60's-80's (with the occasional early 90's material). That's just what I had access to in terms of books.. recently I've been trying to find stuf on the internet to make up for this deficit though. Can you show me some actual sources of these cases? This is the only one that I have found (after a very brief search of course): Oxana Malaya - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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11-30-2010, 09:03 AM
Columbine. but that age thing cancels out when person in question has already learnt 2nd or 3rd language, don't you think? anyone who knows 4 languages will pick up 5th very easily no matter the age - ok not in 80's but up to age of 60 should be fine.
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11-30-2010, 10:08 AM
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You have a set number of years within which to lay the basic neurological functions for language use. If in those years you apply L1, then you have some basic capacity to learn any other language; a set concrete block you can put other materials on top of, even if you've run out of concrete. If in those years you don't even learn L1 then you have no foundation to build up language skills after your window of opportunity has gone. Quote:
Obviously, experiments into language deprivation are rare and those that have been done are massively out-dated and massively fudged. A king supposedly experimented by having children raised by a mute, the result of which was that they miraculously spoke good hebrew (it being the first language told to Adam and Eve by God or something). So our main insights into it are from deafness cases, but i've never looked into them in depth. I probably have some hanging around though. Quote:
It also depends on their L1 and L2 language. If a person has learnt Korean and English, they will have relative ease picking up French and Japanese. If a person has learnt English and Spanish, they will likely have similar struggles to pick up Chinese and Taiwanese as anyone else, BUT better learning habits, unless they are especially gifted (eg, a savant) And even if the Korean/English speaker has ease picking up French/Japanese, they would likely still struggle somewhat with languages like Housa or Arabic. Compare this to the not uncommon situation of middle-class Indian children; they may speak FLUENTLY, their mother's village dialect, their father's village dialect, One or both of the two national languages (urdu or Hindi) and English before they hit their twenties, but after that they may not gain a 6th to quite the same degree. Someone starting to do the same feat aged 30 is likely to never outdo the child; the effect is -NOT- nullified, it is merely lessened.
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11-30-2010, 02:58 PM
@MMM. I didn't say anything about persons who lived abroad and never learned the language of their hosts, but to rush conclusions by only these kind of examples is quite unfair and also, you compared him with a child under 5, which made your example even more unfair.
--------------------------------- Theory is one thing reality is another. No children under the age of 6-7 would be able to learn any foreign language without parental or 'environmental' help, in the cases when it seemed that one learned 2L without help won't count, the reason was: the child watched TV all day long, namely cartoon channels in a foreign language, so it was like having a 10 hour course/day or living abroad. And even in a teenager's case to start with better ops, he/she needs really good education-system, otherwise he'll end up with false or inefficient knowledge. Also if you consider the fact teenagers have real hard time to concentrate on anything (because of certain physical/hormonal and intellectual issues), and that: half a year in a university basically contains four-five years of high-school knowledge (from my experience); I'd say the theory is OK, but in reality a 17years old student have only just begun his studies. That's why I said he'll be able to concentrate more and more on his goals, but the opportunity to reach the level of a native speaker is long lost, so why would I mention it? On the other hand a grown up, whose determination is solid (because he has to work, he has limited time to spend, and has a real idea why it is necessary to learn etc.) will find the way to obtain the language better. About neurons and psychology, those are very context sensitive stuffs. The wild-child theory is extreme and still, as many cases as many results, one of them died another could adopt the requirements of the society. It's true there are examples which say that is going to get harder to learn anything or even impossible as a person's aging. But to say it generally shuts down the opportunity to learn is just not true, not even in the case of languages, it all depends on the individual- on his knowledge, his physical and mental state and the environment he's in, and non the less on his determination!
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11-30-2010, 06:36 PM
I never thought learning a language in school was worth anyones time. A lot of them stretch classes out and teach only very basic stuff. The only people who success when they take these classes, would be the ones who study also in their own time aswell, which is better to do in the long run.
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11-30-2010, 07:52 PM
Wow my head is overheating lol...
Well what I mean by "4th year" is when the courses are in "2h/week" during October to June... So If I take 2h/day for 4 days/week, I'll be in "the level of" the 4th year in the end of the 1st year (well in June)... Do you see what I mean? Well I know that it's nearly impossible to speak fluent for the second/third language, but what do you mean by good? Like we can make a conversation of "anything" without Of course if I go to learn Japanese, I'll try to make more "immersive" what I hear first and then what I read... Well is my 17 years old may meet problems to learn another language? I don't followed all the conversation about all this neurons, brains and psychology things xD I've contacted some students about these "courses" and I'm waiting their answers... (I know this is not an example, but I hated to learn Dutch... I hate this language and I just learned it for "2 years" in High School... and well, I remember some of basic sentences and I can make a small conversation with it [like about food, weather, clothes, ...]... I don't know if this "kind of experience" can motive/proof as I'm able/ready to learn another language which I like? It's maybe crazy but it's just a question huh? It won't kill me lol) I already heared some songs in Japanese... some short English sentences looks really long in Japanese... Is this normal (I suppose yes...)? One more question for French peoples who learned Japanese... Is it easier to learn Japanese from English or from French? Thank you again to take your time to help us...
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