I actually read this whole thread as the topic interests me. Y'all slid off the topic on this page (6), but it seemed to be closing down a bit, anyway. I thought I'd add a few of my "sense" (more than two):
1. Adults can, and do, learn another language to (near) native fluency. I did.
This is probably a good example of the fallacy that says that if I can do it anyone can. I call this the Golden Rule Fallacy for reasons we need not get into here. I would suggest that of the large number of people who are fully fluent in more than one language, the vast majority learned both in their first few years.
2. "Accent" is mostly unimportant in communication, but no one would be considered fluent without a good one. A poor one can hinder native listeners from focusing on the message.
I would prefer the term "fully fluent" for this condition, just for purposes of discussion. See my comment on the next point.
3. There is a "gear" in the brain's ear for listening to a language. If you are expecting one language, but the person starts speaking another (that you know), you may be momentarily lost because you need to shift to a different language "gear". Has anyone else experienced this and knows what I mean? It might sound a bit crazy if you've never had it happen!
I have a friend who is fluent in German; I can't say about her accent, I haven't heard her speaking German in any great amount. She is almost worthless for translation. She can't just drop back and forth quickly enough to translate. She can work over a piece of German and work out a translation, but it doesn't come trippingly off her tongue. On the other hand, there are some who can translate as fast as the source language is given to them. Some of them work for the UN.
On the othest hand, there are those who can drop back and forth between two languages several times during a sentence. The phenomenon is known as code-switching.
4. Although I've never sought information about this, I know for a fact that having an ear for music uses the same neural connections as having an ear for language.
5. Perfect pitch can be a true curse! I don't have it, and I'm glad! When our choir director told us we would sing the Benediction response in the key of the final hymn, some choir members went nuts, especially those with perfect pitch. I couldn't have cared less. I have them all memorized, anyway, but I can sing anything in any key; just give me a pitch; I don't care what it's called!
Back in my first time in college I knew two people who had perfect pitch. For one it was a curse; he would listen to music on the radio and wince if the station's turntable was off-speed. The other one came to the library listening room while I was in there. He put a record on the turntable and started playing it. While it was playing he removed the cover to get into the guts of the turntable, put his finger on the belt, and varied the speed of the turntable just to hear it wobble all over the place. He was blind.
6. The brain is still one of the most mysterious things on earth. Our postulations about its capacities have changed every year for many years. I suspect that the body of what we don't know know will continue to be larger than that of what we do know for a long time to come.
One of the saints of atheist mysticism said, "If the brain were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too simple to understand it...Wait a minute! We
are too simple to understand it." Just personally I believe that the body of things we don't know that we don't know, the unknown unknowns is vastly larger than the body of known unknowns. And probably the body of unknown knowns is even larger still.
7. Zed's post made me smile, and remember a few of the Star Trek aliens' descriptions of humans, such as "carbon-based units", and, my personal favorite, "ugly bags of mostly water"... ;0)
"Sentient meat?! You're trying to tell me that they are sentient meat?! Poppycock!!"
