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Are there any differences in terms of brain dynamics between learning and using a native as opposed to a second language?
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probably depends on how old you are when you learn the second language
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differences
The only information I've seen is that learning any number of languages before circa age 7 usually results in near-native fluency, but after that magic number, things get more difficult and accents and other problems occur. It was suggested in an article I read that this was directly tied to myelination.
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For reasons other than this topic, ZM, is that article still somewhere to be found?
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if it's myelination that interests you, here's the latest news - notice the archives on the left.
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Thank you a lot tsuwm.
EDIT: Thanks, both of you.
Last edited by BranShea; 02/23/08 03:06 PM.
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that article still somewhere to be found?I'm sure it is, because it was in Scientific American. It was about thirty years ago that I read it, but you can probably find the same sort of information in a good textbook on the biology of language. I'll take a look in my library and see if I can find a citation. You might try googling myelination language acquisition ( link).
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Age 5 is the optimum age for learning another language.
I have a good friend who's a gerontologist, and another who tried to learn Spanish for her grand-daughter's sake; both say that it is virtually impossible for an "old" brain to learn a new language. Also witness to this is the old lady at church who comes from Ghana, I think--she came over a couple of years ago and has nearly no English. She sure loves it on fourth Sundays, though, when the Africans sing in their own languages!
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>virtually impossible for an "old" brain to learn a new language
But people do learn languages as an adult, and become very proficient. I've met some of them!
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How old should that "old" brain be exactly, Jackie?
I know of many "young" brains too that never learned the language well. There are more factors than just brain dynamics involved.
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But people do learn languages as an adult, and become very proficient. I've met some of them!
Me, too, but they're not the norm.
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>virtually impossible for an "old" brain to learn a new language
But people do learn languages as an adult, and become very proficient. I've met some of them! Alexander the Great was said to be able to learn a new language in several weeks. He was only in his early thirties when he died though.
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>Me, too, but they're not the norm.
You are wrong, and I can prove it.
But perhaps we are speaking at cross purposes.
If you are saying it is more difficult to learn a second language as an adult then of course I agree. It is profoundly difficult. But Jackie's "nearly impossible" is quite incorrect.
I live in South Korea and several of my adult friends have learnt the language as I am learning it. Sure, it takes about ten to fifteen years of study and immersion, but it can be done. They speak it very well.
Most are university graduates teaching English, but a good number of the American troops stationed along the DMZ have married Korean nationals and learnt the language as adults, and many of them are "unschooled". I have seen some interviewed on television, and they speak the language very well.
These are ordinary people of average intelligence who have learnt as adults to speak a language that is notoriously difficult to learn, and to speak it well.
Interestingly, those who do speak it well that I have talked to were all conversant with various mnemonic techniques. And I have read of memory demonstrations in which mnemonists have learnt to converse in a language after incredibly little study by the application of powerful memory systems. I have not met a single soul who has succeeded in learning the language by rote. That may be nearly impossible for an adult.
Ultimately, I think this is a difference of cultural perspective. North Americans, like us New Zealanders, are inveterately monolingual, hence the misconception.
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As a friend of mine once said (with no idea of irony) "It's like everything - you can't generalise!"
It depends on the individual, their social situation, the language being learned, access to good teachers and time, and a host of other factors.
A 70 year old trying to learn Mandarin at a technical college in Sydney is going to find it much harder to become fluent than a 20 year old living in China.
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>It's like everything - you can't generalise!
I like it.
But it's true: Adults can attain near-fluency in a second language, even if it takes them 15 to 20 years. And when you think about it, that's how long one needs to attain complete fluency in their native language anyway!
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that's how long one needs to attain complete fluency in their native language anyway! Complete fluency, in a grammatical sense, is normally attained well before age five. The rest is just adding vocabulary. Your earlier examples of adults becoming completely fluent were a biased subset of the general populace; the ones who couldn't learn didn't stay the necessary 15 to 20 years.
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They speak it very well.
I have met very few people who've learned a second language as an adult who speak without a trace of an accent and exhibit other minor, grammatical problems.
A child learns a language by immersion and not by study. The mechanisms are different. They learn the actual rules that govern the language as it it used by its speakers. Later, they are exposed to other usage rules to insure that they write a language closer to the standard. A child also learns a great deal of the grammar of a language in a span of five years or so.
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Your earlier examples of adults becoming completely fluent were a biased subset of the general populace; the ones who couldn't learn didn't stay the necessary 15 to 20 years. Fact: Adults can learn to speak a second language well. I gave you examples and I specified three things they have in common: immersion, mnemonics, and 20-odd years of effort. Your argument asserts the consequent. They left because they couldn't learn? No. They didn't learn because they left. My point is simple and very uncontroversial: There is nothing in the brain making it impossible for an adult to learn to speak a second language well, as has been implied. I have met very few people who've learned a second language as an adult who speak without a trace of an accent and exhibit other minor, grammatical problems. Absolutely. But the critical period hypothesis applies to native speaker fluency. I was careful to say near-fluency. Of course, the accent will always be a little "south of the border" and they will never be mistaken for a native speaker, but they can get by almost as well as one.
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Fact: Adults can learn to speak a second language well. but, of course. but it will take much more work than what a child requires. I think that's what everyone is saying, no?
formerly known as etaoin...
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Correct, etaoin. It is, "profoundly difficult", but not impossible. And that's all I'm saying.
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Heh,heh.
As long as you stay playful learning the spoken part of a foreign language comes easy. For the rest of it it's a matter of will and work. (sunday statement).
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There is nothing in the brain making it impossible for an adult to learn to speak a second language well, as has been implied.
Just to clarify my position.
1. Before some magic number age (the one I remembered was age 7) humans learn language natively and without study.
2. After that age, some may acquire a language, by hard study and over a period of years much greater than was needed before the magic number age. Their fluency is not native, but may be quite good. These people are few and far between.
3. It is not impossible to learn a language after one's youth. It's simply tougher and the process of acquisition is different.
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I completely agree zmjezhd. Any adult who studies for long enough will learn the language. And if what you say is true that "these people [who succeed] are few and far between", it is due not to a physical impediment in the brain, but insufficient determination. In other words, few succeed because few are prepared to make the effort required to succeed; not because few can succeed. The marked difference in difficulty, together with my observation that rote learning a second language as an adult is worse than useless but that mnemonics are very effective, was what prompted me to wonder about possible differences in brain dynamics. Wikipedia has some interesting information on that question. Critical period hypothesis Language acquisition: Critical period hypothesis
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I completely agree zmjezhd.
Yes, I think we've reached some kind of consensus.
Any adult who studies for long enough will learn the language. And if what you say is true that "these people [who succeed] are few and far between", it is due not to a physical impediment in the brain, but insufficient determination.
Well, here we disagree slightly. There does seem to be something physical going on. That humans before a certain age learn language with what we call native fluency in a different manner than humans past a certain age suggest to me that something has changed. And, yes, I was ambiguous in one of my statements. The people who are "few and far between" are those who've slogged through second language acquisition and succeeded. I did not mean that people physically capable of the arduous work were few. Ostensibly ever adult human can learn a second language, short of some brain-damaged individuals, I suppose.
In other words, few succeed because few are prepared to make the effort required to succeed; not because few can succeed.
Yes.
The marked difference in difficulty, together with my observation that rote learning a second language as an adult is worse than useless but that mnemonics are very effective, was what prompted me to wonder about possible differences in brain dynamics.
I distinguish between normal first language acquisition and second language study. If by rote learning, you mean simply memorizing a written grammar of the language, some vocabulary, and sample sentence patterns, then I agree with you, it's not enough. But it seems to me that using mnemonics is just rote learning done better. I wonder if any studies have been made about second language acquisition in people with so-called eidetic memories.
Wikipedia has some interesting information on that question.
Yes, I was looking at them when you'd posted. Lenneberg was the fellow I was thinking of. His 1967 book is a classic. I merely skimmed it 30 or so years ago. Pinker is probably the most accessible.
At this late juncture, I'd like to say that most of my linguistic studies have been focused on historical-comparative linguistics, and I've only taken some survey courses and done light reading in the biology of language and applied linguistics.
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I don't know about rote or mnemonics learning of a new language. Please tell me what ou'd consider this :
Two years ago, I decided to learn Spanish in order to prepare for a trip. For about three months, I listened to language CDs from Berlitz. The CD's are in Spanish, combining individuals that speak, and background noises to confirm the content of the conversation being held. Except for the first CD, which explains how the program works, there was no other language used on the CDs but Spanish.
The courses start off naively, with a small child (Pedro) counting and arriving in class, being asked to close a door (sound of door closing) and window (sound of traffic being blocked out and window closing) - all the way to the end of the set of CDs where you can understand everything being said in a party and in a store.
They start of speaking very slowly and the last CD is spoken at natural speed.
Well, I found this extremely easy to follow and each concept and word introduced was immediately adopted as a verbal representation of a thing, so when I say zapatos, I know I'm talking of shoes. When speaking I don't translate "shoes" = "zapatos", I automatically think zapatos because I'm thinking in Spanish.
So finally the question. What is that type of learning considered?
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Please tell me what ou'd consider thisAs with much in the field of education, there are a bunch of methodologies ( link, warning Wikipedia!) used in foreign language education. Yours is what's called the direct method. I've been exposed to many of them in trying to learn different languages.
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>Well, here we disagree slightly. There does seem to be something physical going on.
We actually agree completely, but I need to clarify.
I know nothing about this subject, hence my inquiry; but I am not guesstimating that nothing physical is going on. Firstly, because in my opinion there is nothing else. It's all physical. But also because I started by asking about differences in brain dynamics. Does a different part of the brain or a different neuronal dynamic govern second language acquisition? That is my question. I just know from experience that adults can learn to speak foreign languages very well (though not quite as well as natives) and that therefore there is no total physical "block" in the average adult brain. I thought that was what you were saying, but clearly I was mistaken.
In sum, there clearly is something physical going on up there that makes it very difficult for an adult to learn a foreign language, but whatever it is can be overcome through hard work.
> But it seems to me that using mnemonics is just rote learning done better.
Sure, I guess. But one works and the other doesn't, so the distinction is important.
From what I've read, there is no solid theory on all of this, but apparently it has to do with the number of neuronal pathways. If you rote learn that "kahl" is Korean for "knife" (you sit down and say "kahl, knife" fifty times or whatever) that's one pathway. If you use a mnemonic to associate "kahl" with "kill" and "kill" with "knife", then you have three. You can add as many as you like. The more pathways you create, the higher the odds that you'll be able to retrieve (find your way back to) the memory on cue. This is the simple substitute word system, but there are dozens of mnemonic methods and they can all be superimposed on a single memory task to create a bigger web of associations.
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There is a physiological factor in there somewhere. Children who have been denied the opportunity to learn language up to about the age of seven seem not to be able to learn to speak after that, even in a first language.
However, that doesn't mean adults can't learn to speak another language and be mistaken for a native speaker. The neural pathways required are probably there from the first language. Anyone can learn not to have an accent. Actors do it all the time. Vocabulary is just a matter of usage and rote. Grammar is also learned by usage and rote. Given time and natural ability, many people master a second language as an adult.
But, like I said before, it depends on a variety of factors, and may not be true (or as true) for every language. It is highly unlikely someone going from English to Vietnamese as an old age adult is going to be able to become like a native speaker. But learning a language close to yours (such as Dutch to German, or Spanish to Italian) is relatively easy. Languages that are completely phonetic like Spanish are easy, languages that are not (like English) are harder. Some languages are also inherently more difficult than others, either because they are unique (like Finnish) or just weird (like Xhosa) or have huge vocabularies (like Australian Aboriginal languages) or use tones like Mandarin (which makes it harder for an older person simply because of hearing loss!), or have more exceptions to rules than rules (like English).
Last edited by The Pook; 02/24/08 10:40 PM.
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>>>or have more exceptions to rules than rules (like English).
HA!
I know what you mean there. Living in a predominantly French province, I sometimes have a little trouble explaining a rule to somebody when they keep saying "but..."
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Remember that the folks who wrote the rules believe that if it works in practice but not in theory, something must be wrong with the practice.
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It is not uncommon for someone who has had a stroke to lose their second language(s) but not their first. I have even had a patient who had not spoken French since age 5 (moved to an English speaking area) and whose English was indistinguishable from the English only speakers around her. She woke up from a stroke fluent in French but with no knowledge of English. This suggests to me that there is actually a different area of the brain involved.
At almost 70 she started English classes and her husband of 45 years started learning French.
Pook, you mentioned that anyone can learn not to have an accent. Anyone can learn to sing opera too. But it will be a LOT harder for some people than others. One of the problems in language and especially accent learning is that we lose in childhood the ability to distinguish sounds that we do not hear. Is phoneme the work I want for the sounds in a language? Some people have perfect pitch and others have to work at it and others are tone deaf. There is also "an ear for language". The more polyglot the surroundings a child is raised in the better their "ear" will be and the better that child will be at hearing and therefore being able to reproduce foreign languages accurately.
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>One of the problems in language and especially accent learning is that we lose in childhood the ability to distinguish sounds that we do not hear.
That's right. My African foster son came at the age of five and in 4 to 5 months he could talk fluent with his class mates. Now 22 he speaks without a trace of accent. His sister who came in also at five with her Franco-African mother speaks with the accent of her mixed mostly immigrant school.A second sister who was born and raised here also speaks the immigrant schooling accent , because they never had the real native accent at home.
My son grew up only hearing the Dutch accent for his starting years.
I always admire people who can hear which part of a town or country someone comes from.
I remember from a period we often were in contact with Belgian friends one day someone came at the door and on hearing me asked: "are you from Belgium too?" Without noticing I had taken over the softer sound from our Flemish friends.
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One of the problems in language and especially accent learning is that we lose in childhood the ability to distinguish sounds that we do not hear. Is phoneme the work I want for the sounds in a language?
We hear all sorts of sounds, even the ones that are not in our language. That is what accent is, hearing the difference between the phonemes in your language (or dialect) and how non-native speakers pronounce them slightly differently. What happens is that we perceive sounds differently. (For example, most anglophones when they hear the Japanese voiceless bilabial fricative /ɸ/, as in futon, perceive it to be an f or a w).) Acoustically, the t in top, stop and the one in pot all differ slightly from one another, but most native English speakers perceive them as being the same sound or phoneme. Theese different pronunciations of a phoneme are called allophones.
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the Japanese voiceless bilabial fricative One of the hardest languages to learn from English, or so they say.
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Is there a web site that would give me Japanese words spelled out in the English alphabet? I like to watch Ninja Warrior, which has a lot of Japanese; I've decided that the word that sounds like sah must mean now; but in hearing only, meaning I can't tell where one word ends and the next begins, I don't have a hope of picking up any meaning. Every time I've tried to look up such a site, I was given ones with Japanese characters!
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Is there a web site that would give me Japanese words spelled out in the English alphabet?Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Japanese Dictionary Server may help. Technically, it's not the English alphabet. It's the Latin (or Roman) one. The Japanese language can be represented in Latin characters using what is called romaji (or a romanization system). It may take a bit of getting used, and it would probably help to become familiar with the native Japanese phonological syllabary systems ( hiragana and katakana).
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For the Japanese sounds this is one of the most beautiful movies I have. Just a short trailer, but there are more on that page. Nothing to read, image and sound. Kwaidan of Masaki Kobayashi (ghost stories),I mentioned that movie once before.For words to come it takes a minute. (whole thing 2,5 minutes total) Kwaidan (smuggle this one in, only sideways' related)
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Anyone can learn not to have an accent. Actors do it all the time. Anyone can learn to do brain surgery. Neurosurgeons do it all the time. Anyone can learn to sing like Celine Dionne. She does it all the time. (^_^)
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Anyone can learn not to have an accent. Actors do it all the time.
And some do it better than others. Some actors can't do a decent accent to save their lives: e.g., Keanu Reeves, Lord Larry Olivier, at opposite ends of the acting spectrum. Some can. Hugh Laurie does an amazing US accent. Some people are natural mimics. A friend of mine taught for a year in Sweden. His accent was near flawless. His grammar and usage were abysmal; he did not speak any Swedish before arriving. When first meeting and listening to him, Swedes were confused. They figured he was a brain-damaged Swede.
[Corrected typo.]
Last edited by zmjezhd; 02/25/08 10:50 PM.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Anyone can learn not to have an accent. Actors do it all the time.
And some do it better than others. Some actors can't do a descent accent to save their lives Is that one with a falling inflexion? 
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Is that one with a falling inflexion?
Yep. Purdy much so.
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I have even had a patient who had not spoken French since age 5 (moved to an English speaking area) and whose English was indistinguishable from the English only speakers around her. She woke up from a stroke fluent in French but with no knowledge of English. This suggests to me that there is actually a different area of the brain involved. Interesting. Was her French the French of a 5 year old child?
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I think her vocabulary was limited but I am not sure about grammar and pronunciation. I worked with her several years later and we spoke English although hers was a bit limited and with a very strong French accent.
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In Musicophilia , the case histories of brain damage and its effect on different aspects of musical memory and functions, Oliver Sachs tells that those different aspects are related to different parts of the brain for specific details such as absolute pitch, amusia and more.
He refers to language and vision as having, equally, separate specific parts for different aspects in those fields. (memory and functions). Also that other parts of the brain may take over parts of lost functions . /Shiftings. But he as a dedicated and expert neurologist admits that many mysteries of the brain remain as yet hidden.
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Another interesting case is described by Oliver Sacks in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. The patient had visual agnosia. He could describe things in great detail, but was unable to name them. One object was, "a unicursal plane infolded on itself with five outpouchings." He did not know it was a glove.
It raises another interesting question about language and brain dynamics. How is it the man could describe the object but not give it its proper name, but could give it its proper description? Is there a different part of the brain for nominal and descriptive language production?
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Oh, you.
Sacks (I repeat, Sacks) did not supply the answers to these questions. The Man Who Mistook, etc. is in essence a book of clinical descriptions.
>But he as a dedicated and expert neurologist admits that many mysteries of the brain remain as yet hidden.
An understatement. I have read a few books on the brain and they all agree: When it comes right down to it, very, very little is known about it. In particular I direct your attention to the chapter "What We Know, What We Might Know, And What We Can't Know" in "The 21st-Century Brain" by Steven Rose and "Phantoms in the Brain" by V. Ramachandran.
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Is there a different part of the brain for nominal and descriptive language production?
Oh, you too  you too. Just because so very, very little is known about it, and I already said in post above that Sacks admits there are many unsolved mysteries , why put the question when you already know there is no answer to it? At least not one you might expect to get here. (most probably)
Last edited by BranShea; 02/29/08 03:48 PM.
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Is there a different part of the brain for nominal and descriptive language production?
Oh, you too you too. Just because so very, very little is known about it, and I already said in post above that Sacks admits there are many unsolved mysteries , why put the question when you already know there is no answer to it? At least not one you might expect to get here. (most probably) Different part of the brain, or different neural pathways? Who knows. All I know is "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139).
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A Neurology prop once said that if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand it we would be so simple that we could not.
edited because it was actually a neuro prof not a prop
Last edited by Zed; 03/01/08 06:33 AM.
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I already said in post above Sacks admits there are many unsolved mysteries, why put the question when you already know there is no answer to it?
I did not say there is no answer. I said Sacks didn't give one.
What you are really saying is, "Do not ask questions to which Oliver Sacks has not provided the answer" ?
A curious policy: The Code of Sacks; The Sacks Barrier.
Besides, I am free to ask questions to which I don't know the answer. That's kind of the point of questions, actually.
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The man described had a visual agnosia rather than a language deficit. He literally did not See a glove, he saw what we would see - "a unicursal plane infolded on itself with five outpouchings." You or I would then interpret that visual information as a thing that you put on your hand which is called a glove. He could not interpret the visual information usefully. Most likely if you asked him what he would put on his hands if they were cold he would say "gloves."
There are a few people who although blind since birth had a surgical repair in adulthood which gave them the use of their eyes . The majority did not learn to functionally "see." One stated that although he could instantly recognize a triangle by putting his hand on it he would have to deliberately count the sides and corners to visually figure out what it was. "I see people but they look like trees walking around."
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What you are really saying is, "Do not ask questions to which Oliver Sacks has not provided the answer" ? Of course I do not say that. Oliver Sachs gives no aswer. But his case histories are not less interesting in spite of that (It shows how wonderful the brain is), I do not esteem his work less for that. People often dismiss him as if he were a fraud. I think he is a sincere and compassionate observer. A Neurology prof once said that if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand it we would be so simple that we could not. That's nicely said , Zed.
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I think he is a sincere an compassionate observer.
I have only read The Man Who Mistook, etc. but it is one of the most interesting books I have ever read.
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he is wonderful interesting man.
i have attended book lectures and heard --and read most of his books.. i especially like Uncle Tungsten.. half a history of chemistry, half an autobiography. (100% excellent!)
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You should read An Anthropologist on Mars, Hydra. It's also extremely interesting.
Was it you, of troy, who suggested it to us a few years ago?
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maybe--I have read it, (i have read, but not all of Dr. Sacks books--and each one has been interesting )
Anthropologist on Mars has many interesting stories.. Temple Graundin (sp of her last name) has gone to much fame since then.. (she works in the meat world, but she should be a consultant for austistic children.. (some of her 'self treatments" like her hug machine have been recreated and used in homes and hospitals)
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...a consultant for austistic children.. Does she do NZtistic or cantistic or mextistic children too? 
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yep, Pook; that's a good one.
you should be aware though that one of our unwritten rulz is to go easy on of troy for her typos and spellings; she let us know very early on that she is "dislexic." : )
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yep, Pook; that's a good one.
you should be aware though that one of our unwritten rulz is to go easy on of troy for her typos and spellings; she let us know very early on that she is "dislexic." : ) The Pookwife and I are both 'dishlexic' - neither of us seem to know which end of a dishmop to use. Consequently the sink is always full of whatever can't go in the dishwasher.
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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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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)
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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!!"
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>This is probably a good example of the fallacy that says that if I can do it anyone can.
It is unfair to accuse twosleepy of a fallacy, because it rather depends on what twosleepy was trying to prove. Any unconditional postulation, such as, "It is impossible for an adult to A" is falsified by a single exception. twosleepy does not claim that, "It is easy because I did it"; but simply, "It can be done because I did it." I don't see any fallacy here. (I can't comment on the "Golden Rule Fallacy" however, because you waggishly choose not to define it).
twosleepy, tell us: What language did you master and when did you start learning it?
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>This is probably a good example of the fallacy that says that if I can do it anyone can.
It is unfair to accuse twosleepy of a fallacy, because it rather depends on what twosleepy was trying to prove. Any unconditional postulation, such as, "It is impossible for an adult to A" is falsified by a single exception. twosleepy does not claim that, "It is easy because I did it"; but simply, "It can be done because I did it." I don't see any fallacy here. (I can't comment on the "Golden Rule Fallacy" however, because you waggishly choose not to define it).
twosleepy, tell us: What language did you master and when did you start learning it?
I can see that what twosleepy said was not that anyone can do it and I apologize for suggesting that she had committed a fallacy here. I took it a little more generally than that and I see that I was wrong. There was a little of the generic to her "Adults can, and do, learn another language to (near) native fluency. I did." As for the Golden Rule Fallacy, the Golden Rule states that one should do to others what one would want done to oneself. The problem here is that the others may not want done to them what you would want done to you. The assumption is that the others are like you. In some cases it will be true, but certainly not always. Edit: Oh, and the original claim was not that no adult can become fluent in a second language, merely that it is rare; one counter-example would not disprove it.
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I apologize for suggesting that she had committed a fallacy here. Can one 'commit' a fallacy? As for the Golden Rule Fallacy, the Golden Rule states that one should do to others what one would want done to oneself. The problem here is that the others may not want done to them what you would want done to you. The assumption is that the others are like you. In some cases it will be true, but certainly not always. The problem here is that you are not taking into account the genre of the Golden Rule. As an aphorism it is similar to proverbs in that it represents a generalisation, the plain meaning of which is clear in broad terms even though you may be able to press it to an absurd conclusion by being overly specific about the particulars of its application. It is dependent upon social context and common sense for its right interpretation and application. In the same way, there are proverbs that are seemingly contradictory when taken out of the social context in which they separately apply. For example, "Look before you leap" v. "He who hesitates is lost". In a general sense, the Golden Rule is simply saying treat others as well as you naturally treat yourself. The Author of the Golden Rule also said "Love your neighbour like you love yourself" and that is another way of expressing the meaning of it.
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I do understand the concept of switching gears. I studied Spanish before my vacation there. Unfortunately all of my teachers were S.American so the accent was quite different; I couldn't understand anything said to me. The group I was with were, instead of the international mix I had expected, all from Madrid but very nice about translating for me. On the third morning I suddenly tuned in and understood whole conversations although I naturally missed a lot of detail. It certainly surprised the fellow who started to translate for me "But, but yesterday you didn't speak Spanish."
He was more careful what "compliments" he paid me after that.
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I do understand the concept of switching gears. I studied Spanish before my vacation there. Unfortunately all of my teachers were S.American so the accent was quite different; I couldn't understand anything said to me. The group I was with were, instead of the international mix I had expected, all from Madrid but very nice about translating for me. On the third morning I suddenly tuned in and understood whole conversations although I naturally missed a lot of detail. It certainly surprised the fellow who started to translate for me "But, but yesterday you didn't speak Spanish."
He was more careful what "compliments" he paid me after that. Sudamericano is much easier than the various European Spanish dialects. It's grammatically simpler and the accent is more logical. One reason for the accent difference is that the Spanish colonies were founded before that King (was it Philip?) with a lisp made the silly rule that everyone had to speak like him and pronounce Barcelona as 'Barthelona'. So in that sense it's actually an older, purer form of Spanish than that spoken in Spain. In other ways Sudamericano is more modernised and egalitarian than Castilliano - they have practically done away with the formal/polite forms of address/pronouns/cases etc, especially in the plural.
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Well, I see the knights in shining armor have been out for a spin... ;0)
I was taken aback just a tad, because, as Hydra correctly noted, I was simply saying it can be done. I don't consider myself terribly "exceptional" amongst this crowd, but then, we really don't know much about each other at all.
To answer your query, Hydra, I followed the standard US route to learning a "language other than English", beginning in (brace yourselves for a major dating of myself...) Junior High (7th grade), taking Spanish 2 or 3 days a week. I don't know if it became daily in 8th, or in High School, 9th. I took it through 11th, and my senior year I was an exchange student to Chile for a year. I really would like to write a book about that when I have the time... I found that the schooling I'd received was inadequate, but I don't blame the schooling. I don't think it's possible to become totally comfortable speaking a 2nd (or 3rd, etc.) language with native speakers without being immersed in some fashion at some point. After about 3 months I was quite conversant, but working still on my accent and rolling my "r"s (I spent hours physically dragging the sensation from the back of my throat up across the palate to right behind my teeth. Most people would not bother, but I really wanted to be able to do it correctly!) After about 6 months I was mistaken for a local. I have a great story about that, if anyone is interested.
Pook, I have to bust ya! The lisping king story is just another "urban legend". You can easily see that it makes no sense when you understand that the "ceceo", as it's called, only occurs with the following phonemes: ce, ci, za, ze, zi, zo, zu. It does not occur with the letter "s", which a person with a lisp would do. What's funny is that in Chile, they never referred to themselves as speaking "espanol", but rather, "castellano", yet they did not have the "ceceo" in their speech.
Zed: Did you ever experience a situation where one of your friendly translators began to speak in heavily accented English, but you were expecting Spanish, and you didn't get it at all? Or the other way around, where s/he said something in Spanish but you were expecting English? That's what I was referring to for myself. I occasionally overhear people speaking Spanish in public, and if I attend, then the person switches suddenly to English, I am momentarily lost until my brain figures it out...
Thank you for the apology, Faldage. I wasn't trying to prove anything. And believe me, I'll hold off on that activity in these forums for quite a while... he he he :0)
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>>>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.
That's exactly what happens at our family suppers where we'll switch from French to English and back again, depending upon who we're facing when discussing something.
My Dad and all of my siblings are perfectly bilingual speaking both English and French fluently. My Mom is more at ease speaking French but understand English very well. One sis-in-law is unilingually French, while the other sis-in-law is unilingually English, my bro-in-law is French with a smattering of English knowledge.
Any new person to the table can find our interactions quite confusing as a sentence can start in one language, switch to another when we face a different person, and finish off in the first; all without skipping a beat.
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Yes I know it doesn't apply to the 's' but that doesn't mean the story has no basis in fact. I think it is true that it became fashionable to speak that way because the king did. I don't believe it is just a myth. It is certainly true that it is something that developed in Spain since the colonisation of South America and the South American pronunciation is the older. Is there a better or well documented explanation for how this came about?
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Wikipedia ( cuidado!) covers ceceo in Spanish ( link) and English ( link). And a linguist describes the phenomenon in Spanish ( link) at an Austrian academic site. The reason I personally doubt it, as pointed out by twosleepy (welcome) in this thread, is that if the putative (unnamed) king actually lisped, he wouldn't have just lisped sibilants represented by c and z in Spanish orthography, but also those in s. ( Sarà vero ma non ci credo.) Also, note that not all continental Spanish dialects exhibit ceceo, not even in Andalusia.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Good point about the partial lisp. We visited the church of Santa Thethelia. I think the vosotros/tu may be a city thing as well. In more rural areas of both regions the older and more formal customs may tend to hang on longer.
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I have never visited Spain, although I would like to, so I have no actual experience hearing the ceceo in action, other than a Spaniard away from the homeland... The tu/vosotros thing is fairly well established in most areas. Vosotros is not commonly used because the speaker's audience must consist entirely of persons with whom the speaker is on a familiar basis, and that is rare, outside of a group of friends. The ustedes form addresses everyone respectfully, and therefore is "safer" to use, without risk of offense. Vosotros is used with greater frequency in Spain, and therefore is taught in Spanish courses, but generally only introduced and shown, and not required/tested. "Lisping king" controversy fuel: http://spanish.about.com/cs/qa/a/q_lisp.htm
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Woo hoo! I'm not a "stranger" anymore (hated that...) :0)
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2. "Accent" is mostly unimportant in communication,... A poor one can hinder native listeners from focusing on the message.
Which is it? Certainly in Hindi, the latter is definitely true, to the extent that actors and actresses who grew up in Hindi-speaking households outside India have been dubbed over in their films not because they couldn't speak the language, but because their accent was too distracting. Hardly "unimportant in communication."
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What I was trying to say is that if a person speaks a language correctly, but has a poor accent, communication still occurs. It doesn't bother me that much when I hear heavily accented English, but I know for others it can be a problem. "Distracting" is not the same as "preventing". The poor accent is mostly annoying, and most of us would rather not be annoyed. But bottom line, if it's understandable, then communication happens, and that's what is important. :0)
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On the other hand, in tonal languages, without the right accent it must be almost impossible to communicate.
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What I was trying to say is that if a person speaks a language correctly, but has a poor accent, communication still occurs. It doesn't bother me that much when I hear heavily accented English, but I know for others it can be a problem. "Distracting" is not the same as "preventing". The poor accent is mostly annoying, and most of us would rather not be annoyed. But bottom line, if it's understandable, then communication happens, and that's what is important. :0) The contradiction remains. You claimed that accent is unimportant in communication. This is clearly bunkum. Accent is very important in communication in many situations. I've seen Welsh and Scottish programs on TV in which the dialog was in English but English subtitles were provided. I've also watched a film in which it was easier for me to follow the actors when they were speaking Punjabi, a language I know little of, than when they were speaking English, my native language, because their Glaswegian accents made the English almost impenetrable. All of this invalidates your assertion that accent is "unimportant in communication".
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twosleepy says X. latishya has thought of exceptions to X.
Is X invalidated?
It's simply qualified. In its implied form (the qualification should have been obvious): Accent is unimportant in communication under a sufficient variety of circumstances to justify the rule, but with other obvious exceptions.
Similarly, the size of one's mouth is not important to oral communication, unless one's mouth is the size of a peanut.
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On the other hand, in tonal languages, without the right accent it must be almost impossible to communicate. I've heard of the existence of a Chinese language that has the same sounds as Mandarin but with different tones and that for a native Mandarin speaker it is totally incomprehnsible, but for someone who has learned Mandarin from a non-tonal language, in this case English, it was as comprehensible as Mandarin was.
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On the other hand, in tonal languages, without the right accent it must be almost impossible to communicate. In the case of tonal languages, I would say that this is not a case of having an "accent", because the tonal variations are what actually make up the language. In this case, having the wrong "accent" would be to speak the language incorrectly, an obvious problem for communication! :0)
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You claimed that accent is unimportant in communication. I will concede that I should have modified "unimportant" with "generally". Obviously there are situations in which an accent is so strong that the words are no longer pronounced in way comprehensible to some listeners, but I think (I repeat "think", not "know") that these situations are somewhat uncommon. :0)
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My mother is quite "dys-accent-al" (is there a word for that?). While there are a few accents she can manage quite well, she cannot understand anyone with an unfamiliar accent.
There is an ophthamologist in the same town who came from South Africa over 40 years ago and has the slightest "posh British" accent, but she can't understand most of what he says even though most of their conversations consist of eye exams - "is 1 better? or 2?", "what?", "1 or 2?", "what?", ...
A few weeks ago, she had to call Symantec's tech support line. The call took about two hours because the support rep had to spell a lot of words out a la "a as in apple, b as in banana, ..." after the first part of the conversation where they had to agree on the "alphabet"
Rep:"e as in eagle" (ih oz'n aygull)
Mom:"is that e as in egg? or a as in apple"
Rep:"e as in egg"
etc.
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tonal languages
English uses tone also. It's just that we do not use it phonemically. We use it sententially to indicate things such as questions, doubt, or emphasis.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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And sarcasm! I think tone is important for just about every language. Though non-verbal, ASL relies on tone conveyed through facial expressions and body stance.
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On the other hand, in tonal languages, without the right accent it must be almost impossible to communicate. I've heard of the existence of a Chinese language that has the same sounds as Mandarin but with different tones and that for a native Mandarin speaker it is totally incomprehnsible, but for someone who has learned Mandarin from a non-tonal language, in this case English, it was as comprehensible as Mandarin was. Which might mean ...not at all?
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On the other hand, in tonal languages, without the right accent it must be almost impossible to communicate. In the case of tonal languages, I would say that this is not a case of having an "accent", because the tonal variations are what actually make up the language. In this case, having the wrong "accent" would be to speak the language incorrectly, an obvious problem for communication! :0) Yes. That's what I thought I said.
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On the other hand, in tonal languages, without the right accent it must be almost impossible to communicate. In the case of tonal languages, I would say that this is not a case of having an "accent", because the tonal variations are what actually make up the language. In this case, having the wrong "accent" would be to speak the language incorrectly, an obvious problem for communication! :0) Yes. That's what I thought I said. I was not disagreeing, just saying that it shouldn't really be called an accent, because I doubt they even exist in tonal languages, although I am no expert. Anyone want to be the expert? :0)
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because I doubt they even exist in tonal languages, although I am no expert
I suppose it depends on what you mean by accent. Many non-native speakers of Mandarin have what I would consider an accent. For example, a friend of mine from Canton has a noticeable Southern (Chinese) accent when he speaks Mandarin. He tends to replace x /ɕ/ and sh /ʂ/ with s /s/ and n /n/ with l /l/. He gets the tones right, though, Cantonese having 5 or 6 to Mandarin's 4.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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zmjezhd, you are quite correct about defining accent. It is more than just tonal variations. One that is common and sometimes confusing to new learners of Spanish is the ll. Many times it is taught as the same as a y in English, as in yellow: llama = yama. In many countries, especially in SA, however, you will find a sound more like sh or dj, or some combination in between: llama = djama. Neither one is "correct", as both are acceptable and comprehensible. To my ear, "yama" sounds more "gringo", for what that's worth. But then, I lived in Chile for a year, and they have charming regional accents, to the extent that native hispanohablantes sometimes guess that I am Chilean. Of course, if I really get going, I tend to use some give-away phrases, too! :0)
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the ll. Many times it is taught as the same as a y in English, as in yellow: llama = yama. The ellya is actually more like lyama than yama - it's just the 'l' version of the enya (ñ). But that's too hard for many English speakers to say, so they simplify it to yama. In many countries, especially in SA, however, you will find a sound more like sh or dj, or some combination in between: llama = djama. Or 'zh' or 'dzh'. In Argentina they say it like that. And maybe Uruguay?
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The ellya is actually more like lyama than yama - it's just the 'l' version of the enya (ñ). But that's too hard for many English speakers to say, so they simplify it to yama. They do use that pronunciation in a few areas, but in the US, anyway, you would never hear someone put any hint of /l/ in a word with "ll", nor would you be able to find anyone teaching it that way, nor any teaching resources that even mention it. Or 'zh' or 'dzh'. In Argentina they say it like that. And maybe Uruguay? Most probably they do! Most of SA uses some variation along those lines. The straight ll=y is taught because it is "standard", and easiest to say, as it's a frequently used phoneme in English, whereas all our mentioned variations are less familiar, and therefore less comfortable. :0)
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There is a phenomenon in Spanish called yeísmo (which contrasts with lleísmo). In the former, the phoneme /ʎ/, a palatal lateral approximant phoneme (similar to Italian <gl>, represented by the grapheme <ll>, is pronounced a a simple i griega <y> ( link). It is an important distinction between different regional varieties of Spanish. In Argentine (or Buenos Aires) Spanish, it is realized voiced post-alveolar fricative /ʒ/, though this is changing to a voiceless version /ʃ/. In other dialects it is voiced or voiceless affricates. In Catalan, it is mostly a /ʎ/.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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The critical period hypothesis is a hotly debated topic in second language learning. My understanding is that whatever else we disagree about, it is generally agreed that 1) it is generally harder for adults to learn an L2 than children, especially syntax and phonology, 2) it is not impossible for adults to master an L2, and 3) there is no hard cut-off point at puberty.
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I wonder if anyone has done any brain mapping of people speaking primary vs secondary languages. or of fluent vs non-fluent.
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brain mapping of people speaking primary vs secondary languages Wow, that would be cool!
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The acquisition of the first and later languages is highly complex. Some understanding of the brain mechanisms involved are seen in aphasics who have lost part of their faculties for language (from a stroke or other brain diseases). The pattern of recovery is also helpful and has been the subject of many published studies. For those interested, a short review is: A note on aphasia in bilingual patients: Pitres' and Ribot's laws. Eur Neurol 2005;54:127-131
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Wow, thanks, Dr. Pearce! I tried to find the article but could only find a brief abstract, which includes: Clinical studies have since shown that bilingual 'aphasics' do not necessarily manifest the same language disorders with the same degree of severity in both languages.
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J, I found it through Google[documents]: link but if you click the first (normal) Google result, when you get the abstract, you can click the 'full text' link.
Last edited by tsuwm; 03/31/08 08:52 PM.
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Pooh-Bah
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Welcome Pearce, Thank you, I wondered of someone had been researching this area but was too lazy to go searching.
(Ta to tswm too.)
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