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>This is just an excuse that will limit you. Apoligies if I am making a strawman or unfairly characterizing you, but lately I've been seeing a lot of "Get Moti

>This is just an excuse that will limit you. Apoligies if I am making a strawman or unfairly characterizing you, but lately I've been seeing a lot of "Get Motivated" stuff here and on reddit that is completely false. Sorry, but children do have the "language acquisition" device. I'm bilingual and learned both my languages during those golden years. My memory as a child is amazing, and I can name scene for scene the movies I watched once as a child, yet I can barely tell you the plot of the movie I saw last month. Childhood learning and the malleable brain really isn't something in dispute. Immersion isn't remotely comparable. My wife lived for 5 years in Russia and studied the language all through college. She's no where near my childhood learned Greek which I speak maybe 5 or 6 times a year. Her Russian fades quickly too. If she's not using it, she's losing it. Oh, she speaks 4 laugnages at a proper adult level too. She needs to keep using all 4 or she will also lose them. She's no stranger to language learning or immersion. My Greek is permanent, btw, no need to practice or anything. Its forever mine. There's just something really sad about how the motivation crowd has been co-opted by the meathead sports metaphor crowd "GIVE 110%!!!!". There's science and reality at work here. Yelling and overly positive platitudes aren't helping. If anything its a disservice to the people who really are looking for answers while trying to get motivated or trying to learn a second language. Motivation and learning and hacking them is a lot more complex than just willing yourself to make it happen. There's a fair bit of complexity here, especially when people have unrealistic expectations and do not love the process of learning and trying. Loving the process, being humble, asking for advice, accepting the pain, accepting looking like an idiot, etc are far more valuable to me than the whole "TRY HARDER!!!!" sports cliche.

aik 15y ago
Due to past research it has become accepted fact that children learn languages faster. However there has been a lot of research lately that has shown this to be false. So sorry I don't believe this is simply a motivational tool (however even so, belief that you innately don't have a particular ability often leads to self-limiting behavior). I agree though that a language learned at childhood more easily sticks with you than one learned later in life. This makes sense for a number of reasons. However this is a completely different topic than one's ability learn a language. Just curious -- how many years did you spend immersed in Greek? In addition, speaking Greek 5-6 times a year is great. If you changed that to 0 times a year, I can assure you that your ability to speak it would dissipate. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128224.000-age-no-excuse-for-failing-to-learn-a-new-language.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128224.000-age-no-ex... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050615060545.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050615060545.ht...
- david927 15y ago
  That research hasn't yet made the grade. You'll constantly find articles that state "some linguists" are doubting the Critical Period Hypothesis [1], just as you'll find doubts for many hypothesis, but it's quite well accepted within the linguistic field. And if you talk to people that have been deeply exposed to language acquisition, like "drzaiusapelord" above (and ignore the spirited Redditors who went to Japanese class a couple times), you'll find that it holds. Language is fascinating and with immersion and other techniques can get to 99%. But if you didn't hear it and speak it at 6, you'll never get it like a native speaker. Here's a great example: I worked in Berlin for a Jewish woman who moved to America when she was 5. She didn't speak any English, only German, at the time. When she came back to Germany at 15, she had to learn German from scratch (completely from scratch). She was 50 when I worked for her and her German was flawless, but my German friends said that she occasionally made the tiniest of mistakes which made it clear she wasn't a mother-tongue speaker. She didn't make such mistakes in English. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Period_Hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Period_Hypothesis
btilly 15y ago
I had the most interesting demonstration of the reality of this language acquisition period in high school. I was friends with a family of Vietnamese immigrants. Their oldest was past puberty when they moved to Canada, their younger ones were pre puberty. The oldest and the parents learned English, but never lost their accents. You could not tell that their younger children were not born in Canada. That said, perfect language acquisition is not impossible for all adults. My brother started learning Chinese at 20. He learned it so well that people he first talked to over the phone are sometimes confused when they meet him - they can't believe that he's not native Chinese. (But he's been having to work to lose his Taiwanese accent.)

aik 15y ago

Due to past research it has become accepted fact that children learn languages faster. However there has been a lot of research lately that has shown this to be false. So sorry I don't believe this is simply a motivational tool (however even so, belief that you innately don't have a particular ability often leads to self-limiting behavior). I agree though that a language learned at childhood more easily sticks with you than one learned later in life. This makes sense for a number of reasons. However this is a completely different topic than one's ability learn a language. Just curious -- how many years did you spend immersed in Greek? In addition, speaking Greek 5-6 times a year is great. If you changed that to 0 times a year, I can assure you that your ability to speak it would dissipate. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128224.000-age-no-excuse-for-failing-to-learn-a-new-language.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128224.000-age-no-ex... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050615060545.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050615060545.ht...

david927 15y ago
That research hasn't yet made the grade. You'll constantly find articles that state "some linguists" are doubting the Critical Period Hypothesis [1], just as you'll find doubts for many hypothesis, but it's quite well accepted within the linguistic field. And if you talk to people that have been deeply exposed to language acquisition, like "drzaiusapelord" above (and ignore the spirited Redditors who went to Japanese class a couple times), you'll find that it holds. Language is fascinating and with immersion and other techniques can get to 99%. But if you didn't hear it and speak it at 6, you'll never get it like a native speaker. Here's a great example: I worked in Berlin for a Jewish woman who moved to America when she was 5. She didn't speak any English, only German, at the time. When she came back to Germany at 15, she had to learn German from scratch (completely from scratch). She was 50 when I worked for her and her German was flawless, but my German friends said that she occasionally made the tiniest of mistakes which made it clear she wasn't a mother-tongue speaker. She didn't make such mistakes in English. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Period_Hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Period_Hypothesis

btilly 15y ago

I had the most interesting demonstration of the reality of this language acquisition period in high school. I was friends with a family of Vietnamese immigrants. Their oldest was past puberty when they moved to Canada, their younger ones were pre puberty. The oldest and the parents learned English, but never lost their accents. You could not tell that their younger children were not born in Canada. That said, perfect language acquisition is not impossible for all adults. My brother started learning Chinese at 20. He learned it so well that people he first talked to over the phone are sometimes confused when they meet him - they can't believe that he's not native Chinese. (But he's been having to work to lose his Taiwanese accent.)