8 ms·

Language development starts earlier than most people think. Babies babble with all the sounds the human vocal tract can make, but by 6 months they are only babb

Language development starts earlier than most people think. Babies babble with all the sounds the human vocal tract can make, but by 6 months they are only babbling with the sounds of the language in their household. Up to age 12 or so you can learn a second language accent-free, but at that age an important developmental milestone cements phonemes in place. About 45 years ago I heard Chomsky speak on the idea that the human brain is wired to learn a grammar as much as a bird is wired for birdsong. So learning some grammar is innate, but the particulars are up to environment. Source: 1/2 a century ago I was a bit of a developmental linguistics nerd. Disclaimer: But many memories have faded.

omeid2 3y ago
> Up to age 12 or so you can learn a second language accent-free, but at that age an important developmental milestone cements phonemes in place. This is only true if the second language has sounds that you don't have in your first language.
- dbcurtis 3y ago
  Can you name a language pair where that works? I can’t think of one.
  - iopq 3y ago
    If your native language is Ukrainian, when you learn Russian you don't get more phonemes, unless you count slightly different mouth positions of vowels.
  - dataflow 3y ago
    https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/30633 https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/30633
- mrtree 3y ago
  [dead]
- Tor3 3y ago
  Oh, right. I forgot all those Dutch speed skaters who used to train in Norway a couple of generations back. Ard Schenk.. Kees Verkerk and many others. The majority of them learned Norwegian completely accent-free (you really had to listen to figure out they weren't native), despite not learning the language as kids. I figured that must have been because Dutch has such a variety of native sounds that it basically covers Norwegian language sounds.
dataflow 3y ago
> Up to age 12 or so you can learn a second language accent-free, but at that age an important developmental milestone cements phonemes in place. Seems... dubious? What about people who immigrate later (like in high school) and actually pick up the sounds and accents flawlessly? I've seen folks like that and I'm pretty sure they weren't in high school at age 12.
- iopq 3y ago
  Anecdotally, I know a Serbian who went to study to the US for a year in high school and has a perfect Californian accent.
  - dataflow 3y ago
    There you go!
  - criddell 3y ago
    > perfect Californian accent Oh man, I hope they sound like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCer2e0t8r8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCer2e0t8r8
    - iopq 3y ago
      Nah, he totally, like, sounds like a Valley girl
- Tor3 3y ago
  It's very very rare. Though it's not a cut-off at age 12, it just gets more and more rare (and takes longer) from around ten and older. Not sure if it's so much about the vocal tract, it's more about the brain's ability to hear sounds (my wife can't hear the difference between a number of sounds despite having lived in my country for many years and speaking the language well). In all my life I've only met two 100% accent-free speakers who learned my language as adults, and a third one who was almost there. Everyone else has something I can detect. But children.. a five-year old Japanese girl could repeat everything I said with perfect pronunciation and intonation, first try. Slightly exceptional girl perhaps, she learned the language in a very short time.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
Oh, rad, I didn't know accents worked like that! So if I speak to my kids in English, and my wife speaks to them in Finnish, they'll get to grow up with a disconcerting mix of newscaster English and northern Finnish drawl. I wonder if getting exposed to a bunch of languages as a kid is why I have a (relatively) mild accent in Finnish now, despite only starting to learn at 26 or so.
- vintermann 3y ago
  For the two-language trick to work, both languages need to be equally useful for the kids. My sister and her Canadian husband tried having her speak to them in Norwegian, and him in English, but as soon as they understood that she could speak and understand English, but he could not speak or understand Norwegian, the kids switched to English. They still understand Norwegian, but they speak little of it and with a heavy English accent.
compsciphd 3y ago
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-c...
- _flat20 3y ago
  https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-chomskys-theory-of-language-wrong-pinker-weighs-in-on-debate/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-chomskys...
  - compsciphd 3y ago
    that's not much of a defense "Another problem with the claim that Chomsky’s theory of language “is being overturned” (as if it had ever been accepted, which is not true), is that it’s not clear what “Chomsky’s theory of language” refers to. He has proposed a succession of technical theories in syntax, and at the same time has made decades of informal remarks about language being innate, which have changed over the decades, and have never been precise enough to confirm or disconfirm."
    - foobarqux 3y ago
      There are a bunch of ideas that are more core and strongly supported (language is innate) which you use to explore more tenuous ideas about what the implications are and how they specifically manifest. Linguistics is an extremely nascent field compared to other sciences, Chomsky calls our stage of understanding "pre-Galilean", no one has claimed to have solved the basic questions yet so it isn't surprising that anything other than the core ideas are in constant flux. I haven't seen a good counter argument to the core ideas of universal grammar (or the minimalist program) and to refute an idea you need to actually present a counter-argument not simply say some sub-hypothesis has been refuted in the past so every fundamental idea has been refuted. See also https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007363 https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007363 The SciAM article you linked doesn't understand the arguments Chomsky makes when "refuting" them (e.g. they erroneously say that superficial differences between languages show that there is no universal grammar).
Anotheroneagain 3y ago
It's because you lose the ability to form new abstractions once your neocortex shuts down. The sensory areas begin shutting down quite early (around five) for most. You can only hear which category the sound belongs to + the error ("accent" in this case) and lack the ability to perceive finer nuances after it happens.
runlaszlorun 3y ago
My personal experience actually maps to this exactly and, when I’ve encountered it, it’s been a far more predictable rule than I would have thought. This is anecdotal I know, and I’ve even looked up the science on this and it seems like isn’t as black and white as my experience would indicate. But by now I’ve actually asked this of prob 20-30 people. All of them who came to the US before 12 (or attended American international schools overseas) had no accent. And all of them except two who had come here at 14 or later had at least a hint of an accent. There are the few like the one Hungarian I met who had no English other than spending 3 months in the US and whose English was so spot on I actually thought he was American. In my experience it does seem that there’s something about the brain’s plasticity that changes around 13ish. For example, I started programming young and also had took physics early at my local college and seem to internalize those much better than, for example, the follow-on physics course I took later on. But if anyone knows the science better feel free to correct me! A neuroscientist I am not…
- i2shar 3y ago
  This is well known and well studied. I highly recommend Sapolksy’s lecture on this: https://youtu.be/SIOQgY1tqrU?feature=shared https://youtu.be/SIOQgY1tqrU?feature=shared Start at 12:14 for the relevant topic, but the entire lecture is a good watch.
js2 3y ago
Relevant This American Life episode: > Jiayang Fan has this theory that because she's spent so much time thinking about her own accent when she speaks English, she believes that when she hears other Chinese-Americans speak, she can tell how old they were when they immigrated to the U.S. (7 minutes) > We test Jiayang Fan’s self-proclaimed special skill by having her listen to three Chinese-Americans speak, and then guess when they came to the U.S. (20 minutes) https://www.thisamericanlife.org/786/its-a-game-show https://www.thisamericanlife.org/786/its-a-game-show

omeid2 3y ago

> Up to age 12 or so you can learn a second language accent-free, but at that age an important developmental milestone cements phonemes in place. This is only true if the second language has sounds that you don't have in your first language.

dbcurtis 3y ago
Can you name a language pair where that works? I can’t think of one.
- iopq 3y ago
  If your native language is Ukrainian, when you learn Russian you don't get more phonemes, unless you count slightly different mouth positions of vowels.
- dataflow 3y ago
  https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/30633 https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/30633
mrtree 3y ago
[dead]
Tor3 3y ago
Oh, right. I forgot all those Dutch speed skaters who used to train in Norway a couple of generations back. Ard Schenk.. Kees Verkerk and many others. The majority of them learned Norwegian completely accent-free (you really had to listen to figure out they weren't native), despite not learning the language as kids. I figured that must have been because Dutch has such a variety of native sounds that it basically covers Norwegian language sounds.

dataflow 3y ago

> Up to age 12 or so you can learn a second language accent-free, but at that age an important developmental milestone cements phonemes in place. Seems... dubious? What about people who immigrate later (like in high school) and actually pick up the sounds and accents flawlessly? I've seen folks like that and I'm pretty sure they weren't in high school at age 12.

iopq 3y ago
Anecdotally, I know a Serbian who went to study to the US for a year in high school and has a perfect Californian accent.
- dataflow 3y ago
  There you go!
- criddell 3y ago
  > perfect Californian accent Oh man, I hope they sound like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCer2e0t8r8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCer2e0t8r8
  - iopq 3y ago
    Nah, he totally, like, sounds like a Valley girl
Tor3 3y ago
It's very very rare. Though it's not a cut-off at age 12, it just gets more and more rare (and takes longer) from around ten and older. Not sure if it's so much about the vocal tract, it's more about the brain's ability to hear sounds (my wife can't hear the difference between a number of sounds despite having lived in my country for many years and speaking the language well). In all my life I've only met two 100% accent-free speakers who learned my language as adults, and a third one who was almost there. Everyone else has something I can detect. But children.. a five-year old Japanese girl could repeat everything I said with perfect pronunciation and intonation, first try. Slightly exceptional girl perhaps, she learned the language in a very short time.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

Oh, rad, I didn't know accents worked like that! So if I speak to my kids in English, and my wife speaks to them in Finnish, they'll get to grow up with a disconcerting mix of newscaster English and northern Finnish drawl. I wonder if getting exposed to a bunch of languages as a kid is why I have a (relatively) mild accent in Finnish now, despite only starting to learn at 26 or so.

vintermann 3y ago
For the two-language trick to work, both languages need to be equally useful for the kids. My sister and her Canadian husband tried having her speak to them in Norwegian, and him in English, but as soon as they understood that she could speak and understand English, but he could not speak or understand Norwegian, the kids switched to English. They still understand Norwegian, but they speak little of it and with a heavy English accent.

compsciphd 3y ago

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-c...

_flat20 3y ago
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-chomskys-theory-of-language-wrong-pinker-weighs-in-on-debate/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-chomskys...
- compsciphd 3y ago
  that's not much of a defense "Another problem with the claim that Chomsky’s theory of language “is being overturned” (as if it had ever been accepted, which is not true), is that it’s not clear what “Chomsky’s theory of language” refers to. He has proposed a succession of technical theories in syntax, and at the same time has made decades of informal remarks about language being innate, which have changed over the decades, and have never been precise enough to confirm or disconfirm."
  - foobarqux 3y ago
    There are a bunch of ideas that are more core and strongly supported (language is innate) which you use to explore more tenuous ideas about what the implications are and how they specifically manifest. Linguistics is an extremely nascent field compared to other sciences, Chomsky calls our stage of understanding "pre-Galilean", no one has claimed to have solved the basic questions yet so it isn't surprising that anything other than the core ideas are in constant flux. I haven't seen a good counter argument to the core ideas of universal grammar (or the minimalist program) and to refute an idea you need to actually present a counter-argument not simply say some sub-hypothesis has been refuted in the past so every fundamental idea has been refuted. See also https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007363 https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007363 The SciAM article you linked doesn't understand the arguments Chomsky makes when "refuting" them (e.g. they erroneously say that superficial differences between languages show that there is no universal grammar).

Anotheroneagain 3y ago

It's because you lose the ability to form new abstractions once your neocortex shuts down. The sensory areas begin shutting down quite early (around five) for most. You can only hear which category the sound belongs to + the error ("accent" in this case) and lack the ability to perceive finer nuances after it happens.

runlaszlorun 3y ago

My personal experience actually maps to this exactly and, when I’ve encountered it, it’s been a far more predictable rule than I would have thought. This is anecdotal I know, and I’ve even looked up the science on this and it seems like isn’t as black and white as my experience would indicate. But by now I’ve actually asked this of prob 20-30 people. All of them who came to the US before 12 (or attended American international schools overseas) had no accent. And all of them except two who had come here at 14 or later had at least a hint of an accent. There are the few like the one Hungarian I met who had no English other than spending 3 months in the US and whose English was so spot on I actually thought he was American. In my experience it does seem that there’s something about the brain’s plasticity that changes around 13ish. For example, I started programming young and also had took physics early at my local college and seem to internalize those much better than, for example, the follow-on physics course I took later on. But if anyone knows the science better feel free to correct me! A neuroscientist I am not…

i2shar 3y ago
This is well known and well studied. I highly recommend Sapolksy’s lecture on this: https://youtu.be/SIOQgY1tqrU?feature=shared https://youtu.be/SIOQgY1tqrU?feature=shared Start at 12:14 for the relevant topic, but the entire lecture is a good watch.

js2 3y ago

Relevant This American Life episode: > Jiayang Fan has this theory that because she's spent so much time thinking about her own accent when she speaks English, she believes that when she hears other Chinese-Americans speak, she can tell how old they were when they immigrated to the U.S. (7 minutes) > We test Jiayang Fan’s self-proclaimed special skill by having her listen to three Chinese-Americans speak, and then guess when they came to the U.S. (20 minutes) https://www.thisamericanlife.org/786/its-a-game-show https://www.thisamericanlife.org/786/its-a-game-show