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Random thoughts after skimming this... First of all, why had nobody mentioned linguistics as a field of study by the time I had finished school? I don't think

Random thoughts after skimming this... First of all, why had nobody mentioned linguistics as a field of study by the time I had finished school? I don't think I had learned anything at all in this area until after university, and it's so incredibly rich and fascinating. I reckon the kids lose a lot by having French/German/Spanish/etc without any form of linguistics involved, where they can have a little look at the language from a different perspective. Second, I take issue with the idea that you can't learn a language to fluency in adulthood. Like the guy in the article. I think it's really all economics: - When you're a kid, you have no opportunity cost. Taking the time to repeat something you pronounced wrong costs you nothing, because you're just playing. - When you're a little bit older, you want to socialize. You can socialize with your friends without speaking perfectly, and they find it awkward to correct you. - When you're an adult, you have to work. Most jobs don't require you to speak fluently, so you don't. Jobs that require native fluency will be taken by people who had low opp cost, aka natives or early learners. The only people who consciously try to learn a language to native level are the people in this article, who seem to be able to do it. To me they are the evidence that this would work, if only you defied your economic incentives. The obvious parallel is coding languages. You might have dabbled in Rust as a JS or cpp guy, but once someone is paying you to write it for a living, you take the time to actually learn the idiomatic ways to do things, the libraries to use, and so forth. It also seems obviously true that everyone can learn a bunch of languages. The old people in my family speak three languages, plus the local language of where they ended up as refugees, plus English. Most of them are not university educated, they just grew up with a bunch of languages. People who grew up at a language border tend to speak a a couple as well, and people who met a spouse from another place, eg I have a friend who learned Swedish due to moving over the bridge, and Spanish having married a Mexican. On the computer side, writing more than one language is probably by far the norm, who doesn't write python along with something else?

WillAdams 1y ago
As a counterpoint, my sister learned German in college, going on to get a Master's and becoming fluent --- rather envy her that and often wonder what would have happened if I had chosen (or been offered the choice of) a different language when making the selection when I enlisted. Similarly, the French Foreign Legion seems to be quite successful at teaching French.
layer8 1y ago
Programming languages are different because you don’t have the difficulties of matching pronunciation with writing systems, aspects like literal vs. metaphorical meanings and idiomatic expressions, irregular conjugations, and the usual n:m semantic relationship between words in different languages. Literal translation between programming languages often works, and in any case is independent of whether it’s idiomatic for the language or not, whereas in natural languages it quickly becomes unintelligible.
- mystified5016 1y ago
  That's an interesting point. The absolute hardest part (for me) about learning a language is listening comprehension. I can read, write, and speak French at a reasonable level, but I've never been able to understand a native speaker. It would take a lot of work and exposure to bring my mastery up to the level of my second-year written French. A large part of that is because spoken French is a hot mess compared to the written form, but I digress. A written language without a spoken form is a lot easier to grok. Especially programming languages and their limited grammar. But I think there's more to it than that. One of the reasons I find it trivial to learn programming languages is that code is code is code, no matter which flavor of sugar you shovel on top. The language is simply an abstraction for a logical construct. Skilled programmers work on that logical construct directly, and the language is nothing more than a means to an end. Also there's the fact that the written word is intransient. You have time to pause and search your memory or dictionary for a word. A spoken language requires extensive training to literally rewire your brain. You can't stop to ponder a word because it's gone before you can reconstruct a word from sounds. There's a very good reason that our brains have hardware to turn sounds into linguistic tokens. It's just too much processing to do at a conscious level at any reasonable speed.
BobbyTables2 1y ago
Learning multiple programming languages is practically trivial compared to human ones. Programming languages have a “vocabulary” of what, 20-50 keywords? And modern languages have extremely similar “grammar”… Mastering 500 (even irregular) verbs and 500 nouns of a human language is fairly useless for interacting with other humans beyond very limited scopes.

WillAdams 1y ago

As a counterpoint, my sister learned German in college, going on to get a Master's and becoming fluent --- rather envy her that and often wonder what would have happened if I had chosen (or been offered the choice of) a different language when making the selection when I enlisted. Similarly, the French Foreign Legion seems to be quite successful at teaching French.

layer8 1y ago

Programming languages are different because you don’t have the difficulties of matching pronunciation with writing systems, aspects like literal vs. metaphorical meanings and idiomatic expressions, irregular conjugations, and the usual n:m semantic relationship between words in different languages. Literal translation between programming languages often works, and in any case is independent of whether it’s idiomatic for the language or not, whereas in natural languages it quickly becomes unintelligible.

mystified5016 1y ago
That's an interesting point. The absolute hardest part (for me) about learning a language is listening comprehension. I can read, write, and speak French at a reasonable level, but I've never been able to understand a native speaker. It would take a lot of work and exposure to bring my mastery up to the level of my second-year written French. A large part of that is because spoken French is a hot mess compared to the written form, but I digress. A written language without a spoken form is a lot easier to grok. Especially programming languages and their limited grammar. But I think there's more to it than that. One of the reasons I find it trivial to learn programming languages is that code is code is code, no matter which flavor of sugar you shovel on top. The language is simply an abstraction for a logical construct. Skilled programmers work on that logical construct directly, and the language is nothing more than a means to an end. Also there's the fact that the written word is intransient. You have time to pause and search your memory or dictionary for a word. A spoken language requires extensive training to literally rewire your brain. You can't stop to ponder a word because it's gone before you can reconstruct a word from sounds. There's a very good reason that our brains have hardware to turn sounds into linguistic tokens. It's just too much processing to do at a conscious level at any reasonable speed.

BobbyTables2 1y ago

Learning multiple programming languages is practically trivial compared to human ones. Programming languages have a “vocabulary” of what, 20-50 keywords? And modern languages have extremely similar “grammar”… Mastering 500 (even irregular) verbs and 500 nouns of a human language is fairly useless for interacting with other humans beyond very limited scopes.