4 ms·

As others have said, immersion is the only way that you have control of. If you could de-age yourself, becoming a child would also help immensely, as child bra

As others have said, immersion is the only way that you have control of. If you could de-age yourself, becoming a child would also help immensely, as child brains are much better at learning languages.

academia_hack 1y ago
I hear this a lot (that children learn languages faster, or the corollary from various app ads that the best way to learn a language is to do so like a baby does), but is it actually true? It takes children a very very long time to learn a language and they're quite bad at it for many years. I've even met some teens/young adults who are only borderline literate in their native language after years of schooling and immersion.
Escapado 1y ago
I keep hearing this but sometimes I am not 100% sure if they are _much_ better so asking honestly: Is there any reputable quantitative analysis of this in the context of language learning? For example: I have spent the last two years in japan (I am in my 30s) and just got back to my home country. Went to a language school in the mornings there, immersed myself in the language a little but did not go all out on studying at home except for some Anki and the homework we got. I would spend 1 or 2 evenings per week talking to japanese people in my apartment building for practice. I just took the N2 exam before I left and just failed by 1 point, without any extra studying specifically for it. I could have conversations with people in my apartment complex, make phone calls to get stuff done and get the gist of most news I heard if they were not hyper-specific and I can read easy novels. If I open the NHK news website I am still lost on a bunch of stuff and have to look up a lot. But again, that was 2 years and I was neither particularly good nor bad compared to the other fellow students and I did not go all out full immersion - lots of my interactions were still with foreigners in the afternoon. Anyway, I for sure know more kanji than a 2nd grade elementary school student. I also can say more than a two year old kid. I know of course children learn to navigate a language without explicit study in their first years of life but the point still stands. If time spent studying was equal, how much of a difference remains?
- npinsker 1y ago
  I looked into this once and couldn't find anything -- after all, vanishingly few people practice total, 100% immersion in their new language, where you must either speak or not get what you want. Based on my experience I don't believe it's true.
- collinmcnulty 1y ago
  My strong suspicion is that children just have no responsibilities and are socially allowed to not be able to talk while everyone will speak at their level with a great deal of patience.
  - luckydata 1y ago
    speaking to a child at their level is the best way to keep them from speaking well. I never did it with my son and it didn't hold him back one bit. Everyone remarks his incredible vocabulary and language skills for his age. IMHO holding back with kids is an anti-pattern.
    - zdragnar 1y ago
      My aunt used baby talk with my cousin so much she accidentally invented a new language with him, and he ended up needing a bit of speech therapy to get back to a "standard" level of English for his age. Perhaps coincidentally, he is now fluent in more languages than anyone else I personally know, and leveraged that into a consulting career.
  - jamager 1y ago
    Yes. Also, they don't need much vocabulary, no grammar concerns, no reading/writing. We much overestimate how well kids learn, and how "easy" is for them. Many kids have language difficulties, and they usually know, and they don't feel too great about it.
- laurieg 1y ago
  I think you're right on this one. Children have an immense amount of practice time, support and social pressure to learn a language. The only thing that seems to be different between adult and child learners is acquiring specific sounds/tones. I know many good speakers of English who cannot distinguish L/R sounds. I basically cannot hear pitch accent differences in Japanese despite having spoken it for over a decade.
xormapmap 1y ago
The idea that child brains are better at learning languages is a myth. Adults struggle with languages because traditional language education is not fit for purpose. If you took a child and isolated them in such a way that they never got comprehensible input, and instead only gave them traditional language lessons (think textbooks, grammar drills) - they too would struggle. The good news is that if you take an adult and give them comprehensible input like you would a child, they will learn at least as effectively as a child.
- ThrownOffGame 1y ago
  What about pronunciation? Many of the assertions I've heard about adults in a foreign language is about our ability to recognize, differentiate, and reproduce the different phonemes, many which do not exist in our language. These phonemes are even more difficult to recognize when we're not conversing face-to-face and in-person! So if you're listening to "comprehensible input" if it's on audio, or video voice-over, it is much inferior to seeing/feeling/hearing a native speaker make sound-shapes with their mouth! I made many efforts to imitate my Spanish teachers in my youth, in terms of pronounciation, mouth shapes, accent and emphasis, etc. I credit the in-person instruction with achieving a nearly fluent comprehension and ability to make myself understood. So the argument goes: if an adult is set in their ways and knows a particular set of phonemes, (or even tones, etc.) is it more difficult than a blank-slate child who has no prejudice about hearing and learning new sounds?
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    > if an adult is set in their ways and knows a particular set of phonemes, (or even tones, etc.) is it more difficult than a blank-slate child who has no prejudice about hearing and learning new sounds? The answer is sort of "yes". If an adult is set in their ways and knows a particular set of phonemes, they will have a more difficult time with the phonemes of a new language than an infant would. However, "learning new sounds" is not a correct way to think about it. You're born knowing all the sounds. You unlearn the differences between certain ones. If you, as an adult, have unlearned a difference that matters in your target language (because it didn't matter in your native language), you will have trouble with that difference. An infant can't have this problem. Note that the cutoff point where an immersed child will fail to learn the pronunciation of a new language "automatically" is somewhere in the late teens, though.
DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
Children spend pretty much every waking hour - every day - learning language. If you were to put in that amount of constant effort, you might also learn language just as effectively as a child. Okay, probably not just as effectively, but I think people underestimate the amount of effort children put into learning language. That's practically their job for the first 5+ years of life. The main reason why people fail to learn languages is that they do not put in enough time. There is no magic shortcut, despite countless language-learning programs claiming they have one. You have to spend a significant amount of time every day working at it. Having good resources (e.g., access to native speakers, competent instruction, a flashcard app like Anki) is important, but again, people fail mostly because they don't dedicate enough time towards the language.

academia_hack 1y ago

I hear this a lot (that children learn languages faster, or the corollary from various app ads that the best way to learn a language is to do so like a baby does), but is it actually true? It takes children a very very long time to learn a language and they're quite bad at it for many years. I've even met some teens/young adults who are only borderline literate in their native language after years of schooling and immersion.

Escapado 1y ago

I keep hearing this but sometimes I am not 100% sure if they are _much_ better so asking honestly: Is there any reputable quantitative analysis of this in the context of language learning? For example: I have spent the last two years in japan (I am in my 30s) and just got back to my home country. Went to a language school in the mornings there, immersed myself in the language a little but did not go all out on studying at home except for some Anki and the homework we got. I would spend 1 or 2 evenings per week talking to japanese people in my apartment building for practice. I just took the N2 exam before I left and just failed by 1 point, without any extra studying specifically for it. I could have conversations with people in my apartment complex, make phone calls to get stuff done and get the gist of most news I heard if they were not hyper-specific and I can read easy novels. If I open the NHK news website I am still lost on a bunch of stuff and have to look up a lot. But again, that was 2 years and I was neither particularly good nor bad compared to the other fellow students and I did not go all out full immersion - lots of my interactions were still with foreigners in the afternoon. Anyway, I for sure know more kanji than a 2nd grade elementary school student. I also can say more than a two year old kid. I know of course children learn to navigate a language without explicit study in their first years of life but the point still stands. If time spent studying was equal, how much of a difference remains?

npinsker 1y ago
I looked into this once and couldn't find anything -- after all, vanishingly few people practice total, 100% immersion in their new language, where you must either speak or not get what you want. Based on my experience I don't believe it's true.
collinmcnulty 1y ago
My strong suspicion is that children just have no responsibilities and are socially allowed to not be able to talk while everyone will speak at their level with a great deal of patience.
- luckydata 1y ago
  speaking to a child at their level is the best way to keep them from speaking well. I never did it with my son and it didn't hold him back one bit. Everyone remarks his incredible vocabulary and language skills for his age. IMHO holding back with kids is an anti-pattern.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    My aunt used baby talk with my cousin so much she accidentally invented a new language with him, and he ended up needing a bit of speech therapy to get back to a "standard" level of English for his age. Perhaps coincidentally, he is now fluent in more languages than anyone else I personally know, and leveraged that into a consulting career.
- jamager 1y ago
  Yes. Also, they don't need much vocabulary, no grammar concerns, no reading/writing. We much overestimate how well kids learn, and how "easy" is for them. Many kids have language difficulties, and they usually know, and they don't feel too great about it.
laurieg 1y ago
I think you're right on this one. Children have an immense amount of practice time, support and social pressure to learn a language. The only thing that seems to be different between adult and child learners is acquiring specific sounds/tones. I know many good speakers of English who cannot distinguish L/R sounds. I basically cannot hear pitch accent differences in Japanese despite having spoken it for over a decade.

xormapmap 1y ago

The idea that child brains are better at learning languages is a myth. Adults struggle with languages because traditional language education is not fit for purpose. If you took a child and isolated them in such a way that they never got comprehensible input, and instead only gave them traditional language lessons (think textbooks, grammar drills) - they too would struggle. The good news is that if you take an adult and give them comprehensible input like you would a child, they will learn at least as effectively as a child.

ThrownOffGame 1y ago
What about pronunciation? Many of the assertions I've heard about adults in a foreign language is about our ability to recognize, differentiate, and reproduce the different phonemes, many which do not exist in our language. These phonemes are even more difficult to recognize when we're not conversing face-to-face and in-person! So if you're listening to "comprehensible input" if it's on audio, or video voice-over, it is much inferior to seeing/feeling/hearing a native speaker make sound-shapes with their mouth! I made many efforts to imitate my Spanish teachers in my youth, in terms of pronounciation, mouth shapes, accent and emphasis, etc. I credit the in-person instruction with achieving a nearly fluent comprehension and ability to make myself understood. So the argument goes: if an adult is set in their ways and knows a particular set of phonemes, (or even tones, etc.) is it more difficult than a blank-slate child who has no prejudice about hearing and learning new sounds?
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > if an adult is set in their ways and knows a particular set of phonemes, (or even tones, etc.) is it more difficult than a blank-slate child who has no prejudice about hearing and learning new sounds? The answer is sort of "yes". If an adult is set in their ways and knows a particular set of phonemes, they will have a more difficult time with the phonemes of a new language than an infant would. However, "learning new sounds" is not a correct way to think about it. You're born knowing all the sounds. You unlearn the differences between certain ones. If you, as an adult, have unlearned a difference that matters in your target language (because it didn't matter in your native language), you will have trouble with that difference. An infant can't have this problem. Note that the cutoff point where an immersed child will fail to learn the pronunciation of a new language "automatically" is somewhere in the late teens, though.

DiogenesKynikos 1y ago

Children spend pretty much every waking hour - every day - learning language. If you were to put in that amount of constant effort, you might also learn language just as effectively as a child. Okay, probably not just as effectively, but I think people underestimate the amount of effort children put into learning language. That's practically their job for the first 5+ years of life. The main reason why people fail to learn languages is that they do not put in enough time. There is no magic shortcut, despite countless language-learning programs claiming they have one. You have to spend a significant amount of time every day working at it. Having good resources (e.g., access to native speakers, competent instruction, a flashcard app like Anki) is important, but again, people fail mostly because they don't dedicate enough time towards the language.