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Learning a foreign language–before you're born
- make3 1y agofiguring out how to turn on brain plasticity and motivation networks, and just kill anxiety, would make life quite interesting. it's too bad that improvements in neuroscience are the absolute most insane Pandora's box, with dictatorships potentially rewiring their people's brain for compliance and whatnot, thought reading, thought implantation, all nightmarish
- roschdal 1y ago> dictatorships potentially rewiring their people's brain for compliance and whatnot They do this to everyone already.
- worthless-trash 1y agoYou say that like its a bad thing.
- bloqs 1y agowhen is it a good thing?
- worthless-trash 1y agoThere is a lot of people that left to their own devices would definitely be a net loss on society. By shepherding them to utility and societally beneficial behaviors they will not be a negative.
- make3 1y agoyou're the problem
- worthless-trash 1y agoYou best believe I'm definitely part of it.
- yapyap 1y agoYou wouldn’t want to fully kill anxiety though, in healthy doses it serves a purpose
- mierz00 1y agoThe first time I ever saw a psychologist this was one of the things they told me. Specifically, that athletes tend to do better when anxious. I think about this very often when I find myself very comfortable and under no stress, I can feel my performance dropping.
- teiferer 1y agoThe article explicitly mentions (towards the end) that this is far from evidence for language learning. But such a headline makes for clicks I guess.
- vaylian 1y agoIt's probably a learning process for sounds that are typical in a language. Later in life we can also distinguish different languages even though we don't speak them. Many non-English-speakers will still identify a song like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisencolinensinainciusol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisencolinensinainciusol as being English, even though it only uses sounds that are typical for English.
- dotancohen 1y agoI started learning Arabic at about 45, and many sounds I've learned to make with my mouth, but I can not distinguish with my ears when other people speak. For instance ك/ق or س/ص or د/ض. It's as if my brain is binning these sounds together and I can not retrain the binning.
- selimthegrim 1y agoWell, two of them you mentioned, ض/ص you can imagine the tongue making a bowl shape when you say them.
- cpfohl 1y agoSaying/hearing is not the same. Parent struggles to hear the differences and says they can pronounce them. Polish has a retroflex and palatalized “sh” pair of sounds (Sz vs ś) that I can pronounce perfectly but not clearly distinguish as a listener. I learned Polish when I was 5, moved back to the states when I was 11, barely used it for 7 years, and relearned it when I was 18. I don’t know if (at 5) I ever distinguished between the two. But I certainly struggle now.
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- endriju 1y agoI think about this quite often, as 2 of my kids were born in Ireland, but grew up elsewhere (Slavic country). I speak English with them, but so do some of my friends/neighbors with their kids. The other kids would seldom speak English though, while my kids seem to default to English somehow. Btw. they left Ireland when they were 2y and 9months old (now 9 and 7), never attended daycare there, were only exposed to English at grocery stores, doctors etc. My point is, the early exposure to the language seem to make huge difference. I'm sure it's a combination of other things too but I'd say it is definitely a strong factor. [edits: grammar]
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago> while my kids seem to default to English somehow. > I speak English with them You seem to know the answer already :) Kids regularly find "more reliable" adults and weight their opinion, manners and ideas higher than others, so if you're mainly speaking English to them, they'll default to trying to adopt to that, even if the main language is different all around them.
- Bengalilol 1y agoTitle is adult centric. All languages are foreign. It could have said: babies learn to recognize sounds before they are born.
- trallnag 1y agoEpigenetics?
- JimmyBuckets 1y agoLanguages are not the same as generic sounds to the human brain. Title is clickbaity but I also think it more or less communicates the point of the article
- Bengalilol 1y agoLanguages are not the same as generic sounds but they are all made of "generic sounds" (let's call them speech contrasts). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0163638384800223 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01636...
- JimmyBuckets 1y ago[flagged]
- NedF 1y ago> All languages are foreign. The babies are exposed to French the whole pregnancy and after, it's the foreign Hebrew/German they are testing for. This is a meaningless comment. The study is most likely bunk, but this nit pick is boring and wrong, they should have enough native French exposure already, it's the foreign language that matters.
- blueflow 1y agoHave you ever noticed that every other adult is seemingly unable to comprehend what being a kid is like?
- Thorrez 1y agoThe point of the study was to see if just a small amount of language exposure would be enough for the unborn baby to start learning it. And the answer was yes. For a native language, the unborn baby gets a lot of exposure. Only with a foreign language would an unborn baby get a small amount of exposure.
- trallnag 1y agoMaybe this is why I'm such an enjoyer of Russian bands like Aquarium and GrOb? My parents listening to them while I was in the cooker in 1996? Nevertheless, I'm basically illiterate when it comes to writing Russian.
- valeriaortiz 1y ago[dead]
- avazhi 1y agoYeah, this is a press F to doubt kind of situation, for many reasons: frontal cortex not developed, Broca’s and Werneke’s areas not developed, sounds not transmitting through a belly and through amniotic fluid into an undeveloped auditory canal, etc. Easy to spot bullshit that sounds more like an April Fools post than anything else.
- yocolo 1y ago[dead]
- cgsmith 1y agoI shared this article with my sister. Unfortunately I have lost faith in most people to read the full article. Within 30 seconds of sending the article she responds with "Sadly I don't know two languages! So we will focus on english together" To me the point is to toss as much at the brain as possible. Not limit yourself or your child with monoculture.
- Etheryte 1y agoA little empathy can go a long way. Perhaps your sister simply has different taste in reading than you do? For example, I opened the article and closed it pretty much right away because it has all the hallmarks of a clickbait nothing burger.
- thaumasiotes 1y agoA lot of people worry that exposing their baby to another language will somehow impair its ability to learn theirs. This isn't true, but people worry anyway. --- The result described in this press release isn't new. We already knew that neonates are able to distinguish languages they've been exposed to from languages that they haven't been. What this study adds is "we documented an existing known result, but with some pictures of brain activity". Brain activity is always good for an extra publication. Compare the classic paper Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf .
- yapyap 1y agoall languages are foreign before you’re born
- smeeger 1y agoi have a problem with these kinds of titles. you always see these titles that appear to contradict themselves or baffle people in order to bait people into clicking. the title should be “exposure to language in the womb appears to have lasting impact” or something like that. when i see baffle bait on HN it just makes me feel embarrassed. i think there should be a guideline against it honestly.