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>It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't exist in t

by alex_c 14y ago

>It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't exist in the learner's native language. Do you think people who grow up bilingual have an advantage in this area? Not necessarily just because they have a larger set of phonemes to fall back on, but because they may find it easier to notice differences and recognize new ones? ("this is language specific" understanding vs. "this is how it always is") Also, your comment about reading touches on a project I've been working on (and have shelved for about a year). If you don't mind I'd love to hear what you think, I'll dust it off and send you an email once I get the prototype up and running again.

tokenadult 14y ago
Alex, yes, please feel free to follow up about our shared interests. Perhaps some of my writing on those interests, updated after I read the sources you suggest, will show up either here on HN as FAQ posts or as new pages on my personal website, or both. To answer your direct question, my anecdotal observation is that people who are native bilinguals enjoy a life-long advantage in further language learning, which makes sense on theoretical grounds. I'm not sure to what degree this hypothesis has been put to the test in the research literature on language acquisition, some of which I have read.
philsnow 14y ago
I have read a tiny bit of the literature on language acquisition, and what I have read says that mere exposure to the phonemes of a language (even absent any attempts to actually teach that language) during early years (definitely before puberty but with greater effect between the ages of 1 and 6) makes it easier to form those phonemes later in life. That said, I think every second-language learner (even those who will never learn a third language) could benefit from being taught the entire international phonetic alphabet, to aid them in mentally placing (inside the mouth) the sounds they're supposed to be making. Knowing the difference between 'a' (unrounded open front) and 'ɐ' (unrounded near-open central) vowels helped me when learning the Cantonese phonetic system. Just knowing all the sounds that are "available" and knowing which of those sounds the target language uses is very useful.

by alex_c 14y ago

tokenadult 14y ago

Alex, yes, please feel free to follow up about our shared interests. Perhaps some of my writing on those interests, updated after I read the sources you suggest, will show up either here on HN as FAQ posts or as new pages on my personal website, or both. To answer your direct question, my anecdotal observation is that people who are native bilinguals enjoy a life-long advantage in further language learning, which makes sense on theoretical grounds. I'm not sure to what degree this hypothesis has been put to the test in the research literature on language acquisition, some of which I have read.

philsnow 14y ago

I have read a tiny bit of the literature on language acquisition, and what I have read says that mere exposure to the phonemes of a language (even absent any attempts to actually teach that language) during early years (definitely before puberty but with greater effect between the ages of 1 and 6) makes it easier to form those phonemes later in life. That said, I think every second-language learner (even those who will never learn a third language) could benefit from being taught the entire international phonetic alphabet, to aid them in mentally placing (inside the mouth) the sounds they're supposed to be making. Knowing the difference between 'a' (unrounded open front) and 'ɐ' (unrounded near-open central) vowels helped me when learning the Cantonese phonetic system. Just knowing all the sounds that are "available" and knowing which of those sounds the target language uses is very useful.