For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
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Re: For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
#2[deleted]
Re: For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
#3> each of whom had at least some degree of proficiency in five or more languages
Maybe the study clarifies this but the conclusion is exactly as I would expect if you use such a loose definition of polyglot.
Re: For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
#4> each of whom had at least some degree of proficiency in five or more languages Maybe the study clarifies this but the conclusion is exactly as I would expect if you use such a loose definition of polyglot.
Why? Would you expect something different for people who speak more languages, or speak them more proficiently?
The paper abstract ( https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/34/3/bhae049/7625489 ) does into a little more detail on their findings already.
Re: For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
#5> each of whom had at least some degree of proficiency in five or more languages Maybe the study clarifies this but the conclusion is exactly as I would expect if you use such a loose definition of polyglot.
Why? Would you expect something different for people who speak more languages, or speak them more proficiently? The paper abstract ( https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/34/3/bhae049/7625489 ) does into a little more detail on their findings already.
I mean, "some degree of proficiency" means the person self-reported "at least minimal proficiency." I could achieve minimal proficiency through a few hours of language tapes.
Re: For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
#6This makes sense. I have fairly good L2 German production, but I go from conversant to barely coherent when fatigued. My L1 English production diminishes, but not nearly as much. Likewise, my friends who speak English as an L2, even those who have spoken it with a strong command for over a decade, will struggle when very tired. Though we usually speak in English (her English is way better than my German), I've had a German friend ask me to switch a few times when she was very stressed or tired. She speaks at least five languages, with English being her most fluent after German.
That said, I'm most interested in the follow-up research mentioned at the end of the article.
> They also plan to study people who learned one language from infancy but moved to the United States at a very young age and began speaking English as their dominant language, while becoming less proficient in their native language, to help disentangle the effects of proficiency versus age of acquisition on brain responses.
Re: For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
#7If you learn any language as an adult, chances are you're never going to become as fluent as a native speaker, no matter how long you live in a second language environment. I say that as someone who has done it myself, and seen a lot of friends and family going through the same process.
Children are a different story. They can learn a language and start speaking just like native speakers, local accent and all, within months. It's absolutely amazing to see. My niece went to Australia when she was 5. She could speak Portuguese, our native language, as a native, obviously, and was very afraid to learn English. A few months later she was fluent in English and had the local accent from basically day 1 :D. I never absorbed the accent myself (moved to Australia as a 23 yo, over 20 years ago). She is 11 now and she now mostly speaks English, and it takes effort for her to answer to us in Portuguese when we try to get her to do so. Her dad, my brother, studied for years (even before moving) to try to speak somewhat fluent and correct English... but even now, more than 5 years later, he struggles. His wife barely speaks anything.
When I was new in the country, I could see that the younger the person, the faster and the easier it was to learn. No child I've seen ever had any difficulty learning a new language from scratch... they really are amazing at it!
I have been learning Swedish as I've moved to Sweden years ago, and I am in the same position as my brother is in Australia: I can only speak basic Swedish and I make mistakes and have to think a lot to say things coherently, specially without having to translate from English first - I've spoken English so long that it's my main language now... but I still understand Portuguese with less effort than English (and after just a few weeks speaking mostly Portuguese, as I do on some of my vacations, I become much better at speaking it again and words stop coming in English first, but that depends on the topic as well - if it's a topic I only ever speak about in English, like work, I find it horrible to speak about that in Portuguese!).
To think some people are able to learn 50 language (as mentioned in the post) blows my mind. I don't think I will ever speak my third language properly, let alone learn another dozen languages in the future :D
But this is another observation I've made over the years: a minority of people are very talented at languages and can indeed learn much more easily than others... though as far as I know, only children can learn within months and with perfect pronunciation.
Re: For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
#8> each of whom had at least some degree of proficiency in five or more languages Maybe the study clarifies this but the conclusion is exactly as I would expect if you use such a loose definition of polyglot.
I see your point.
I’m good at learning languages, and 100 hours of self-study would make me sound “fluent” to most Americans. That said, I would self-rate myself as “minimally proficient, mostly at short simple conversations”.
> Maybe the study clarifies this
They do:
“The mean self-reported proficiency for the highest-proficiency language was 20 out of the maximum score of 20 (SD = 0; note that for three participants, the highest-proficiency language was not their native language; Table S1), 18.3 for the second most proficient language (SD = 2.45, range: 10–20), 15.8 for the third most proficient language (SD = 3.36, range: 8–20), 13.3 for the fourth most proficient language (SD = 4.034, range: 7–20), 11.2 for the fifth most proficient language (SD = 4.23, range: 4–20), and—for individuals with proficiency in more than five languages—10.33 for the sixth most proficient language (SD = 3.99, range: 4–18).”
These were folks who self-reported (perhaps inaccurately, but still…) at a relatively high level of proficiency.
Re: For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
#9Presumably they’ve adjusted for actual use?
I grew up with German as first but find English (2nd) easier thanks to more use. And same for third lang (Afrikaans) - ease feels directly correlated to usage not order
Re: For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue
#10I’d be curious what would happen with my kids who grew up with pretty much equal levels of Spanish and English at home, although right now, they’re mere bilinguals (my ex-wife as a trilingual (Spanish-English-French), is a bit of a laggard among her family where many speak four or more languages).