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How multi-lingual children learn languages

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Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#11

Post by shared4you »

realrocker wrote: post #5

Let me give you another tiny sample group for the study. Indians! I started learning Hindi, English and Bengali when I was four. Most of my fellow citizens(middle class) were in the same boat because there are 22 official languages here in India. After college I moved to South India, where there is another myriad family of completely different languages. I can barely keep up with them. Does it improve or harms my abi…

    > 18 official languages here in India
Correction: it's 22. Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_languages_of_India

Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#12

Post by zenith2037 »

Here's a thought from someone who's semi bi-lingual from a very young age. (Semi because I'm not completely fluent, but proficient.

Some people when speaking another language that's not native, will 'image' the english word when talking. Like, saying "ni hao" but in their mind it will be 'hello'.

However for people who've learned it from a young age, 'ni hao' is simply 'ni hao' and 'hello' is 'hello' but the meanings we recognize as the same. I don't remember the source to this, but take it as you will.

Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#13

Post by Causalien »

As a multilingual speaker (English, Mandarin, French, all fluent) who eventually let English take over as my main language here's what I think.

If you learned two languages since birth you develop two language sites. I read somewhere that the Wernicke's area is divided into two if you do this as well. Perhaps auditory memories are triggered based on language as well. You think and have internal dialogues in different languages which triggers completely different memories. This explains why one might lose one language, but keep the other one.

Whereas, for learning languages later in life, a person tends to translate the new language into the main language. The internal dialogue is always in the form of the main language. The memories are one contiguous experience based on one language. Often, when self examining during meditations, it is hard to make out what language is used. This explains why a brain problem will wipe out sections of speaking ability across all languages because they are all eventually translated from the main language.

Like people who started with C, we tend to think in C and see how new languages add on to C and just remembers the new rules of the new language relative to C instead of having a completely new life experience from ground up of learning the new programming language.

In short: Bane said: "I was born in darkness, you simply adapted"

Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#14

Post by nobodysfool »

Causalien wrote: post #13

As a multilingual speaker (English, Mandarin, French, all fluent) who eventually let English take over as my main language here's what I think. If you learned two languages since birth you develop two language sites. I read somewhere that the Wernicke's area is divided into two if you do this as well. Perhaps auditory memories are triggered based on language as well. You think and have internal dialogues in different…

I think you can come to false conclusions quite a bit if all you are basing your research off of is your own intuition. I learned Russian, and as a native English speaker it was difficult, but I can think in Russian, and I don't translate Russian into English in my head. There are some things I say in Russian that I would have no idea how to properly translate into English. The first programming language I learned was basic, but I don't think 'oh this in python is like x in basic'.

Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#15

Post by jtheory »

Natsu wrote: post #10

The point about keeping languages separate is interesting. I know bits and pieces of many different languages, but I only know two reasonably well. I studied French for about six years in high school and college, but I haven't had much occasion to use it since and am somewhat rusty. Conversely, Japanese I hear quite a bit of these days so my experience with it is much more recent. But sometimes when I try to remember…

I have similar experiences -- I spoke only English at home as a child, then studied French starting in 6th grade.

Nowadays I'm fairly fluent in French (and live in France, so I use it regularly), though nowhere near my level of comfort in English, and I know scraps of various other languages to get by when traveling -- but it seems like my brain is inclined to store words in just two buckets -- "native" vs. "foreign".

Often when I'm trying to come up with a word in any other language, the French word pops into my head first, I discard it, then I'll get the right word in German or whatever (if I know it). If I'm trying to say something in Spanish or Italian, I sometimes don't realize that I don't know the right word, because the French word in the right accent (and possibly modified ending) sounds about right.

My wife grew up truly multilingual, though, with 2 languages at home, a 3rd as the medium of education, and friends who all spoke a 4th among themselves -- and she has less of a problem keeping them separate (including new languages she's been picking up as an adult).

Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#16

Post by pasquinelli »

Causalien wrote: post #13

As a multilingual speaker (English, Mandarin, French, all fluent) who eventually let English take over as my main language here's what I think. If you learned two languages since birth you develop two language sites. I read somewhere that the Wernicke's area is divided into two if you do this as well. Perhaps auditory memories are triggered based on language as well. You think and have internal dialogues in different…

taking it to computer languages seems iffy to me. i started with basic, and in no way do i think in basic. in fact, i wouldn't say i think in any particular programming language. if i were to venture a guess, i would say this is because no computer language is anyone's first language. when we write a program, we're reducing our entire natural reasoning about the program into abstractions that fit the language we're using, and then translating those abstractions into actual code.

Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#17

Post by llgrrl_ »

zenith2037 wrote: post #12

Here's a thought from someone who's semi bi-lingual from a very young age. (Semi because I'm not completely fluent, but proficient. Some people when speaking another language that's not native, will 'image' the english word when talking. Like, saying "ni hao" but in their mind it will be 'hello'. However for people who've learned it from a young age, 'ni hao' is simply 'ni hao' and 'hello' is 'hello' but the meanings…

That theory sounds bad, man. I'm an bi-lingual Asian from a relatively older age compared to you (10+) and have been living in the US for quite some time.

The 'imagine' part only happens when one is still relatively bad at the language that person is trying to speak. I wouldn't say that I 'imagine' or have any intermediate representation when I speak in English.

Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#18

Post by jacalata »

There are some languages that are so difficult that they have never been successfully learned as a foreign language and are only spoken by native speakers who started at birth.

I am enormously skeptical of this claim, and would like to see evidence for it - and it would have to show that people had made significant efforts to learn the language, had access to a level of resources similar to those available for other languages, etc. I suspect that the examples that would actually come up would be some dying tribal language where nobody has been able to learn it properly from the remaining three grandparents who speak it, which is in no way evidence for 'the language was simply too difficult'.

Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#19

Post by ethanpoole »

The difference between L1 and L2 language competency is deeper than whether you acquired multiple languages in "parallel" or "serially". The competency level, whether you are fluent or near-fluent, is based on the critical-learning period which ends roughly at the onset of puberty. Nothing rules out acquiring multiple L1s in serial, which I suspect to be the case in many instances of multilingual children.

Moreover, the author's anecdotal support is in contradiction with the fact that children do acquire multiple languages largely without problem. There are effects of one language on the other, but they are different in natural, and far less frequent, to crossover effects in L2 language learning, e.g. learning Spanish is high school.

Re: How multi-lingual children learn languages

#20

Post by ethanpoole »

jacalata wrote: post #18

There are some languages that are so difficult that they have never been successfully learned as a foreign language and are only spoken by native speakers who started at birth. I am enormously skeptical of this claim, and would like to see evidence for it - and it would have to show that people had made significant efforts to learn the language, had access to a level of resources similar to those available for other…

Although you are right to be skeptical of this claim because near-native competency is always possible, L2 competency (learning a language as a foreign language) will always be less than L1 competency (native). For instance, there are grammatical constructions with very low input frequency about which native speakers have strong intuitions, which L2 speakers will not have. The difference in L1 and L2 intuitions may be remarkably subtle, often semantic/pragmatic, but you don't have to work in the linguistic community for long to come across them.
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