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From: Tobias Brox on 15 Dec 2005 20:00 [Dances With Crows] > It may not be just you. ISTR some studies of children in multilingual > households that found that kids could pick up languages very quickly and > well if 1, 2, or 3 languages were routinely spoken around them. If 4 or > more languages were used, kids learned less well and got confused. I know that there are quite some kids here in town growing up with 4 languages or more (immigrant parents having different mother tongues, speaking English between themself, and in addition the local language). We're going for Russian, Norwegian and English now, and I think we should stick to that. I hope we haven't messed him too much up with exposing him to Mandarin, German, Czech and Spanish as well. :-) I heard Mandarin is one of the easiest languages to pick up for a child. -- This signature has been virus scanned, and is probably safe to read Tobias Brox, 69?42'N, 18?57'E
From: Peter T. Breuer on 15 Dec 2005 20:05 In comp.os.linux.misc Tobias Brox <tobias(a)stud.cs.uit.no> wrote: > I believe that if an adult C knowing only language A, thrown into a > society where everybody knows the totally different language B and > nobody knows language A - and if there are no dictionaries nor books > available, then C will have serious troubles learning language B, > even if two persons are hired as full-time teachers for C. Hey, I learned spanish without studying it in any way, by going to live in the country. The same is true of many people all over the world, in many different countries and speaking many diferent languages (including all the taxi drivers in new york). The handicap is in NOT being surrounded by the speech - one's interaction is generally very confined. > I suppose that after four years C will know B even nearly as good as a > 4-year child. > Unfortunately, this is only belief not science. Such an experiment > would not be possible today, I'm afraid. One learns faster as one figures out more. Peter
From: Tobias Brox on 15 Dec 2005 20:55 [Peter T. Breuer] > Hey, I learned spanish without studying it in any way, by going to live > in the country. I don't refute that, and I also know people who have learnt quite a lot of languages while travelling. Two things; I believe you (and all the others) had plenty of "bridges". Almost anyone beeing in a foreign country is carrying a dictionary, no? Even if the majority can't communicate well in English, there are plenty of people in Spain that can speak English; I do not believe that you didn't get lots of help from such people. Also, I don't know anyone that have learned foreign languages in adult age that way with any kind of perfection. -- This signature has been virus scanned, and is probably safe to read Tobias Brox, 69?42'N, 18?57'E
From: Peter T. Breuer on 16 Dec 2005 03:10 In comp.os.linux.misc Tobias Brox <tobias(a)stud.cs.uit.no> wrote: > [Peter T. Breuer] >> Hey, I learned spanish without studying it in any way, by going to live >> in the country. > I don't refute that, and I also know people who have learnt quite a > lot of languages while travelling. > Two things; I believe you (and all the others) had plenty of > "bridges". Almost anyone beeing in a foreign country is carrying a > dictionary, no? Even if the majority can't communicate well in > English, there are plenty of people in Spain that can speak English; I > do not believe that you didn't get lots of help from such people. The ordinary people don't speak any english. Many don't speak anything intelligible to most people as far as I can tell. Yes, my colleagues spoke english, which meant I didn't have to learn any spanish for a lng time. I finally learned it by getting into situations where I had to speak it, when I found that the passive listening had resulted in my building up enough inner knowledge, unbeknownst to me, that I was fairly comfortable. About the same happened to me in french, which I "learned" at school and at home from the age of seven, but never spoke or was able to speak in any sense other than doing the exercises - but at about age fourteen I got tired of not speaking and being considered dumb in class, so I put my hand up and managed to make sentences with great difficulty, using the passive data absorbed by my brain, and then improved rapidly (many years later the french civil service qualified me to bid for professorships in the french university system, and I went for some of them giving the trial lectures and so on, but I had stopped studying french in the school sense at age sixteen - I daresay you could do the same in english). > Also, I don't know anyone that have learned foreign languages in adult > age that way with any kind of perfection. Oh, I'm pretty bad - because I'm largely uninterested in the language. But I do have at least one english colleague who is pretty close to perfect. I'm handicapped by not being able to do spanish "r"s - nor do I want to, since they sound horrible. There are a whole load of russian sounds I can't even hear the difference between, let alone speak (that "shsh", "shch", "chch" set of consonants). Peter
From: Tobias Brox on 16 Dec 2005 08:22
[Peter T. Breuer] > The ordinary people don't speak any english. Many don't speak anything > intelligible to most people as far as I can tell. Yes, my colleagues > spoke english, which meant I didn't have to learn any spanish for a lng > time. I have the same problem when I'm in Russia. I'm usually hanging around with people from the academic circles, then I simply don't have to speak Russian. Occationally I wander a bit around for myself, I pick up hitch-hikers and taxi customers, I'm pretty sure I would have been able to speak Russian pretty well by now if I had to, all the time. Still, it's very hard to get started just from scratch, in addition to exposure and practice I think it's really needed to look a bit in books and dictonaries, and ask people in English when beeing uncertain about things. In urban areas, I've never had problems finding people beeing able to speak English - neither in Spain, Russia nor China. It's just to look a bit around, find a young person with 'academical look', and the chances for a positive reply to "excuse me, do you speak English?" are pretty high. > There are a whole load of russian sounds I can't even hear the > difference between, let alone speak (that "shsh", "shch", "chch" set of > consonants). Yes, I also have difficulties. Russians in Norway also have problems with our "kj"-sound. Also, in Norwegian it's a quite distinct difference between 'y' and 'i', but most Russians have problems hearing that. I believe this, plus grammatical logics, plus certain concepts are much easier to learn for a young child than an adult. I believe I have read about scientific studies on this in New Scientist, though I can't back this up with references at the moment. -- This signature has been virus scanned, and is probably safe to read Tobias Brox, 69?42'N, 18?57'E |