Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

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wannaknow
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Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby wannaknow » 2017-06-21, 10:09

I wonder if it's possible for a post-pubertal person to aquire a language the same way as you got your mother tongue. For exempel, through just watching tv shows and skip grammar and vocabulary exercises. What do linguists say about this method? Does it work and are the results the same as for a 3-years old native speaker?

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Re: Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby kevin » 2017-06-21, 10:48

A three years old native speaker hasn't just watched a few TV shows, but they have had three years, 24 hours per day, full immersion without any option to switch to a different language to communicate. Under the same circumstances, I don't see why it shouldn't be possible, but it seems like a horribly inefficient way to learn a language. Who wants, or can afford, not being able to communicate for three years, just to get to this very basic level?

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Re: Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby Estrella » 2017-06-21, 17:56

Don't forget that people help children learn how to speak. They will show a baby a spoon and say "spoon". They will simplify their sentences when they speak to a toddler. They will correct the child when the child uses the wrong word. Unfortunately, TV shows won't do that for you. And then the child reaches that age and goes to school and learn grammar, vocabulary and all the boring stuff. :P

הענט

Re: Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby הענט » 2017-06-23, 11:28

It's a myth that kids can learn languages faster than adults. They may master the pronunciation faster, but their vocabulary is always very limited. Like Wendy Vo 'The Miracle' who spoke very basic sentences in her video presentation.

I think the problem is with the way languages are taught. Kids learn to speak, read and write first and then they learn about the grammar. But adults do it the other way around. They look puzzled when they're trying to figure out all the Spanish verb forms instead of using the most common ones and learning the rest later on. They also try to write and read Chinese before they can even pronounce the words. That's pretty inefficient IMHO.

But adults can learn a language much faster if they dedicate themselves. Now surely kids can learn a language fast, but when I was a kid I used to watch Pokémon on RTL II . I managed to understand everything (except maybe allerdings or the word congratulations which was in English) but nowadays my vocab's very limited, because what was enough for a kids show is not enough now. I can have conversations in German but I would struggle to write this reply in it.

My Swedish ex said she could speak Bosnian fluently when she was a kid but at what level if she can't say a word of it now?

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Re: Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby linguoboy » 2017-06-23, 14:30

Estrella wrote:Don't forget that people help children learn how to speak. They will show a baby a spoon and say "spoon". They will simplify their sentences when they speak to a toddler. They will correct the child when the child uses the wrong word. Unfortunately, TV shows won't do that for you. And then the child reaches that age and goes to school and learn grammar, vocabulary and all the boring stuff. :P

As I recall, the evidence suggests that this sort of explicit instruction has little impact on how quickly and accurately children acquire language. Children encouraged to speak in this way will begin producing utterances earlier, but not more accurately than those who begin speaking later.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

IpseDixit

Re: Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-06-24, 10:45

Dr. House wrote:It's a myth that kids can learn languages faster than adults. They may master the pronunciation faster, but their vocabulary is always very limited.


Do you have any sources to back this up? I'm not an expert myself but I've heard numerous anecdotes of kids being immersed in a foreign-language-speaking environment and picking up the language very quickly. Moreover, isn't it obvious that kids would have a limited vocabulary? After all, their entire life experience is very limited. At least to me, things like morphology and syntax (and how good you are at picking up those two) seems to be way more important than the number of words you know and AFAIK, kids are incredibly good at absorbing the structure of a new language faultlessly.

Anyway, nobody seems to have pointed out that you can't learn a language as children do simply because you don't have the brain of child.

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linguoboy
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Re: Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby linguoboy » 2017-06-25, 2:07

IpseDixit wrote:Do you have any sources to back this up? I'm not an expert myself but I've heard numerous anecdotes of kids being immersed in a foreign-language-speaking environment and picking up the language very quickly.

Anecdotes are nice, but they're no substitute for linguistic studies.

Again, as kevin points out, it's a question of comparing like with like. First language acquisition is total immersion with no alternative communication channels available. It is extremely rare for adults to put in that sort of position in this day and age. Even second language acquisition is a different story for children than adults. Most of the anecdotes about rapid acquisition I've heard also feature total immersion for at least 7-10 hrs a day (depending on the length of the school day and whether the child spends time with allophone classmates afterwards). How quickly do you think you might acquire a language under those conditions?

IpseDixit wrote:Anyway, nobody seems to have pointed out that you can't learn a language as children do simply because you don't have the brain of child.

No one has demonstrated why that is even relevant.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Re: Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby janet090 » 2017-08-25, 5:04

I am also confused about that. These discussions are very helpful.

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Saim
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Re: Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby Saim » 2017-08-25, 9:10

wannaknow wrote:I wonder if it's possible for a post-pubertal person to aquire a language the same way as you got your mother tongue. For exempel, through just watching tv shows


No-one would be able to learn their mother tongue purely through TV shows. Plomp a newborn in front of a TV for several years without any other meaningful human interaction and if they even survive it they're not likely to speak much better than if they had been raised by wolves.

Karavinka

Re: Aquire language the same way as children do- possible?

Postby Karavinka » 2017-09-02, 11:28

Human brains can be lazy asses. Just showering yourself with hours and hours of TV will be unlikely to get you there just by itself.

When children learn their first language, they have a pretty compelling reason to do so: they need to understand what adults around them are saying and say something back if they want to get a cookie! That's a good reason for the brain to think this "language" thing is important and worth learning.

You actually can experience something similar as an adult. You are less likely to forget a word or a phrase if you have used it in the real life (say, while traveling) and it helped you in a way. One of the reasons why people learn faster when they're physically in the target language speech community.

But if you're learning a foreign language with "pure immersion" at home, not only you have the power to shut off the TV, whether you understand what's going on or not does not help with your chance of survival. The brain may as well take it as useless noise to filter out.

So.. I guess it's possible in the right context, say, if you are captured as a prisoner of war in a country where nobody speaks your language, you're surrounded by that language 24/7, and for some reason they're kind and caring enough not only to feed you but often even help learning the language.


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