vijayjohn wrote:Wait, did I never tell you? I work for Apple Maps. They're so secretive that that's all I'm allowed to say.
You told me a bit about the job, but not who you worked for? I'll keep asking you questions every so often and eventually learn all about your job!
vijayjohn wrote:There's a lot of Malayalam words whose meanings I have trouble remembering, but I'm actually starting to think that my Malayalam has reached a native-like level by now and that my issues with vocabulary are similar to native speakers of English learning/reviewing vocabulary, e.g. for the SAT or GRE (or some other university-level entrance exam). I've been talking to my parents and their relatives and friends in Malayalam as much as possible. This morning, I asked my dad flat-out (in Malayalam), "I pretty much know as much Malayalam by now as you do, right?" and he said, "Yes" (also in Malayalam). So today, at the end of the year, I've decided to finally (or at least tentatively) give myself four yellow stars for Malayalam in my profile.
Congrats!
vijayjohn wrote:I've also recently come to realize that although there's a theory that we acquire our first language rather than learning it, I have had to explicitly learn every single language I know (have I said this before? I feel like I have right now, but I don't remember when I did, if ever). I had to learn English (as in, with books and everything) and lose the Malayalam I had learned naturally from my parents. Then I had to spend years and years (re)learning Malayalam, and of course, I've explicitly studied all kinds of other languages since then.
Yeah I always wondered about that theory. Just because a child learns their first language in a different way than adults doesn't, to me, mean that they magically "acquired" it. Personally I think their brains just do a better job of passively processing and internalizing what they hear from those around them, than we as adults do. That's probably why native speakers can't usually tell you the rules of their language but can tell you what sounds incorrect.