Re: History of French

From: Herman Rubin (hrubin_at_odds.stat.purdue.edu)
Date: 09/16/04 

Date: 16 Sep 2004 18:53:46 -0500

In article <f05gk0913gjqkshjlfvrgp36j8o5fgfrlf@4ax.com>,
Ruud Harmsen <realemailseesite01@rudhar.com> wrote:
>Wed, 15 Sep 2004 05:41:06 GMT: Nathan Sanders
><nsanders.DIE.SPAM@wso.williams.edu>: in sci.lang:

>>> Why do linguists cling to the notion that children are magic compared to
>>> adults?

>>Because they are. After the first 5-7 years of life, something
>>"switches off" in our brains, and capacity to learn language is
>>significantly diminished.

Or something gets set. The current MRI evidence is that
brain patterns are set, and they seem to be somewhat different
for different written languages.

>I don't believe that. I think the difference is that adults cannot
>afford to learn a language 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for several
>years. Children can and do. Everything they do also involves language
>learning. Adults could hardly come in a situation like that. One
>reason is they already have a word for most things, so they have less
>need to learn what things are called while dealing with them. Even in
>intensive submersion courses.

There are more problems than that. When I took French, there
was a list of the rules for French pronunciation, including
how to make the sounds which are in French but not at least
well approximated by English. I found these very clear, but
I would have had difficulty in making them just by listening.

My children could not make the German umlaut sounds until I
told them how. A short explanation and a small amount of
practice sufficed; how many hundreds of tries does a child
have to make to produce a speech sound? 

-- 
This address is for information only.  I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu         Phone: (765)494-6054   FAX: (765)494-0558

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