Re: Why can't daddy?

Claudio Grondi wrote:

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
Claudio Grondi wrote:

Harlan Messinger wrote:

Ruud Harmsen wrote:


Wed, 10 May 2006 07:51:36 +0800: Lee Sau Dan
<danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:


"Claudio" == Claudio Grondi <claudio.grondi@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Claudio> My own experience from trying to check myself if it is
Claudio> true, that generally children learn faster than adults
Claudio> is, that adults are often able to learn much faster than
Claudio> children can.

How much time a day does a child spend on learning a language?


14 hours a day?


How much time a day can an adult afford on learning a language?


20 hours a week, if an intensive course, otherwise 3.


Everyone seems to be assuming that the L2 learning being discussed is in
a classroom context. How does that differ from the case of people who
move to a place where they don't speak the local language and pick it up
through daily living and just getting by?

In this context a funny thing I experienced once comes to my mind:

As I was fishing at a lake at night I have met a guy working for some
years as a foreign worker in a mining company there. Happy to have
someone to talk to I started a conversation in the language of the
country he was living and working, but this failed due to as he stated
(translated here to English in a manner to give the right impression
about his language skills):
"No time ... language ... to learn - few words ... at work ... need -
... native friends ... no have."
Ok, I thought, lets talk to each other using his native language, but
... this also failed! He stated (translated to English):
"many years ... ago, speaking ... language - can't ... it anymore."
So we were sitting next to each other for hours and enjoyed fishing in
this nice silent night feeling to understand each other without any words.

I think, that in a standard case (i.e. usual situation) an adult doesn't
get enough attention from others and doesn't have the time to percept
the language, especially when working hard for living. This is in my
eyes the main reason why many foreign workers even after twenty, thirty
years don't speak the language of their host country very well, where
their children (also these which were 10-12 years old when changed the
country of living) do that mostly even without any foreign accent after
they learn it at school they have been forced to visit there.
So the standard case to progress in learning a new language for an adult
is to force himself to take the time and get the necessary attention in
context of a self-study or a kind of classroom situation.
A child gets usually corrected when using wrong words or phrases - the
adult is confronted with impatience or a laugh as the person he speaks
to is usually not ready to put the efforts in correcting his language
mistakes. Lucky are these ones who are in deep love with a foreigner and
living in his native country for a while - they are getting enough
attention from the partner and his friends to pick up the language
trough daily living with the loved one and his companions (friends,
family, co-worker, etc.).


If I were to detail all the grammatical errors in your (perfectly
understandable) message, do you think that your next message of similar
length will contain any fewer errors? or even that it will not contain
the same errors found here?

As you will be probably the only one ready to do it for me, it would
maybe lower my error rate in similar sentences in my directly following
next messages, but I doubt it will have a really sustainable effect on
me considered in terms of months or years.

Exactly. One of the greatest linguists ever, who died on December 31 of
last year at the age of 81, lived in Chicago for 50 years; she was a
master not only of Akkadian, but of Sumerian and Elamite as well; yet
her Hungarian accent never diminished, and she confessed to never being
able to master certain aspects of English grammar (restrictive vs.
non-restrictive relatives, in fact). This despite her also being a keen
analyst of poetry in all her adoptive languages (as a student in Paris,
she and her classmates translated a Babylonian epic into perfect
alexandrines ... though she would never let anyone see the ms.).

L1 and L2 acquisition are qualitatively different.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Why cant daddy?
    ... Claudio> My own experience from trying to check myself if it is ... How much time a day does a child spend on learning a language? ... country he was living and working, but this failed due to as he stated ... that in a standard case an adult doesn't ...
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  • Re: Why cant daddy?
    ... Claudio> is, that adults are often able to learn much faster than ... How does that differ from the case of people who move to a place where they don't speak the local language and pick it up through daily living and just getting by? ... I think, that in a standard case an adult doesn't get enough attention from others and doesn't have the time to percept the language, especially when working hard for living. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Why cant daddy?
    ... Claudio> it is still the case, ... Claudio> English, being at its top condition after my longer (six ... The tongues had been tuned to the German sounds so that I ... I know from my own experience with a Chinese PhD candidate I was a tutor of, that finally he has beaten me on grammar issues of the language. ...
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  • Re: Why cant daddy?
    ... Claudio> I think, that in a standard case ... Claudio> doesn't have the time to percept the language, ... because her questionnaire was in German and I look Asian. ...
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  • Re: Why cant daddy?
    ... I believe any adult taking an intensive course of a second language X ... In my own case it turned out, that I haven't got the time to get my second language pronunciation perfect and it would even not make much sense to try it, as there is no advantage worth the effort and no language course where the course instructor is _really_ capable of teaching adults the right pronunciation and language "melody". ...
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