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And that’s how my infantilization fetish made me a polyglot.
Unrelated but I love your username
Awww, ty! 🥰
Linguists are still divided on this topic, called the “Critical Period” hypothesis - the question of whether there is a “Critical Period” during childhood when children naturally acquire language better than adults.
The data in favor cited in pop articles often comes from “feral children” like Genie, but as Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world mentioned, how much of this inability is due to natural brain development and how much is due to years of unimaginable trauma is hard to know.
Other research has cited brain plasticity differences and brain matter changes that occur during puberty that seems like it may be linked to language acquisition.
Again, however, the counterpoint of “It takes ten-ish years of pure immersion for children to learn a language, and how many adults actually do that” is pretty frequent.
I’m still undecided about what I think - maybe something in the middle, like “humans do lose some neuroplasticity during puberty that may inhibit language acquisition a bit, but adults acquiring native-like fluency is still possible with enough immersion”.
There was an old study showing that London taxi drivers develop enlarged hippocampi, the part of the brain used for navigation, to deal with the labyrinthian London streets. The growth continued over several years even in mature adults as they used those navigation and memorization abilities. I’d like to see a study of the brain of an adult prospective language learner over a long period to see if any similar plasticity exists for the brain’s language centers.
(I’ll admit I’m horribly biased. I was exceptional at picking up new languages as a teen, but let that knowledge decay into nothingness as an adult. I’d hate to have wasted such a useful talent.)
I think most immigrants I know have an accent when they speak my language, even if they have good grammar and vocabulary, and have been living here a long time.
My dad has been in the US far longer than his birth country of Japan, having moved in his 20s. His English is excellent in terms of vocabulary and grammar, but his accent is very strong. I, on the other hand, having been exposed to the language when young and living in Japan for just one year, have a much better Japanese accent than he does English but am far worse in all other aspects.
Language acquisition happens different in young children than in adults or older children. Linguists are not divided on this topic.
What he is trying to say is: is that due to a loss of neuroplasticity or is it more along the line of older children and adults learning a second language usually aren’t deep in the same level of immersion. I agree with him that it’s probably somewhere in the middle
There is a pretty famous research paper called “Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life” by Werker and Tees that shows that infants are better at picking up subtleties of phonemes and they start focusing on the most heard language at around 9 to 12 months of age.
The paper is pretty old, published in 1984, but it was very influential at that time. Janet Werker has several other studies about language acquisition, so she might be a good name to start checking when you’re interested in that topic.
Hard disagree. I am not a linguist, but did study language acquisition a bit in the context of childhood development and unless the science on the topic has changed dramatically in the last decade, it seems pretty clear that there are physiological differences between child and adult brains that dramatically impacts language learning.
For example, there is a critical age period for being able to distinguish different sounds, something that if not learned during this period may be impossible to ever pick up. This age period is shockingly young; I don’t remember exactly but iirc it’s less than one year old.
The most well-known example is that in Japanese, R and L are the same letter (their R/L letter sounds like a cross between the two, with a bit of D thrown in). Thus Japanese people have difficulty distinguishing between R and L in English; I personally verified this with a bunch of my Japanese friends (including a number who spoke English very well) and they could not distinguish between “election” and “erection,” no matter how clearly I enunciated. However this is far from the only example out there; native English speakers similarly struggle differentiating various sounds in languages from countries like India and China that are clear as day to those speakers. This is not a matter of will or attention or even practice, it’s a brain issue.
Given this, I find it highly unlikely that there aren’t other elements of language learning that are harder (or even impossible) to properly learn outside the critical window.
This should be taken with a grain of salt, just as yours and op, but neuroplasticity makes arguments like yours shaky (well well well if this isn’t gonna turn out to be our old friend dialectics). If children just had a special environment, you’d find the physiological countepart. So unless it’s controlled for otherwise, you can’t make a one directional proof out of it
Random addition to your post…
There’s early/limited studies suggesting the drug valproate, which is used for bipolar and epilepsy sometimes, can re-open the perfect pitch acquisition capabilities of the human brain even if the individual is no longer an infant and has aged past the language acquisition stage of childhood development.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/
Different use of it in an 8 year old girl with language regression: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11230735/
God if I could take a pill and immediately identify jazz chords instead of using my smooth brain I would be the goat of piano. But seriously though it takes so much effort to transcribe advanced chords
This age period is shockingly young; I don’t remember exactly but iirc it’s less than one year old.
Anecdotally, that sounds hard to believe to me, because I moved from South Korea (which has the same sound ambiguity) to the US at the age of 11 and have no problem at all distinguishing between the two sounds. All of my Korean friends that I had back in middle school also had no issues, even though none of them were born in the US. On the contrary, I’ve been told at times that I speak Korean with an obvious western accent.
I think the age was around 9 months where some where the majority of neurons get discarded since they’re not useful and babies can use them to identify different lemurs for example.
I still think this is not the whole picture. People in their 60s learn languages faster than teenagers because they have more “surface area for knowledge to stick to” if you know where I’m going.
Not to take anything away from babies learning languages. They have to learn to use their tongue, vocal chords and identify sounds at the same time so them being able to use grammar at 2y with vocabulary is as insane feet. Babies also have dedicated regions of the brain for speech but then again, so do adults.
I feel the post makes a valid point. It’s harder for the baby to learn a language since they don’t know any. An adult in the same situation would most likely be faster because majority of the skills needed to speak a language are already there.
About the accuracy of sounds it’ll take some very careful training of the adult like people do with babies. On top of that, I wouldn’t underestimate the brain, over a long time such as a year of full immersion the brain is capable of picking up on a lot of things as long as the adult pays attention.
It really amazed me to learn that Spanish uses “b” and “v” somewhat interchangeably.
Personally, I find myself struggling with the difference between the g and ğ sounds, even after somebody with a native language that has both explained it to me.It really amazed me to learn that Spanish uses “b” and “v” somewhat interchangeably.
I’m not sure that’s the same scenario, they just have very soft ‘b’ sounds that aren’t plosive like they are in English.
I don’t think native Spanish speakers can generally differentiate between them either except by context.
I can’t imagine this could possibly generalize enough to significantly counter the original post’s claim. Take one little slice out of it, sure, but not much else.
This is easily one of the most interesting comments I have run across on Lemmy. Got any other interesting bits of info for those of us who only speak one language?
Off the top of my head: being multilingual appears to have various benefits for the brain, such as delaying the onset of dementia.
Barely related fun fact about DharmaCurious: there are dozens of videos of my family members holding me up to mirrors as a baby and saying “what’s that?” And me replying “that’s my erection!” Because I couldn’t distinguish l/r as a kid. I couldn’t do rs well in general. Took speech therapy classes
Fascinating, i wonder how this affects music arrangement and instrument expression between cultures
but can’t adults learn a second language much faster than a child learns its first? I assume with dedication an adult can reach a fluency of a 10 year old in just a couple of years - where it took the child… …10 years.
You’d have to be somewhat intensely studying and immersing yourself for two years to speak like a native 10-year old.
I’m not saying if you moved to another country with good motivation to learn the language that it couldn’t be done, but I do think you would need to at least immerse yourself in an environment which has the language. Doing duolingo for a couple of years will not net someone the fluency of a native 10-year old.
My parents said I was already speaking when I was one. Not well, but I was. Much sooner than my siblings. So by the age of two-three I could’ve had some rudimentary conversations, had that language proficiency not been in the underdeveloped mind of my toddler-aged self. I think that’s more like the language skill you’d get with two years of not-super-intense studying.
I just did a Google- depending on language, student and other factors, between 600-2500 hours.
That’s a very subjective window.
I know a guy who’s lived in my country for more than 12 years, and still can’t really speak but the most basic sentences, however, it is understandable, because his native language is English, and people like having the chance to practice their English. So despite being immersed and even needing the language, he just hasn’t really gotten around to learning it.
That’s the difference between language acquisition and learning one as an adult; motivation.
If you don’t have any, you’re not gonna learn. Kids can lack it totally, and they’ll still learn to speak, just as much as they’ll learn to walk.
I mean children under 10 can be shockingly fluent. I think their utter lack of life experience can mask their otherwise surprisingly developed language skills.
When you teach a child what a dinosaur is, you have to do a lot more explaining than when you try and teach an adult what a dinosaur is in french - the child isn’t just learning a language for those 10 years.
If I’m remembering correctly there is an age (younger) where we are more receptive to patterns in regards to LA, but we don’t differentiate the language received. “All” input in this stage is valid input that kid brain associates meaning to, which slowly gets weeded out (lost) if you don’t use it into adulthood. However, we are all generally speaking, on an even playing field developmentally as we age after that point in regards to learning a new language. Adults just tend to have less free time to devote to learning a new language as a young adult, etc.
That’s why no one learns French. Because if you try to speak French to a native they roll their eyes and start speaking English to you.
Zero appreciation of the efforts.
As I’ve been told, they* tend to be more polite to you if you make an attempt at least, considering it a gesture of respect for the country you’re in. They may roll their eyes at how bad an attempt it is, but it’s still a credit.
There is a similar phenomenon in Germany, where we may switch to English, not necessarily because we’re annoyed at your bad German, but simply because we consider it more efficient or courteous to engage with people in English. Maybe the French have similar reasons.
I’ve caught myself in that reflex too: I learned English from the start of primary school, consume a lot of English media, speak English with international colleagues and consider myself fairly fluent. If you struggle with German, I’ll be quick to offer using a language we’re both good at because it makes things easier for you. That’s not a lack of appreciation, it’s an offer of convenience.
On the other hand, if you wish to practice your German, I’m more than happy to help. I get the impression that many generally are willing to humour you, provided we have the time for it. If you’re ordering at a restaurant or asking for directions, odds are we’ll switch to English to speed things up. But if I have the time, I’ll gladly listen to your German and offer corrections and explanations.
*Possibly just a specific subset of localities or businesses; I can’t give a first-hand account nor obviously make a blanket statement about a country of ~68 million people (1.66 times the population of california, for comparison).
The stressful thing about speaking French in France is that the French’s attitude towards the French language is a lot like Brit’s attitude towards English. I’ve definitely found it way more difficult than speaking German in Germany, or Spanish in Spain.
Tangential funny story: My parents used to live in Germany, and my dad dropped the car off at a local garage for servicing and the guy there spoke way better English than my dad’s German, so they conversed in English. In the time that the car was in the shop, there was a football match between England and Germany that was a big deal, to the extent that when my dad picked up the car, the guy there pretended he could only speak German.
Germans tend to say ‘ah, our language is difficult but I think you mean to say…’ or ‘we pronounce it…’ the French on the other hand are far more likely to say ‘I don’t understand what you are saying at all’ or ‘it sounds disgusting when you speak’
My friend that’s French born but lived in the UK a decade went back and got the same treatment, the shop keeper literally ten minutes from where he was born did the whole pretending not to understand and acting superior thing - I’ve never known anyone in germany do that. Spain you might get scolded for not speaking the correct dialect especially in Catalan but it’s rare.
France is beautiful and the people can be wonderful but they have some weird issues too especially around language and identity.
I’d rather someone force me to speak properly than just refuse to engage at all, which is what happens if you meet a German who cannot/will not speak English.
no, fuck the fr*nch, they’re the worst. they’re all like “oh you vizeet a cunt-khe yueh shued mek zee effokht tueh speek zee longuage” meanwhile they can’t speak any other language in a comprehensible manner and when you make an effort they hate that their precious disgusting sounding language is slightly altered by someone who normally speaks an objectively better language that makes more sense.
meanwhile nearly everywhere else if you try to string up a sentence in their language or even use like short phrases for hello thanks and goodbye they’ll smile and look pleased you’re at least trying. in a lot of places people help you without question if you speak English and respond in English or try signing if they’re not fluent. being a decent human is not that hard.
and their food is overrated. not bad for europe i guess.
their only good contribution to the world was guillotines for the ruling class, and now they’re even fucking that up.
Yes because you’ve obviously met every single person in France and have been in every single region…
yep, none of that forming opinions based on limited experience shit. this is how I form my opinions. I have things to potentially say about Germans too but have only met 87% of them, so I’m still waiting. I’ll be saying some shit in a couple months after the survey.
I learned French in France. French rudeness is overstated. In Paris, in high-stress situations, yeah, they don’t have time to listen to you stumble through a communication that could be completed in a fraction of the time with greater accuracy in English. But outside of Paris, or in more working class neighborhoods, in mom-and-pop shops, you can get all the practice you need. Stay away from Franprix, and go to the corner bodega, and you can strike up a friendly convo.
I also found that French people express appreciation by correcting you. They assume if you’re putting in the effort to learn, you want to know when you make a mistake, and how you should improve. Constant correction can be mildly discouraging to me, but once I learned to take it in the spirit it was delivered, my emotions stopped hindering my communications.
Funny, every complaint I read online about the French seems to apply much better to Germany. But I’ve never heard the same criticism IRL for some reason
I have fairly severe social anxiety; when I went to France, the negative response to the French I was able to stutter out ensured I’d never try to speak French again. (I read it fairly well, because Candide was good enough to read ten times)
In high school, I had an assignment to go to a local Chinese restaurant and order in Chinese. The response to my “我要broccoli 牛肉” was so enthusiastic that I still do a set of Chinese flash cards everyday.
There has to be a motivating force for you to learn something. Whether that is social approval/encouragement, needing to be able to ask for certain things… Some people can be motivated by an intrinsic love of learning things, but for most I think this is confined to specific topics.
For language, I think you need a show that you want to watch, a space you can navigate by only using that language, something that gives you meaningful feedback and places to go that a grade simply doesn’t.
Same story here with Spanish. I was in South America for all of two weeks. But the smiles and help when I tried to use Spanish for anything more than beer and bathrooms keeps me going back to Duolingo.
I speak Spanish, I have a fairly basic level of fluency but don’t live there. People understand me and I can hold conversations but they call me gringo and they are not “nice” or welcoming about it.
I have very little attachments to where I’m from so that was the last straw for me. I don’t identify culturally with where I’m from anymore.
Well that sucks, I’m sorry you got the other end of the stick.
It’s not something to feel bad about it was just a defining moment at made me understand that despite being born there and living through my childhood it’s not my home and these ppl aren’t my people
I had a similar positive experience in Spain and Morocco. Tangier is very close to Spain so most of the locals know Spanish.
I would always start conversations in Spanish. Most of the time the person I was talking to would appreciate my attempt and switch to English. In Tangier I talked to a street peddler for over 15 minutes while friends were in a store. I attempted to speak in Spanish but he preferred English. He just wanted to chat.
ensured I’d never try to speak French again
Probably for the best (context: am Canadian and was forced to learn French, but I didn’t).
Yeah, what’s up with the French man? So full of themselves
Teenager I was traveling with couldn’t figure out how to use the turnstiles at the metro. Random French guy, in English: “you disgust me.”
Also got scammed by an Uber. The Louvre was worth it though, we hated Paris so much we spent the entire day inside the museum.
Given the success of foreign exchange students, I’m willing to bet the age factor is much less important than people claim.
People bring up the abused or abandoned children that had trouble learning to speak when introduced to society later in life, but usually fail to mention the reason they were neglected/abandoned as children was due to mental disabilities, so they aren’t really a viable data point.
Genie was locked up at 20 months old. I don’t think they locked her up because of her mental illness. They locked her up because of their mental illness. I reference Genie because she’s the most documented “wild child,” which is a completely disgusting term.
Language is universal to all humans, even though it is multifaceted. Humans also have massive brains that require extra care to bring to fruition in comparison to other animals. Language is one of those things. You can learn other languages at any age, but you first need learn a language.
Genie was locked up at 20 months old. I don’t think they locked her up because of her mental illness. They locked her up because of their mental illness. I reference Genie because she’s the most documented “wild child,” which is a completely disgusting term.
I was going off old college memories - after looking it up, it sounds like her father thought she was mentally disabled and began/increased his neglect because of it, despite her only outward health issue being delayed walking due to a hip problem.
Also re: “wild child”. I agree, and thanks for pointing it out. That’s what they were called in my books, but catchy rhyme aside it’s a horrible way to refer to a victim of such abuse. I’ll edit my original comment.
Language is universal to all humans, even though it is multifaceted. Humans also have massive brains that require extra care to bring to fruition in comparison to other animals. Language is one of those things. You can learn other languages at any age, but you first need learn a language.
It would be fascinating to know what inner thoughts look like without the construct of language to frame them in. Unfortunately there’s no ethical way to find out, short of uplifting a non-sapient species and asking them.
To your last point: I don’t think it’s hard to figure out.
Unlike many people I don’t always have an inner monologue. Like, right now I’m writing so I “hear” the words I’m putting on my screen. But if I’m programming or doing some other complex abstract thought? No sentence there, only a flow of abstract thoughts (words, images, nameless concepts, feelings, intuition, all meshing together in a way that is unique to my brain and would take several paragraphs to adequately explain). This occasionally makes it… challenging to communicate an idea I just had, because my thinking runs parallel to my formulating and going from one to the other is a significant mental overhead.
For sure language does play some structuring role in how I see the world. But there are lots of thoughts I have which aren’t ever framed by language, and I imagine if I didn’t speak any language that’s how all my thoughts would be. Although that would obviously be very limiting, it certainly doesn’t sound alien to me.
Adults that pick up new languages are rarely native fluent though.
Also being a “wild child” has to affect your brain’s development a lot.
People really underrate the difficulty of learning not a language but language itself. Concepts learned in one language can transfer over to other languages, but when you learn your first language, you have to learn the concepts for the first time in addition to the word. Personally, I am of the opinion that the critical period in learning is mostly a biproduce of learning over time and less a special feature of a brain’s age. The cortex naturally will organize around the incoming sensory information coming in, so over time the “increased plasticity” of newborn brains will reduce as it becomes increasingly more fitted to their experiences.
Is it difficult if it’s also inevitable? In a social setting, a child will either learn a language or develop one — two wild children would develop a rudimentary language that would evolve in complexity as it’s passed down generation by generation. I wonder if a feral child, who matured alone and without social interaction, could learn a language later in life. Or, if it could, how difficult it would be.
What do you mean by the critical period in learning being a byproduct of learning over time as opposed to a special feature of the brain’s age? I don’t think I grasp it. Are you saying that it’s not really the brain’s age, but rather that it hasn’t learned a lot yet? Which are distinct but highly correlated.
A large foundation for the belief in critical periods for language are based on Genie, a feral child who was entirely unable to learn a spoken language despite significant efforts. Today, she can use some sign language but cannot speak.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)
So the answer is largely believed to be: No. You cannot learn a spoken language if you missed the critical period.
It’s also literally impossible to test/study ethically, so nobody actually knows.
Just from the overview of that wikipedia page, it’s clear she has been subjected to a horrific amount of abuse and emotional turmoil, both as a child and later as an adult. It seems extremely dubious whether you can really draw any general conclusions from such an extreme case study.
How could a child not be exposed to any spoken language without that circumstance also being somewhat traumatic?
Did you read the Wikipedia article? I grant that isolation is inherently traumatic, but by itself, it pales in comparison to what that person went through.
I grant that isolation is inherently traumatic
That was my point, I don’t see how a traumatic experience during a child’s formative years could have no effect on their ability to learn or socialize later in life. I’m not making a “nature” argument, I’m making a “lack of nurture during the most important years” argument.
I don’t have a source handy, but from what I remember: yes, a feral child can learn language later, but never to the same level of fluency. It’s more like learning a second language. Also there is extremely limited data because it mostly comes from horrifically abusive situations.
If I remember right, the most interesting data came from a study that gathered deaf children from areas where they had no sign language. The young children rapidly developed sign language, but the older children (teens) had a hard time keeping up and did not reach the same fluency.
children have vastly more plastic brains than adults do. Even adults who literally move to another country to learn a language generally have a harder time to learn language. A lot of kids are educated in bi-lingual locations, they manage to pick up two languages while still being schooled, you as an adult couldn’t manage that shit even with a job.
There is also data that suggests if you don’t pick up a language before a certain point in your life, you will never be truly fluent in a language. There’s at least one feral child case that backs this up.
Though, learning a language is actually one of the best defenses against stuff like dementia, so if you’re worried about that, and older, go learn a language or two.
It’s important to keep your brain busy so your mental health never declines significantly.
I remember reading about a deaf colony in (IIRC) Guatemala that was initially populated by deaf adults who had learned sign language as adults or older children. The original residents had children, and the children developed the sign language into a more complex “full” language with more developed grammar and syntax. Children’s ability to learn language goes beyond their higher neuroplasticity.
Children’s ability to learn language goes beyond their higher neuroplasticity.
there’s a possibility it does, but considering the part of the brain that deals with language, is also the brain, i’m not sure how ultimately relevant it is.
Although, language disorders would likely align with your statement that language abilities aren’t just high neuroplasticity, regardless the capacity to learn it is going to be a highly plastic experience.
There is also data that suggests if you don’t pick up a language before a certain point in your life
We only have one case to base this on though, no? Genie? That said, it’s important to teach deaf children sign language as early as possible, which I’m sure is much more deeply researched.
learning a language is actually one of the best defenses against stuff like dementia
I’ve always wondered if this idea may have some issues relating to biased sampling. We look at older people who either do or do not know multiple languages and determine whether they’ve begun to develop dementia-like symptoms and draw conclusions from there. Have we ruled out the possibility that those who are predisposed to dementia will struggle to become bilingual in the first place?
Reminds me of how doctors used to think caffeine had protective effects on the heart as caffeine drinkers had stronger hearts on average. Turns out people with undiagnosed heart issues would just have negative symptoms from caffeine, so they avoided drinking it.
We only have one case to base this on though, no? Genie? That said, it’s important to teach deaf children sign language as early as possible, which I’m sure is much more deeply researched.
i believe this is the case, but there is probably external evidence that points to this as well. The sign language is an interesting point though.
I’ve always wondered if this idea may have some issues relating to biased sampling. We look at older people who either do or do not know multiple languages and determine whether they’ve begun to develop dementia-like symptoms and draw conclusions from there. Have we ruled out the possibility that those who are predisposed to dementia will struggle to become bilingual in the first place?
that’s a possibility i suppose, but i believe the general field of science surrounding this also supports the idea that keeping your brain engaged and healthy improves your mental health as you age. Similarly to your physical body, which would make sense, though that technically isn’t scientific lol.
There are likely studies that account for this as well, people who learned a second language later in their life, vs people who grew up bilingual and people who are monolingual.
It’s also generally understood that your brain is highly plastic, and if you don’t use it then you lose it. It’s why applying learned concepts is so important, and it’s part of the reason you need refreshers after a few years, so this also seems to line up with that idea.
I, too, prefer to side on the scientific consensus haha. But it’s interesting to think about from an outside perspective.
I’m actually studying Japanese right now as a direct result of a minor concussion with the hopes it would help with recovery. On the downside if it doesn’t, at least I’ll know some Japanese, I guess.
I’m actually studying Japanese right now as a direct result of a minor concussion with the hopes it would help with recovery. On the downside if it doesn’t, at least I’ll know some Japanese, I guess.
best of luck with that, even if it doesn’t help, it still gives you something to focus on, which is probably a good thing for recovery in any case.
The downwind effects of things are often multi faceted and we don’t think about them very much.
It’s a bit of both. Infants have more neural plasticity as others have mentioned, so when using the same learning strategy babies are going to learn better. That said, adults have a lot more knowledge and experience and are able to make connections to a lot more things; so there are methods aimed at teaching adults that are more effective than methods used to teach babies.
Everything is easier to learn as a kid, especially things involving lots of muscle memory. Go try to learn how to skateboard as an adult
I’m don’t even able to tie my shoes as an adult
Were you trying to tie them as you typed that sentence?
Chill fetus, he’s not a native English speaker
Also, as an adult, you have to provide for yourself. Without language, that virtually becomes impossible. Therefore, you have to keep using a language you already know, which reduces immersion. As a 2-5 year-old, everything is provided for you, so you don’t have to use a language you already know. You can just be there messing up language all you want in trial-and-error until you get it.
To make a real quasi-experimental study (random assignment is impossible because age cannot be assigned), we’d have to ensure that adults are given the same amount of support with activities of daily living as children. We’d also have to give them the same understanding, compassion, and forgiveness for mistakes, and also encouragement and esteem support.
After thinking it through to write this comment, I think the original microblog post is based af.
Uhhhhh, both?
I’m no expert on this topic but I do recall having seen brain scans showing different patterns of neural activation while speaking for language learned in infancy vs adulthood. That suggests that there is more than one route to language learning and one of them closes off after a certain age
No child is going to be fluent in their native language in 5 years, lol.
What have you ever met a 5-year-old sure they might not be able to have deep philosophical conversations with you but they are very effective at communicating.
I know my little brother, which is 5 and half of the time I don’t know what he’s talking about. Although it’s much easier to communicate with my cousin’s son which is also 5. Still, saying that they are very effective at communicating is a huge exaggeration, since they can only say simple sentences.
Well when they’re five they’re very them-centric. They’re not really interested in conversation, they’re more interested in just telling you huge amounts about their own lives. It’s all very interesting stuff about the yogurt they’ve just eaten.
Most 5-year-olds have hundreds of words in their vocabulary.
Most 5-year-olds have hundreds of words in their vocabulary.
Sounds about right, and that’s not that much.
There’s different levels of “fluency”. Roughly summing up the CEFR[1] model:
A1: Can ask and answer simple questions
A2: Can hold simple conversations
B1: Can talk about interests or events
B2: Can understand the main ideas of more complex or subject-specific texts
C1: Can use language flexibly without much searching for expressions
C2: Can easily speak and comprehend virtually everything in the target languageC1 is probably what I’d consider fluency, and looking at my own peers and language, some adults don’t even fit the criteria for C2 in their own native language.
CEFR doesn’t entirely map to native language development well, since it assumes fluency in the speaker’s native tongue and a certain ability to grasp more complex topics in the firsts place, where a child would still have to develop the mental faculties.
Still, attempting to describe native language development in CERF, at age 5, children are expected to “have mastered all basic grammatical markers at this age and should be speaking in grammatically correct sentences most of the time”[2], which I would consider somewhere between A2 and B1.
If the mental development for fluency in your native language are present, I do think that comprehensive immersion in a target language for five years, supported by helpful natives, can bring you a long way to fluency. The Goethe-Institute estimates that learning German will take approximately 600-750 hours[3] to reach C1, though it bases that estimate on its own dedicated language courses. Investing an average 3h of learning the language per week for five years would put you at 780. With additional support and practice outside of lessons, I think you could do with much less than that.
[1] Wikipedia: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages, accessed 2024-09-02
[2] Speech and Language for Kids: 5-Year-Old Speech Checklist, https://www.speechandlanguagekids.com/what-speech-and-language-skills-should-my-5-year-old-have/, accessed 2024-09-02
[3] Goethe-Institut: Frequently Asked Questions, Section “Our Courses”, Question “How long does it take to learn German?”, https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/m/sta/lon/kur/faq.html#accordion_toggle_6206750_2, accessed 2024-09-02
I think that’s part of the puzzle is definitely that small children don’t get embarrassed or ashamed if they make a mistake. Adults and older kids do, so they stop trying or they limit themselves to what they know they can do well.
I wish we could just turn off our embarassment for things that aren’t important.
