Other languages? 3

[rjoubert]

It seems to me that most of the people that frequent this forum have a firm command of the English language, whether they be from across the pond or here in the US. I'm just curious as to what other languages you all know.

I took 4 years of French in high school, and I took a year-long course in Korean while I was in the Army. While I was taking the course in Korean, it seemed that all of knowledge of French slowly leaked out the other side of my brain. Apparently, there's only room for two languages in my head. I am so amazed by people who know several languages. One of my Korean instructors, a sweet 60+ year old Korean lady, was fluent in 5 or 6 different languages!

 

[Rofeu]

I'm not quite sure why, but infants do have a tremendous abillity to learn languages. However, but I don't know if there's any truth to it, I've heard that 3 or in some cases 4 is the max they can learn to speak fluently at the same time because above that they lose their abillity to distinguish between them.

I think that the more languages you know, the easier it becomes to learn another due to your expanded source of references. You have more overall vocabulary to relate an unknown word to (even in a foreign language). It would be interesting to see if the learning of languages with completely different roots becomes easier as well.

I've seen the comment that French seems to go out the door when learning Spanish or Portuguese several times now and I've experienced the same when studying Spanish. I wonder if that works the other way around as well?

Cheers,

Roel

 

[SantaMufasa]

The ability for children, especially babies and toddlers, and to a lesser degree, pre-adolescents, to quickly learn languages relates, in large part, to "brain wiring": our brain circuitry in our early ages is "soft wired"; as we age, that circuitry changes into a "hard wired" physiology. Also, there is an apparent "loss" of brain-circuitry potential for those "circuits" that do not get use at an early age...A definite example of "Use it or lose it."

An example of early-age language skills that adults do not have relates to aspects of Mandarin and Cantonese: There are pronunciation nuances in those languages that a six-month-old baby can discern/differentiate, but adults for whom those languages are not first languages, cannot discern/distinguish those same pronunciation nuances.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]

 

[ESquared]

Dave, I am sure that adults have less brain wiring for such things, as you say, but I am not convinced that every adult attempting to learn Mandarin or Cantonese for the first time cannot distinguish those pronunciation nuances. Perhaps not at first, but with training one can?

I have an aptitude for language. I repeatedly get comments from speakers of other languages that I am the first to pronounce their name correctly the first time, after hearing it only once. How do I do it? I listen? Tonal languages would probably not be something I could get instantly, but I'd be interested to see how well I actually did.

At first I could not hear certain sounds in Portuguese, but now I can hear them just fine. I think it's actually related to musical ability.

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[DataDog]

rjoubert: My son also went through DLI for Korean. Then Advanced Korean. Then back as an Instructor!. The only language I'm any good at is the most widely used programming language ......(profanity) --- universally spoken and understood all over the world.

DataDog
"Failure Is Not An Option'

 

[philhege]

DataDog and rjoubert, That's what I'm talking about when I say "immersion". My cousin came out of Monterey and would lapse into Russian in the middle of a sentence.

 

[IknowMe]

Dave, when you say "pronunciation nuances" is it a "I say tomayto, you say tomahto" deal or are we talking completely different words that are spelled similar but pronounced differently?

Wow, I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
I think I've forgotten this before.

 

[AnotherHiggins]

MrMilson,

I used to work with a guy who spoke pretty good Mandarin. He has since packed up and moved to China, where he travels and teaches English - so his Mandarin is probably pretty good by now....

Anyway, when talking about tonal languages once, he gave me an example.

It was three syllables (bao, I think, but maybe not), all the same pronunciation. But one had an upward inflection (you know, how you'd pronounce the last word of a question?), one had a lowered inflection (think of the sound the death star makes before blowing up Alderan) and one was pronounced "flat". Those three syllables comprise a sentence of three different words.

And speaking to E's point about music - at least tangentially - studies have shown that speakers of tonal languages have a far easier time obtaining perfect pitch.

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[SantaMufasa]

MrMilson, along the lines that John was asserting, both Mandarin and Cantonese use tonal/accent nuances such that the equivalent of each "syllable" in those languages have six distinct tone/inflection/accent nuances that (can) completely change the meaning of what one is saying.

Because of these nuances, Chinese get even more of a hoot out of English speakers' mangled attempts at speaking Mandarin/Cantonese than we get out of Asians' mangled "Chinglish" in the sample signs that we have seen in other threads here.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]

 

[IknowMe]

Are there written representations of the different tones? I imagine it would be quite difficult to learn a language of this type if you were left to make the determination of each based on context alone.

Wow, I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
I think I've forgotten this before.

 

[IknowMe]

In retrospect I suppose it may not cause any more or less confusion than English homonyms.

I guess it would be easier for a beginer to understand the sentence "He pounded the ten pound bat with a bat." if we used a different tone for each meaning of the word.

Not that I'd use those exact words to describe the event but I thought an extreme example was better at revealing the point.

Wow, I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
I think I've forgotten this before.

 

[rjoubert]

This is why the US military (or Defense Dept) has rated English and Chinese as CAT 5 languages...this is the category of languages that are the most difficult to learn. While I was at DLI, Mandarin Chinese was a CAT 4, but just before I left, they bumped it up to CAT 5.