Recent comments in /f/philosophy

eliminate1337 t1_j4gi8vk wrote

Reply to comment by 5slipsandagully in What it means to “know” a language by thenousman

> it's almost impossible to learn a second langauge with native-like proficiency later in life

The gap between an advanced learner and native speaker is more in accent, idioms, and other cultural specificities than in functional proficiency. Past the critical period, you won’t be mistaken for a native speaker.

There are plenty of people on /r/languagelearning who pass the C2 exams (basically native proficiency). Look up the C2 English exam, it’s effortful even for a native English speaker.

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denisoshea13 t1_j4ggs57 wrote

Reply to comment by 5slipsandagully in What it means to “know” a language by thenousman

Children can differentiate between two different languages from before birth. Children can grow up learning two or more languages, which makes it much easier for them to learn languages later in life. Learning a second language impacts the first. A childhood native language can fall out of use in adulthood and a non-native language can become dominant. You do not have to be native level speaker to be entirely proficient In a language. (Think of people from the Netherlands speaking English) This critical period you reference, as well as this “cognitive mechanism that you used to acquire language”, is heavily contested and has more to do with the effects of language on cognition than linguistic ability or competence .It seems like you are devaluing language that is learnt at a later stage in life, this upholds an out of date view on a commonly misunderstood process that is not actually true and can be harmful.

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virtutesromanae t1_j4gcnnn wrote

Reply to comment by 5slipsandagully in What it means to “know” a language by thenousman

>By the time you've reached adulthood, the critical period for acquiring a language has passed and you're stuck with what you've got.

I agree with everything you stated, except for this. While it is certainly more difficult to learn another language in adulthood, you are not "stuck with what you've got." The learning process for another language is different than for one's native language, and the way adults learn most things is often different than the way children learn, but it can be done. The trick is to find the best way to learn at whatever stage one finds oneself - and that may vary from person to person. Also, continually working on foreign languages throughout life helps one more easily acquire new languages. If that particular muscle is allowed to atrophy, it doubtlessly becomes a much more difficult task.

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5slipsandagully t1_j4gagiu wrote

Reply to What it means to “know” a language by thenousman

It's risky to compare language acquisition to other kinds of knowledge or learning, because strictly speaking you don't "learn" your native language the same way you might learn a second language later in life.

From what we know about it, first language acquisition is automatic, begins in infancy, and occurs even with a paucity of stimulus. That is to say, your knowledge of your native language exceeds the sum of the language you've heard. Your capacity to acquire a language also diminishes over time. By the time you've reached adulthood, the critical period for acquiring a language has passed and you're stuck with what you've got*.

There's also a whole lot we don't know, such as why it's almost impossible to learn a second langauge with native-like proficiency later in life given first language acquisition is effortless. Second language learners can reach a point in learning where no amount of effort or immersion in the target culture will help fix the errors that remain in their understanding of the second language, and we don't know why this happens.

Language acquisition probably has more in common with learning to walk than it does with learning to ride a bike, that is to say it's innate and somehow you know when you're ready to do it, even before you're old enough to know how to not shit your pants. So, discussions of what it means to "know" a language need to differentiate between the processes of language acquisition and language learning, and be clear-eyed about how bad we are at the latter even though we're miraculously talented at the former.

*To clarify this point, because a lot of people took issue with it, I don't mean you can never learn another language, only that the process of learning a language in adulthood will be different to the process of acquiring a language (or multiple languages) in early childhood. This is an important consideration if you're going to talk about what it means to "know" a language

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