From: Olga Bourlin (fauxever@sprynet.com)
Date: Thu May 16 2002 - 01:28:58 MDT
Olga Bourlin
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 11:05 PM
Subject: Re: Toddler learning
> > From: "Dossy" <dossy@panoptic.com>
> > > >
> > > > Buy why?
> > > Because it's easier to learn languages at a young age than it is
> > > as an adult.
> > No argument there - of course it is. But that still doesn't answer my
> > question - "But why?" So a child learns a new language. Then what?
The
> > language doesn't "stay" without a lot of high maintenance (and a
language
> > will be forgotten faster than it took to learn it in the first place).
> because it's much easier to relearn once it's forgotten, not to mention
> that pronounciation is much better by people who have heard the sounds
> while very young (that is, if they hear it from native speakers. from
> non-native i suppose it might even hurt pronounciation, but that is pure
> speculation).
So now we have:
1. A child learns a new language; then
2. A child forgets the language; but
3. That child or adult can relearn the same new language faster once those
neural connections have been put down; and without much of
4. An accent (vat, no charming accent?)
So learn, forget, relearn (no accent), but I still have trouble
understanding: "But why?" (go through all that?) (i.e., aside from the
practical reasons one would learn a language whether child or adult, as in
the case of immigration to a new country).
On a related matter: Am I wrong in my observation that in the USA many even
"educated" adults can't even speak American-English very well? My husband
and I have both gotten emails (absolute unwitting howlers) from people even
in positions of "power" whose grammatical skills revealed them to be on
about the level with not-very-bright third graders (maybe we've always had
this in the past, but with the advent of email it just shows up "faster and
dirtier" - perhaps because emails bypass the interceding agents of the
past - editors, secretaries, what have you?). By "past" here, I mean in the
recent few decades (I know literacy has gone way up since the Industrial
Revolution.)
Olga
>
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