LL-L "Language acquisition" 2005.05.16 (06) [E]

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2005.05.15 (01) [E]

Ingmar wrote:
> So what do you think: was I a Hungarian in a past life, do I have multiple
> personalities or was I just being Adellistic at that time - inspired by
> a beautiful and lovely girl?
>
> Rubin Imre (Ingmar Roerdinkholder)

There's nothing like a good dose of hormones to make you learn a language
really fast. I was fluent in Dutch within a week or so back in the day (a
lot of which I learned, by the way, from reading "De Scheepsjongens van
Bontekoe").

Or maybe it's just adrenaline. When I decided to learn Spanish, I found
myself a private teacher from Chile. He put forward all those wild macho
theories, about how every woman really wants to look up to a man, how men
are superior in may ways etc. - and I was only allowed to contradict him in
Spanish! I hit the books so hard that, after two or three weeks, I could
tell him in no uncertain terms what I thought of him and his views. He then
laughed and said: "Somehow I knew this approach would work with you!"

Of course, both times, I had the advantage of already knowing related
languages, Lower Saxon in the first case, French and Latin in the second.

I am currently watching a very interesting process - my 11-year-old
daughter, who is in 6th grade, just changed schools and now has to catch up
on 9 months of French which she hasn't had at her old school. She never
learned any French before, although, when told she would have to catch up,
her first reaction was: "That's OK, I already know the difference between
salut and salaud!" (one meaning hello, the other one being a four-letter
word, similar in meaning to "swine").

Her prononciation was flawless from the beginning, but then she's been
exposed to French through our exchange students, one from France and two
from Senegal, and some French friends (although she never tried to speak it,
claiming she didn't much care for it). Her big advantage, however, turns out
to be completely bilingual in German and English, and knowing a little
Dutch. She already knows lots and lots of vocabulary that the others in her
class still have to learn in both English and French, namely all those
Latin-derived words such as important (or lots of adjectives ending
in -ant), imagination (or anything else ending in -tion), resistance (or
many other words ending in -ance or -ence), drainage (or plenty of words
ending in -age), etc.

Besides those, there are plenty of words that she sees and then makes
connections to the languages (all of them Germanic) that she already knows:
sucette - sucker, rue - road, oeuf - oval, école - school, perroquet -
parakeet, etc.
This process is quite fascinating to watch and shows me what a deep
underlying understanding of general language structures she has acquired by
growing up in two languages, related but different. After two weeks in her
new school, others are already copying from her in tests!

Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: Heinrich <heinrich.becker at gmx.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2005.05.15 (01) [E]

Hi to Ingmar and Reinhard,

in addition to your interesting thoughts about this very complex topic I
believe, there have to be more skills as you described Reinhard. To
"understand" sombody means first of all more than "only" a verbal
interaction. Language is more than we all know! There are enough
researches, that conclude a combination with being musical ( to be able,
imitating sounds ) and having a talent for languages. One condition for
both branches is a good memory, no doubt. To have a good memory doesn't
necessarely mean to be able to combine your gifts. I have met people who
were called "calendar idiots". They immediately could tell you,
1949-01-05 was a wednesday.... back to 200 years ago.But they were very
one-sided.

More and more I get to the conclusion, a social intelligence and desire
of communication is the main condition to understand other people
including to learn their languages. I don't know, how Siegmund Freud
thought about.

Heinrich Becker

----------

From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2005.05.15 (13) [E]

Reinhard, you wrote that people who acquire languages must faster and
easier than the average probably have analytic minds and are 'better'
in mathematics, computer sciences and so on, too.
Well, that is absolutely not the case with me. In my mind, the distinction
between what we call <alfa-wetenschappen> and <bèta-wetenschappen> in
Dutch couldn't be greater. At the Atheneum (secondary modern school) my
results for Dutch, German, English and French were excellent, but they
were really really bad for Math, Physics, Science etc. History, Geography
and Biology were quite fine, on the other hand, but Economics a disaster.
And nowadays I know how to use a computer quite fine, but you shouldn't
ask me anything about how it works...

Ingmar

>Reinhard wrote:
>...I feel confident that quite a few of our Lowlanders could pull this
>off too.  You don't have to be a savant to do so. All you have to
>have, besides a sharp mind, honed memory skills and good resources, is an
>analytical mind that figures out the principle patterns and then starts
>reading and listening to pick up vocabulary and idiomatic expressions.
>
>Again, I do not wish to trivialize his skills, but I am aware that the
>average person has strange, myth-like ideas when it comes to non-native
>language learning.  Non-native language learning is seen as one of the
most
>difficult tasks, and success in doing so is often equated with high
>intelligence.  I consider this overblown.  I think that most people could
do
>very well at it if they had the right conditions, the right mindset and
the
>right method.
>
>Or have I lost all sense of proportion?

----------

From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2005.05.15 (10) [E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>It turned
out that he had been cared for by a Chinese nanny in his toddler years, but
by the time he was about school-entry age he was unable to communicate with
that nanny during a visit to Manchuria ...<

That is a very interesting anecdote and one I shall add to an increasing
pile of the same: all about people who after head injuries/ strokes revert
back to their 1st language, all other languages seemingly lost.

I believe it must point at some 'truth' about the way in which our
languages are stored in the brain, that after the first language which
forms a core, others are layered on top (?) or by side or in such a way
that the 1st language can be left unharmed by brain 'damage' or shock,

One anecdote I  have about a teacher of languages - even tho' he knew he
taught French and German, he could understand neither immediately after a
stroke. 6 months later the brain had recovered enough for him to access
these langauges again.

Fascinating!

Heather

----------

From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2005.05.15 (01) [E]

Those powers of motivation and interest make a world of difference. I am in
the same category as Ron, and I do not believe in past lives. I do not learn
things in small steps like most people learn. Literally, since I was a
little baby, I have learned things in leaps and bounds. When I learned
Spanish in high school, I was looking ahead in the book shortly after the
course began. I am one of those people who hates repetition. Tell me how to
conjugate it. Give me a few phrases, and let us move!

----------

From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2005.05.15 (10) [E]

Maybe it was, I don't remember the name of that program, but I watched the
one I was referring to when I still lived at home with my parents, so it
must be at least 18 or more years ago...
By the way, in the Dutch show "Wie was ik?" the participants aren't really
brought under hypnosis. They remember striking details about the history
and geography of the localities that no-one could have known without
having been a part of daily life there for a long time.
At yesterday's show where a girl from Amsterdam went back to Brussels of
1870, I noticed she had a very slight <Flemish> accent in some words some-
times, but for the rest non of the other two 'previtals' showed any
special knowledge of -in this case- French or German. But the Belgium
accent is very well known in Holland, everyone can imitate it more or less
without any trouble...

Ingmar

>Heather Rendall wrote:
>I wonder whether the programme being referred to about remembering under
>hypnosis was "The Bloxham Tapes"?
>
>I found plenty of references via google if anyone wants to follow up the
>reference.
>Personally  I found the recollections of one women being in a Jewish
>program in York in the 12th ? 13th century very very intriguing ... if not
>convincing

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language Acquisition

Whoa!  Isn't this a popular subject?!  It usually is whenever it surfaces.

Ben:

>  When I learned
> Spanish in high school, I was looking ahead in the book shortly after the
> course began. I am one of those people who hates repetition. Tell me how
> to
> conjugate it. Give me a few phrases, and let us move!

This describes me too, is also one of the reasons why I find most in-class
language courses frustrating.

Heather:

> That is a very interesting anecdote and one I shall add to an increasing
> pile of the same: all about people who after head injuries/ strokes revert
> back to their 1st language, all other languages seemingly lost.

I'm glad this was useful, Heather, and I hope we'll get to find out more
about your collection sometime.

By the way, I think that what we are talking about, especially this hypnosis
thing, is related to better-than-usual language skills in one's dreams.
I've experienced it a lot.  A few times I remembered snippets of it after
waking up and realized that the skills had been real, and I was in awe.  I
believe that, again, in our dreams we go beyond certain limits, boundaries,
inhibitions, and are temporarily able to retrieve certain memories and
skills and go soaring with them.

Heinrich:

> I have met people who
> were called "calendar idiots". They immediately could tell you,
> 1949-01-05 was a wednesday.... back to 200 years ago.But they were very
> one-sided.

These are what is known as "savants," formerly known as "idiots savants"
("knowledgeable idiots"), meanwhile shortened in politically correct manner,
in many cases also "autistic savants."  Those are the ones I had referred
to.  Famous movie versions are "Rainman," "Shine" (about the Australian
pianist David Helfgott) and "Beautiful Mind" (about John Forbes Nash Jr.).

Ingmar:

> Reinhard, you wrote that people who acquire languages must faster and
> easier than the average probably have analytic minds and are 'better'
> in mathematics, computer sciences and so on, too.
> Well, that is absolutely not the case with me. In my mind, the distinction
> between what we call <alfa-wetenschappen> and <bèta-wetenschappen> in
> Dutch couldn't be greater. At the Atheneum (secondary modern school) my
> results for Dutch, German, English and French were excellent, but they
> were really really bad for Math, Physics, Science etc. History, Geography
> and Biology were quite fine, on the other hand, but Economics a disaster.
> And nowadays I know how to use a computer quite fine, but you shouldn't
> ask me anything about how it works...

Well, if you say so, Ingmar.  But you have to also ask yourself what came
first, the chicken or the egg.  Do you really lack the innate talent for one
of the supposed categories?  Might it be that you are just less interested
and thus less motivated in it?  In other words, might your personal interest
predisposition in conjunction with the popularized (questionable)
categorization tell you (or offer you the excuse) that you are only wired
for one and not for the other?

This alpha versus beta categorization is particularly popular in Europe and,
as far as I am concerned, has been hanging around like a bad smell for far
too long.  I used to be taught the very same thing, and I, too, came to the
conclusion that I was not "wired" for maths and hard sciences, thus avoided
them as much as possible.  I very much regret having bought into that, and I
now consider it a hamper of hooey, a crock of claptrap, a tub of twaddle ...
a _bobemayse_, an "old wives' tale."  Later in life I came to realize that I
could do just as well in "the other category" than in "mine," once I had the
necessary motivation to do so.  In fact, I now believe that this popularized
binary thinking model -- which is consistent with traditional European
compartmentalizing of people by supposedly innate characteristics -- is
dangerous in that it limits people, sadly enough limits mostly young people,
be it because their adult mentors subscribe to it and thus misguide them, or
be it that they themselves use it as an excuse for not paying attention to
"the other side."

A few years ago my wife and I were asked by a mother to mentor her teenaged
daughter, in hopes of this making a difference regarding university
admission.  We obliged, and it turned out that the girl was totally
deficient in maths and science credits.  We advised that she take a lot of
maths and science classes between then and applying to universities.  She
ignored it.  It then turned out that she had been indoctrinated by her
mother that "girls and blacks don't do science."  Thus, this was a case of
self-directed sexism and racism.  We were unable to convince the mother that
this was detrimental to her daughter.  (I think what she really tried to say
was "girls and blacks are rare sights and are thus unwelcome in the world of
sciences," but to her this was one and the same.)  However, the daughter
eventually managed to sleaze by and get into a junior college in hopes of
being allowed to transfer into a university after two years.  Her school
adviser gave her no alternative to taking mostly maths and sciences courses
to make up for past neglects.  She did very well in them, so well that she
ended up being admitted to her top choice university.  She later said that
this had really surprised her, that she had really believed that she was
incapable of doing well in maths and science and that because of that it had
never occurred to her that she might develop an interest in them.
Incidentally, when she was much younger, I had supported her in wanting to
learn foreign languages.  I even bought her some useful books and tapes.
She ended up taking both Spanish and Swahili, did very well in both and
really enjoyed it.

At universities in China I watched many students' progress and noted that
most of them did equally well in science and languages, also in fine arts
and sciences.  When I asked them about that, it turned out that they had not
been brought up with the (in my opinion limiting) thought model, that they
did not consider this unusual.

If I could go back to my beginnings I might make the same basic choices, but
I would not limit myself as much as I did then, would end up with a more
rounded education.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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