Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!ames!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Early Language Learning & Ancient Language
Message-ID: <7898@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Date: 26 May 90 17:41:34 GMT
References: <1990May25.142052.16989@athena.mit.edu>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 18

From article <1990May25.142052.16989@athena.mit.edu>, by news@athena.mit.edu (News system):
>...  After a certain age, if the babies
>have not been exposed to those sounds, they are no longer able to learn to 
>differentiate ('l' and 'r' in japanese children for example).  The extreme
>example is cats raise in darkness.  When they are eventually taken out of the
>darkness, they are blind.  They never "learn" to see.

If what you mean is that after having learned to ignore the l/r
difference in Japanese (as they must), it takes Japanese speakers a
while to distinguish l/r in a language like English which requires it,
that's true.  There's nothing surprising about that.  If you mean that
adult Japanese speakers cannot learn to distinguish l/r, given practice
(and motivation), that is just not true.  There is the possibility that
they do not distinguish the two in the same way as native English
speakers, once they have acquired the distinction.  The comparison
to cats raised in darkness is really absurd.

				Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu