Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!hcx1!garyb
From: garyb@hcx1.SSD.HARRIS.COM
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: foreign language requirements f
Message-ID: <93900021@hcx1>
Date: 4 Apr 89 23:20:00 GMT
References: <161@landru.UUCP>
Lines: 39
Nf-ID: #R:landru.UUCP:161:hcx1:93900021:000:2067
Nf-From: hcx1.SSD.HARRIS.COM!garyb    Apr  4 19:20:00 1989


>> >>>I presume, Henry, that you know how f^&*#%$ hard Japanese is to learn...
>> >>
> 
> Note that little children have learned Japanese, Latin, and other foreign
> to us languages. Not exceptional kids, either, but those present-day kids that
> live in Japan, and the historical kids that lived in the Roman Empire.
> It can be done.

I remember reading somewhere about some research that suggests the
human mind's ability to learn to speak new languages is much reduced
after about the age of 12, or 15, or some other very young age.  In
particular, the ability to speak it well, especially without an accent
is much reduced.  It was suggested that at some point, the cerebral
circuits that control speech have become "programmed" for the native
tounge(s) of the child, and that future attempts to learn to speak new
languages must reporgram these same "circuits".  It was also suggested
that perhaps the cause of this phenomena is that after this
programming takes place, a bunch of neurons that used to be reserved
for speech are freed up and put into service for some other task.

I don't remember if the these researchers were interested in language
comprehension too, but it seems like this same theory could just as
easily apply to comprehension.  Indeed, it seems reasonable to me,
that any cognitive skill that has become as involuntary as speech or
speech understanding, will be more difficult to adapt to a new
environment than to have learned that skill from the start in this
same environment.

Well, just a thought (and one that probably doesn't belong in this
news group)

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