- nordmann wrote:
- Well, yes. The way we absorb vocabulary and the way we acquire new language skills in particular do not fundamentally change as we get older. However what does change is the level of self-consciousness which can inhibit our willingness to develop linguistic acquisition. And though there are several reasons why this is so and the level subjectively changes anyway from person to person, there are very few of us who escape the effect, even if - as is apparently the case with yourself - one is aware of this effect and consciously takes steps to avoid it.
Which is why your previous claim to be able to quickly acquire comprehension of portmanteau words in a foreign tongue based on recognition of their structure and instinctive comprehension of one element within them only rings partly true, and indeed smacks of retrospective attribution of technique to a process that in fact was much more simple, much more instinctive, and much more in common with language acquisition as performed by a toddler than your claim allows.
The same applies to your "observation" that European languages share a common structure and that this also facilitates the process. The structural parallels are certainly there, and of course they play a role in how quickly one can acquire comprehension of language other than your native tongue. But comprehension, as any educator will know, is not achieved simply through exposure to the material to be absorbed by the pupil. By far the greatest facilitator of comprehension is a pupil's own enthusiasm to learn, and when this enthusiasm is promoted by the pupil also identifying and appreciating an actual and urgent requirement to learn, then the teacher's job is that much easier and the pupil's ability to absorb and retain information that much more pronounced. Material that lends itself to more rapid comprehension helps of course, but it is an insignificant factor compared to the child's own ability to maintain motivation to absorb it.
The initial drive to acquire language by young children is partly related to understanding the world around them, but by far the greater motivation is in their own absolute requirement to be understood - to become initiators of communication and not just participants in the exercise. In other words the very young child quite naturally and instinctively has internalised the process and requires practically no assistance whatsoever from outside in maintaining motivation, developing rules of acquisition, and even developing a consistent regime of self-analysis that allows the whole process to evolve and improve over time. However the latter is also a completely instinctive thing that the child does without even being aware they are doing it, and in fact this is why it works so well. You, as with almost every adult in the world, have grown self-aware enough to be more than conscious of this aspect to learning and now place so much importance on it that it actually inhibits those parts of the process which in fact are the ones that do all the work. This is the problem with too much emphasis on post-event analysis of any process - no matter how much truth and accuracy the analysis contains the work and time used to arrive at any conclusion is work and time a natural linguist (young child) would have devoted to actually acquiring language in the first place. When that analysis contains dodgy conclusions (such as your portmanteau theory) then the waste of effort is even more pronounced.
nordmann, thank you very much for your reply as a whole and I learned a lot from each paragraph in particular.
Comments on your first paragraph:
I completely agree with what you say. I suppose that you in this paragraph also hint to our subjective reasons for the willingness to acquire a
language. Perhaps in the same vein as LiR mentioned about her "latin", I had perhaps the same experience about my French and already 15 years old (French was a "main?" course, major? in our school)...
My father's family due to the Belgian
language struggle was a bit denigrating for French and as such one has an influence from that from childhood on (my mother was more neutral)...
That said, a bit the same way, as I understand LiR too, the French
language teacher (native speaker) (and although he was the scapegoat of the whole class) was able to enthuse me in the French
language and culture and from then on I have a lifelong willingness to learn the French
language and about French culture...and in the next three years I made an enormous progression in the acquirment of the
language, helped by my intentional buying French paperbacks and listening to one of the two TV channels in French that we had access to: "Brussel Vlaams" in Dutch and "Lille" (northern France), in French. The possibility to speak wasn't there yet...even not in class...
Comments on your second paragraph:
Yes, again I completely follow your reasoning and thanks to you in your previous message I became aware, where the fault in my reasoning lay
Comments on your third paragraph:
I already commented in the first paragraph. And yes these common constructions and same words, which most times have also a same meaning, are an aid to acquire a
language, but are certainly not the core action of the process of acquiring a
language (as you say).
Comments to your fourth paragraph:
nordmann, even in the BBC messageboard time I came in contact with the problems of this question. Even learning for the first time about a certain Noam Chomsky. In that time (the internet of that time: focused on English
language words and items) the first entries about Chomsky were not about "
language", but more about his politcal views...the first entries painting him as a socialist, nearly a communist
...and only on the second or third page I became aware that he had also something to do with
language...
There I learned about the controversy about the learning of a
language by children...innate or not innate and everything in between...and perhaps professor Chomsky was a hype in that time...
Seeking again on the internet I found I thought an "essay"...as I understand it, you can now let make an essay for you if you pay money for it...the lazy stupid student...as it is all new to me...nordmann, you, who knows nearly everything...
But nevertheless this "essay" summarizes the problems that I had with the Chomsky affair...
https://ivypanda.com/essays/language-acquisition-a-critical-discussion-of-innate-and-learning-approaches-introduction/As I understand it, you are also, as I, a "more or less" (we say: min of meer
) adept of the "learning approach"?...
And I understand your analysis of a child that wants primordially to communicate with the outer world, especially the narrow world around it and that that is the greatest incentive to start to learn the
language that it hears around...?
And you are also right that for the adult there are many inhibitions to acquire a new
language, inhibitions that a child doesn't have, as it in its innocence, without preconditions, "rolls" into the situation? Or it has to be that his parents or inner circle make preconditions?
But I still want to warn, as I already said, (and even admitted that one as an adult learns the
language in the same behaviour as a child) that without a long "exposure" to the native environment, one can never learn another
language in all its aspects and intonations, as I already explained to MM for the Flemish dialects...and I suppose it is the case for all languages...
I mean and think that without being a relatively long time into a community and communicate thoroughly with that environment, one is not able even with all good intentions to learn in depth another
language.
And yes the "openness" for foreign languages is perhaps stimulated by living in a small
language community as the Dutch one or for instance the Danish one of Nielsen at the crossroads of big entities as the French, German, English
language groups? Big
language communities due to history as for instance Spanish spoken allover the world and due to that fact, as I already experienced (especially the older ones) not wanting to speak another
language as they are that conviced of the value of their own mothertongue.
Paul.