NationStates Jolt Archive

I have recently noticed someting that gave me an idea on why it is more difficult for one to learn a language as an adult than it is as a child. Perhaps my theory makes no sense, and perhaps it's old news and somebody else came up with it before me, but I figured I'd postit here for discussion anyway.

When I think something to myself, it is (rather predictably) in English. I'd imagine that a Chinese-speaker would carry out a mental dialogue in Chinese, a Spanish-speaker would carry out their mental dialogue in Spanish, and so on.
I was brought up speaking English mostly, and didn't start working with foreign languages for a while.

When I speak to others in a foreign language or try to comprehend the speech of others in a foreign language, I must first mentally translate it to English, then comprehend it from there. I do not have meaning directly associated with non-English phrases, rather I must indirectly attribute meaning to them through my first language.

So, my first idea is that perhaps as a child, you learn a language, and that language is directly associated with meaning, but when you choose to learn a language in older age, must comprehend it through your language.
But that can't be true, as I am fairly sure that there have been instances of people growing up with one language, moving elsewhere and speaking it very little, and forgetting it. In that case, they obviously aren't thinking in that language.

So, my next idea, the one that seems a bit more complete to me, is this:
When you are young, you begin to learn learn language through direct association of meaning with words.
I believe I have heard that it is commonly accepted that the brain becomes sort of settled in its patterns once it ages a bit, making it more difficult to learn and such.
Perhaps this causes it to be difficult to learn language in the same way as you do when you are young? It is easier to understand a language through the lens of a language you already speak, isn't it?

Sort of like this:

Learning language when young:
Object<-Meaning

Learning language when older:
Object<-Native Language<-New Language

Notice I said 'difficult' and not 'impossible'. I must test my pet theory with a question about something that throws a monkey wrench into it. I am fairly close to positive that it isn't impossible to learn a new language to the point of being able to comprehend meaning directly with it. But, there is a bit of a hitch.
Bilinguals. Can one have meaning directly associated with multiple languages?

Like this:
Language 1
|
Object
|
Language 2

So, I have some questions.
Were you raised bilingual? If so, did you hear both languages as you first learned language? Can you think in both of them, or is there a 'dominant' one?

Did you learn the language other than your native tongue once you were older? Can you think in it?


By the way, could somebody tell me if I am not making any sense? I am rather nervous that none of this will make sense to anybody else...

as a child, you learn a language, and that language is directly associated with meaning, but when you choose to learn a language in older age, must comprehend it through your language
i think there's probably some truth there (the crux of the arguement as i see it)... the speech centres of the brain are far more active in children - especialy babies - and allow them to pick up meanings through just hearing words in context. this ability (and the corresponding bit of the speech centre) starts to weaken and shut down till, by the time one hits puberty, its off alltogether. this means that as an adult you have to manually assign meaning to words, making language learning harder (your arguement)

of course in some lucky bastards this bit of the brain never switches off and - in some rare cases - stays 'fully on' as per how an infant would learn language... thats why some people are just gifted linguists... bastards (i know one, he's a bastard ;) )


at least thats what i understand. i could be wrong of course


edit:
By the way, could somebody tell me if I am not making any sense? I am rather nervous that none of this will make sense to anybody else...
i lost you towards the end there, but thats cos i reading fast and wanted to write down what i just posted before i forgot it :P

I agree with you it makes total sense. They tell us that now in schools, well some of that its harder to learn as an adult, it just is.

A random observation I thought I'd throw in: I have a Greek friend who studied in France and has lived in England for about three years now. She's bilingual in Greek and French, and pretty good at English. She reports that the language she thinks in depends almost entirely on context. For example, if she's thinking about work, she'll think in English (unless she doesn't know the word for a concept.) In contrast, when she's in France, she thinks in French, and when she's thinking about her upbringing, its in Greek.

A random observation I thought I'd throw in: I have a Greek friend who studied in France and has lived in England for about three years now. She's bilingual in Greek and French, and pretty good at English. She reports that the language she thinks in depends almost entirely on context. For example, if she's thinking about work, she'll think in English (unless she doesn't know the word for a concept.) In contrast, when she's in France, she thinks in French, and when she's thinking about her upbringing, its in Greek.
That's very interesting.
Perhaps that makes sense in conjunction with the idea that the next, more difficult, step in language acquisition after the point of basic understanding would be to forego the middleman-language and to begin directly associating with meaning? Maybe it would be because one language was used most often in the context of those ideas that are thought about in that language?


Yes, I'm still spouting semi-nonsense about this, most likely.

That's very interesting.
Perhaps that makes sense in conjunction with the idea that the next, more difficult, step in language acquisition after the point of basic understanding would be to forego the middleman-language and to begin directly associating with meaning? Maybe it would be because one language was used most often in the context of those ideas that are thought about in that language?


Yes, I'm still spouting semi-nonsense about this, most likely.
That makes some sense to me personally, but I think there may be other factors. For example, there's the relationship of individual languages/cultures to one another. In my experience, it's easier for northern Europeans to become fluent in English, whereas most southern Europeans (especially the French) never seem to lose their accent, and are more likely to have to 'reach' for the right word.

There's also the point that good linguists report that it gets progressively much easier to learn additional languages after the first three or so (even into adulthood). It's as though the brain retains its plasticity and sets up subconcious processes to link words and structures.

Which brings me to another random thought. Your theory deals with meaning only. However, from what little I remember of what little I learnt about the biology of the brain, there are two distinct parts of the brain that deal with language. One specialises in labels (meaning), and the other with grammer, relationship structures &c. (And one reason I remember this is because I'm good at the latter, eg intuitive at mathematics, but crap at remembering names.)

There's also the point that good linguists report that it gets progressively much easier to learn additional languages after the first three or so (even into adulthood). It's as though the brain retains its plasticity and sets up subconcious processes to link words and structures.
Interesting, I hadn't heard that before.
Which brings me to another random thought. Your theory deals with meaning only. However, from what little I remember of what little I learnt about the biology of the brain, there are two distinct parts of the brain that deal with language. One specialises in labels (meaning), and the other with grammer, relationship structures &c. (And one reason I remember this is because I'm good at the latter, eg intuitive at mathematics, but crap at remembering names.)
Well, the reason my theory probably doesn't fit reality is that I have not actually studied this or anything, and I know little about the neurology and psychology of language. I have no clue what actual researchers in the field have been doing.

I have recently noticed someting that gave me an idea on why it is more difficult for one to learn a language as an adult than it is as a child. Perhaps my theory makes no sense, and perhaps it's old news and somebody else came up with it before me, but I figured I'd postit here for discussion anyway.

When I think something to myself, it is (rather predictably) in English. I'd imagine that a Chinese-speaker would carry out a mental dialogue in Chinese, a Spanish-speaker would carry out their mental dialogue in Spanish, and so on.
I was brought up speaking English mostly, and didn't start working with foreign languages for a while.

When I speak to others in a foreign language or try to comprehend the speech of others in a foreign language, I must first mentally translate it to English, then comprehend it from there. I do not have meaning directly associated with non-English phrases, rather I must indirectly attribute meaning to them through my first language.

I'd gladly agree with you, as I too am a native monolingual English speaker who thinks in English - but I didn't always. I remember when I was about 11 or 12, I started carrying on what where basically "conversations" with myself in my head. Just every now and again, and it probably sounds crazier than it really was, but hey, I was a weird kid ;). Anyway, eventually these conversations became permanent, and now they represent my continual thought process. But I remember that before that, I didn't think in English. I thought in feelings, images, sounds. Fair enough, if I was thinking about something to do with language, I would think in terms of words, both written and spoken; I remember one quite vivid image is that whenever I was thinking of a word's spelling, I would picture the word in big block 3d letters as a monolith in the middle of a desert. But that was about as close as my thoughts got to "thinking in English".

I've talked to other people about this, and I get varying responses. Some say they've always thought in terms of spoken language, others say that they don't -which actually seems kinda creepy to me now, like i'm speaking to aliens who deal with communication in some bizarre psychic way inside their heads and then magically communicate that into English for the outside world. Of course, most people think i'm crazy when I say things like this and don't understand what I'm going on about :p

But I definately agree that you can be set in your ways, so to speak, by your primary method of communication. You offer the example that you have to mentally translate your "thoughts", English, into the language that you're speaking. The downside of this is that language isn't always a one to one correspondence, and that concepts have a considerable amount of semantic space to move around in. There may be nuances of meaning to a phrase or word in a foreign language that are completely ignored when you just try and use it as a substitute for your own English thoughts, which may have actually used that word in a completely different way.

....
Well, the reason my theory probably doesn't fit reality is that I have not actually studied this or anything, and I know little about the neurology and psychology of language. I have no clue what actual researchers in the field have been doing.
It's an interesting subject. It takes you to the heart of conciousness and understanding.

Ooh, one last random observation for you that might be relevant. There was a guy who used to work for me who was Nigerian, second language French, but also fluent in English. Very bright bloke, and good at his job when things were going smoothly, but got into difficulty quickly if a customer started rowing with him. When I asked him about this, he said that when he got stressed he stopped thinking in English and had to mentally translate the customer's words into French, then into his native dialect, think of a response in that language and then take it back into French, thence to English. Hence his problems.

One of the important things to remeber is that knowing a language consists of a fair few different things, most of them fairly complex and only some of them related to meaning. Knowing a language consists of a lot more tan just memorizing the dictionary.

You have to know what are possible sounds. Thais can start sentences "ng". You can't in English, and most English speakers can't tell the difference between "ng" and "n" at the beginning of a word (certainly if its spoken in a sentence) because they don't differentiate. As they get older, they tend to have more and more trouble.

You also have to know how the syntax of a language works, how you organise your sentences. Some have their subjects at the front ("I hit him"), some at the back ("Hit him I"). These rules get pretty complicated pretty quickly, as you can see from the fact that Microsoft still can't write a half-decent grammar checker.

Languages don't really differ that much at the level of meaning. Sure the Eskimo's might have a few more words for snow, but reality dictates that the vocabulary in most languages has a pretty broad overlap.

As for thinking in language, my feeling is sometimes, sometimes not, and it probably varies from person to person (you can probably think in images, emotions and a bunch of other stuff). We've certainly all had the experience of thinking something we couldn't put into words (I have, anyway).

Satisfy me that you know what this thing you call "meaning" is.

Then we can talk.

Well it really depends how a person sets about learning the langauge or any words i nthe first place.
On the most part people do in fact learn a second language with reference to their first language. But that is in fact like superimposing a life sized map onto the already existing land scape to find your way about.

My grandmother speaks 6 langauges and can write in 4. She says that when she is taught a new word from any language, instead of referencing to another word and then whatever concept that represents; she attaches it straight to the concept and stores the word in her memory as if it's simply a synonym.

So she wouldn't - think of an object/concept, then think of the possible english words to describe/refer to that object, then reference that word to possible words from another language.

She would simply - think of an object/concept, then think of all possible words from all languages she knows that can refer to that object/concept. In essence making no mental distinction of language until choosing which word she chooses, which depends on who she is talking to.

Satisfy me that you know what this thing you call "meaning" is.
Well, that's a bit difficult. I suppose I don't really know. I used 'meaning' sort of to denote the connection between an object and the symbol used to refer to it. Although, that can't be quite what I said, as the meaning is what I said was being referred to, wasn't it...

You've got me stumped. I suppose I used a concept not only without defining it, but without having the slightest idea how to.
Oh well...

From a philosophy point of view you've obviously got a point.

From a language point of view you're most of the time just talking about the refferent of a word - the physical thing it denotes. Obviously language meets philosphy half-way, especially when you're talking about abstract concepts, but as a practical matter when I refer to a "dog", you know that I'm not actually talking about a chicken. Obviously the categories get a litle fuzzy round the edges (what if it's half-wolf? genetically modified? a robot that bleeds and exactly resembles a dog in every respect?), and there's a whole lot of study devoted to how it is that we can actally talk about anything, but the fact that we can tends to suggest that there's is such a thing as meaning in the sense of "the thing a word refers to", even if we don't understand exactly how that process of ascription works.

Well it really depends how a person sets about learning the langauge or any words i nthe first place.
On the most part people do in fact learn a second language with reference to their first language. But that is in fact like superimposing a life sized map onto the already existing land scape to find your way about.

My grandmother speaks 6 langauges and can write in 4. She says that when she is taught a new word from any language, instead of referencing to another word and then whatever concept that represents; she attaches it straight to the concept and stores the word in her memory as if it's simply a synonym.

So she wouldn't - think of an object/concept, then think of the possible english words to describe/refer to that object, then reference that word to possible words from another language.

She would simply - think of an object/concept, then think of all possible words from all languages she knows that can refer to that object/concept. In essence making no mental distinction of language until choosing which word she chooses, which depends on who she is talking to.

I think it's fair to say that anyone who speaks a language with any degree of fluency has to be doing that. Like I said earlier, when you're speaking a language, you're operating what's actually a bunch of very complicated rules. With the foreign languages I do speak (badly) I sort of stumble along in a combination of thiking in them and then reverting to English when I get stuck, but it's clear to me that anyone fluently speaking a language is just operating that system without reference to anything else.

but the fact that we can tends to suggest that there's is such a thing as meaning in the sense of "the thing a word refers to", even if we don't understand exactly how that process of ascription works.

But that doesn't really help when it comes to translating between languages... which seems to require some notion of synonymy, wouldn't it? As in, "x and y mean the same thing"?

Referents don't help here. "Humans" and "bipedal mammals" refer, I believe, to the same set (unless there is a bipedal mammal of which I am unaware). Nevertheless they mean quite different things.

Clearly, if matching referents cannot even match meanings within one language, it has little chance of doing so across languages.

So, what is "meaning"?

But that doesn't really help when it comes to translating between languages... which seems to require some notion of synonymy, wouldn't it? As in, "x and y mean the same thing"?

Referents don't help here. "Humans" and "bipedal mammals" refer, I believe, to the same set (unless there is a bipedal mammal of which I am unaware). Nevertheless they mean quite different things.

Clearly, if matching referents cannot even match meanings within one language, it has little chance of doing so across languages.

So, what is "meaning"?

As I say, for the purposes of linguistics it really is just "What a word means". Obviously that's not very helpful for a specific discussion of meaning itself, but it does seem to get us by when it comes to discussing other language problems.

You're completely right in saying there's something going on that you can't explain through reference, because, as you say, if we discovered a species of bipedal rhino tomorrow we wouldn't have to change the definition of "human", but you'd also have to concede that the french probably wouldn't be changing the definition of "homme", because we know that "homme" and "man" are basically referring to the same thing, whether that things is the set of all things with two legs and an interest in sport, or some Platonic concept.

To put it more simply, my point is not that we've solved that meaning problem (we haven't), but that you can say a lot about language with the sort of rough and ready cocept that we all seem to understand on some level.

If you mean that "meaning" is a pretty slippery concept to go basing a theory of language aquisition on, then I completely agree, and wouldn't dream of trying to do so. Come to think of it, was your original post in reply to me?

Ah, you are certainly correct that linguists go on without any concept of what "meaning" is.

Whether or not this results in significant flaws in their work is another question.

As an example, I suspect that a clear understanding of "untranslatability" requires an understanding of "meaning" -- since it would seem that for something to be untranslatable, it must have a meaning that simply does not exist in another language.

But does that imply that meaning depends on language, rather than the other way around? Language itself would seem to become even further removed from "reference," for if reference were all that mattered there could be no such thing as words without translations. Reference is always translatable. Indeed, this is often how translators attempt to give a sense of an untranslatable word. "It refers to things such as x, but its meaning has no equivalent in another language."

But that is just the same as explaining that "human" refers to a "bipedal mammal." They denote the same things, but this would not amount to an adequate translation.

To put it more simply, my point is not that we've solved that meaning problem (we haven't), but that you can say a lot about language with the sort of rough and ready cocept that we all seem to understand on some level.

Yes, I agree.

If you mean that "meaning" is a pretty slippery concept to go basing a theory of language aquisition on, then I completely agree, and wouldn't dream of trying to do so.

That is, more or less, what I mean.

Its a nice theory, but it ignores the fact that infants naturally learn anything at all much faster than adults do. Their brains are making more connections when they are babies and infants than they are as adults. It has nothing to do with language, its just the way the brain is wired. Babies are like a sponge and they absorb all manner of knowledge quite easily, much more so than adults. As you get older your capacity to learn actually decreases.

Its a nice theory, but it ignores the fact that infants naturally learn anything at all much faster than adults do. Their brains are making more connections when they are babies and infants than they are as adults. It has nothing to do with language, its just the way the brain is wired. Babies are like a sponge and they absorb all manner of knowledge quite easily, much more so than adults. As you get older your capacity to learn actually decreases.

Anarchyel, YES, I've actually reached agreement with someone on the internet. From here to world peace...

As for children learning everything faster, it's true to an extent but language seems to me a special case. Three year olds are learning words at the rate of a few a day and mastering gramar rules that are still giving the boys at Microsoft problems, but they aren't, for example, learning their way around the house or how to do their times tables at the same speed. Language does seem to be a bit of a special case.