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Not wired for languages? | ||
Tags: Talent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4568 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 57 13 December 2012 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Today I chatted to a young South African man. He was very pleasant and was something of a computer specialist with a talent for programming.
Having an interest in Germanic languages, I asked him if he knew any Afrikaans. "It's a dying language" came the reply "it's a waste of time teaching the language to people". Not looking for an argument, I merely nodded and made light of the situation, saying that in the UK we learn French and German and don't have much success at that. He then went on to tell me that he "couldn't do languages", that they didn't make sense to him. Now, I've heard this claim many times from British people, many of whom are highly qualified in maths, science or computing disciplines. So here we have highly-intelligent people who can extrapolate complex formulae to the nth degree or program computers to perform all manner of tasks, yet they actively send out the message that they are incapable of learning a foreign language. Personally, I suspect that they've realised that they can live their entire life through English and view an additional language as an unnecessary skill to expend energy upon. I don't subscribe to the belief of not having the head for languages. Or does this type of person exist abroad? The quirky Dutch scientist, the Belgian maths lecturer and the Swedish computer geek all claiming to be unable to function in languages other than their native one because that's the way their brains are built. Edited by beano on 13 December 2012 at 7:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5280 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 57 13 December 2012 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Nobody would say that about English which quite literally, even the mentally retarded can do, but if you ask
about any other language beyond that, you might get the same answer. German would be half possible, particularly for the engineers, but the brilliant scientist who also spoke French or Spanish or Mandarin would be a very rare breed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4417 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 3 of 57 13 December 2012 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
The type of people who claim that they can not learn a foreign language ? Yes, it is very common. The type of people who actually can not learn a foreign language ? I believe they are quite rare (though of course, if you already decided you are going to fail before even starting to try, chances are that you will - but that has nothing to do with innate abilities). Extra bonus when said person proceeds to tell you that you, on the contrary, have a gift for languages so they speak only one language and you don't (of course, it could not have anything to do with all the efforts you put into learning). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5202 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 4 of 57 13 December 2012 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My honest, and admittedly cynical view, is that people make excuses like this because they don't want to admit that they are just lazy. I see this from my family all of the time. They are all obese, uneducated and poor. I work really hard to have money, get good grades in college, and be in shape. It is easier for them to say that I "just have good genes", or that I'm "lucky", instead of admitting that they are just not willing to put in the hours to change their lives.
Anyone that has the capacity to say "I can't learn languages" obviously can learn languages. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to do something, but I think there is something very wrong with not taking responsibility for your life. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5280 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 57 13 December 2012 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am a little torn on this. Some people have an interest and a talent for Math, some for running, some for
languages. I could not become a Math professor or an athlete if I were payed a million dollar. That some people struggle more with languages than others, I therefore find perfectly natural. That they are totally unable to learn it, I do not buy. I suppose that under a threat of death or torture I could learn more math, and become a jogger, just as they could learn a language if they really wanted to. We say that success is due to 10% inspiration, and 90% transpiration, and there is a lot of truth in that. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5478 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 57 14 December 2012 at 12:34am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, it's pretty hard to become a professor in any subject. At least in the US, there's a lot of competition. But I'm sure you could learn quite a bit of math, if you were interested and you worked as hard at it as you do at languages. Even if you found it hard to learn math in school, that's like saying it's hard to learn French from Rosetta Stone. :-) The tricky thing about math is that the advanced ideas build on the basic ideas, and you need to know those basic ideas cold. It's not enough to just read about integrals, for example, any more than it's enough to read about the subjunctive in a grammar book. You have to practice it, play with it, and work at it until it becomes a part of you. It's the same in math—when something in math makes no sense, you sometimes need to go back down two layers and build up slowly, practicing as you go. One of my favorite metaphors for learning is the Appalachian Trail. This trail runs 2,200 miles through the eastern US, stretching from Georgia to Maine. Every year, about 100 people hike the whole thing. And they're not all natural athletes, or 20 year olds, or anything like that. One of my couch potato friends did it. Then there's this marvelous woman, Grandma Gatewood:
You don't finish the Appalachian Trail because you're young, or because you're in good shape, or because you bought a really expensive backpack. You finish the trail if wake up every morning and put one foot in front of another. And the same thing goes for languages and math. Most people who say, "I'm bad at languages!" are really saying, "I've hiked 5 miles a day all week long, and I'm still in Georgia! I'm not a natural born hiker!" The trail's 2,200 miles long. Of course you're still in Georgia. You can either decide the trip is worth it, and keep walking until you reach Maine. Or you can decide you'd rather spend your time doing something else. Either of these decisions would be perfectly respectable. But it's silly to say, "I'm just no good at hiking/languages/math!" It's much more dignified to say, "Life's too short, and I'd rather do something different." 11 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5280 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 57 14 December 2012 at 1:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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@emk: I so very rarely disagree with you that I simply have to take this opportunity :-)
As a teacher I so often saw that some of my kids were great in some subjects, and really bad at others. I never stopped shaking my head in disbelief at some of the other teachers who would categorize the kids as smart or stupid/lazy. Smart at what, stupid in what ?? One of my pupils was considered almost an idiot by his math teacher, yet in my English class he was a straight A- candidate. And not only because his mother was English. He had a natural advantage at it yes, but he also developed his ideas well, wrote with insight, and could catch in the air any problem I sent his way. Two kids can go to school in a foreign country, one comes back fluent, the other one can hardly string two sentences together. What is the explanation for that, if not at least partly talent? A girl in my daughter's class went to school in Spain for 6 months, and she came back with the kid version of " dos cervezas" - "un helado por favor". After 6 full months - being a 10 year old. In that same timeframe I was indistinguishable from a native speaker. A friend who is a mathematician has a son who could do math problems at the age of three that I could never do. I do not know exactly what talent or the right motivation comes from - if I did I would have become a billionaire. I am absolutely certain that we have different talents though. An interesting factor here is what belief in yourself can do for your motivation, and hence for your success. A friend of mine who is an American professor told me that now and then he will give a D-student an A just because he finds her sexy. Being a third generation teacher I find that wrong beyond words. The interesting thing however, is that he says that it has happened several times, that the same student suddenly takes a real interest in the subject, starts to study hard, and the next time he can give her an A because she actually deserves it. Both my girls are absolute top of their class in English and Spanish. Now in Spanish they have had a little extra advantages, but in English they have not.And they are not geniuses in any other subjects - just average. So why do they do well in languages? Genes, upbringing, belief in themselves, expectations from me? I have no idea. But just as I know that air exists even if I cannot see it, I know that some degree of talent exists even if I cannot explain how or why. And then of course in addition to that you need a lot of hard work :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 14 December 2012 at 1:07am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5327 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 57 14 December 2012 at 2:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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Do you really think that if you took this really intelligent man for a long walk, if you started to explain how a
given language works, introduced some words, started creating sentences, asked him to translate a few more, he couldn't do it? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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