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Critical Period Hypothesis | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6879 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 41 of 60 19 October 2006 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well said. Concise and true I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6879 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 42 of 60 20 October 2006 at 9:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Something about accents that I notice on occastion, and I wonder what other people here might feel about it.
Jerry's pronunciation is an excellent "standard American" (if you will; I realize that he's speaking in Canada) accent. In fact it is almost "too good," in that it sounds like someone is almost exagerating it, like a non-native speaker over-annuciating the pronunciation. And actually, since he's giving a speech to people who aren't native speakers, in this particular case he might be making a move to speak extra-clearly. But a very clean accent also sometimes gets my attention, for the same reason that a person speaking with perfect grammar might get my attention: I'd wonder if they learned under other conditions than that of a native speaker. I remember hearing this once on TV on the History Channel where the hosts of a show went to a musuem in Sweden to talk about an old sunken Swedish ship. The guide at the musuem spoke so well that I wondered if maybe he was an American who worked at the musuem. Another time was when I was watching "Thirteen Days" and there was a scene at the UN involving the Soviet representative talking through an interpreter. At first I thought the interpreter was an American doing the interpretation, but the more I've watched that scene, the more I wonder if it was just a person with exceptionally good English skills. The line is sometimes so thin that I wonder if it's just my imagination hearing things. If I could speak any of the languages I want to learn as well as Jerry speaks English, I'd be very happy indeed; I don't mean to take anything away from these achievements. But does anyone else here know what I mean?
What exactly is his method though? I was quite impressed by his pronunciation, but it seemed to me he barely scratched the surface of his method (which would have been reserved for the class, anyway, I suppose). Even so, he mentioned he focused on pronunciation instead of grammar. I got that part, but does he ever study grammar at all? I have a hard time picturing myself learning a whole language without ever looking at a grammar book for reference, unless perhaps I'm living in the country, which in most cases I likely won't be. Which means I can get audio things and all that, but to pick up more of the language, I feel I'd need more than just audio/texts and so forth. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| puellanivis Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 6622 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Swedish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Latin, Mandarin, French | Message 43 of 60 20 October 2006 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
"Individual aptitude" is a poor phrasing I think here. While it is true that it varies from individual to another, it is more a factor of hereditary than individual effort. Me and my sisters all have a natural ability to pick up accents and new phonemes very easily. Although this does not impact our specific language abilites. Namely, when speaking English, I cannot hear the difference between the vowels in "pot" and "caught", although I can produce them, and if I'm thinking in a language that does make such a distinction, then I am able to notice the difference. My ears hurt whenever I hear various people mangling words in a foreign language. In Japanese I was an oral monitor (teaching two small groups of students) and I was constantly frustrated by the pronunciation that others gave to "tsu". They would usually just say "su", and I'd be like, "no, tsu tsu tsu tsu" and they'd say they couldn't hear a difference. From simply 2 years of college level study, and little exposure to native accents, I picked up a very good Japanese accent, as for German, I spoke with a whole total of 2 native speakers during my four years of High School, but upon getting to the University, I almost felt like bleeding from the ears when I heard another girl saying "ick verduh fil-like nack doych-land gay-en." How could I pick up "ts", ich-laut, ach-laut and the umlauted vowels without any difficulty? I can't hardly answer, I don't remember anymore, but the same is true for all of my sisters. One speaks Dutch so natively that the Dutch people that she is around all day usually forget that she is anything but native Dutch, another sister took the DLAB and scored what they told her was the highest of anyone before her at that testing facility, I took the DLAB and got a 128, which was well above what was necessary for them to offer to teach Mandarin, Arabic, Japanese, or Russian. So, it is always important to remember that "the critical period" is actually different for each person, and in some cases may actually not even happen for some lucky people, or happen only so slightly, that someone could only describe their accent as "native, but not from any province that I know of." 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7115 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 44 of 60 20 October 2006 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Jerry's accent is fine and pretty much native excluding a few TH's that he pronounced closer do D's (e.g. "dat" instead of "that"). What wasn't quite like a native was his grammar.
He did do some native-like mistakes that would actually make his English skills more convincing. For instance he said things like: "all that I have is jobs that pays about ten dollars" "there must have been some people who does..." Many natives confuse the plurality of verbs and nouns and that's what he did, which sounds fine for the sake of sounding native. Of course, I was about to stop the video when I heard him say "pronouwnciation" which he wouldn't stop saying. He also said something like "cauwmpany" "stu-unts" (D's don't get glottalised before a schwa/N combination, but T's do sometimes) and "two years of my affert" was odd.
The resonance of his accent is closeish to Standard American. Although he sounded like he's picked up the local accent as well, so he couldn't be considered as (it's almost mythical, but people claim it exists) accent-less. He was also trying to be heard in a room that seemed to have bad acoustics, so that might explain the excessive enunciation. Lastly, you could tell his speech mixed a few elements of English from England when he said "juring" instead of the Standard American "during", "monast-er-y" (like when someone who would normally say "monastry" slows down and adds back the schwa) instead of "monasairy" and also he pronounced Israel like the English say, as opposed to how most people in the States (and I assume Canada) pronounce it like "Izreeuhl". If he learnt English at a later time in his life, then I'm very impressed. If I could attain that level in the languages I'm studying I'd be more than happy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| puellanivis Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 6622 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Swedish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Latin, Mandarin, French | Message 45 of 60 20 October 2006 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oddly, I learned only at a later point in my life that it's pronunciation, and not pronOUnciation. The second one just made sense to me. Don't ask me where I got it from, I just seem to have picked it up. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7115 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 46 of 60 20 October 2006 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah that was a personal rant, but it could have also increased his chances of sounding like a native.
PronOUWnciaton I think is deduced from the fact that you "pronounce" things. Therefore it sounds "correct" that way (especially as it's a serious word). Thing is, I know of someone that gave a public discourse on correct "pronouwnciatoin" and many had a hard time listening to it no doubt! Same thing with "eXpresso". Words like "express" have got an X so it's possible to then pronounce espresso incorrectly because we're used to hearing EX combinations. Anyway, back on topic. I've never heard of this C.P.H. before and feel it's an incredibly daft idea. People are restricted by their own limitations. In other words, some either have no desire to advance because of what people say to them, or the fact they're able to "get by". This has little to do with the physical ageing of the brain and is simply their own fault. Well that's how I feel about it at least... Edited by Sir Nigel on 20 October 2006 at 3:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| puellanivis Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 6622 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Swedish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Latin, Mandarin, French | Message 47 of 60 20 October 2006 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is really no different between a Spanish person saying "espeed" instead of "speed". "esp..." doesn't occur as often as "exp..." and if enough of a concensus of people is reached, then if all you ever hear is "exp..." you think that is how it should be pronounced.
Well, people can feel that electricity is the flow of electrons through a wire, rather than an actual push of the electrons through the wire. But that doesn't make it correct. In fact, electricity is the later, and the individual electrons move through a wire slower than a person can walk. The CPH is a pretty good hypothesis at predicting human behavior. It's not perfect, and there are people who seem to "break the rules"-- like pretty girls who can pick up the very unique phonemes in American Sign Language within a month, or Daniel Tammet, who can seem to pick up a language in a week well enough to be conversant. But the principle is sound, and weakening it just slightly, that past the CP, each person's brain becomes accustomed to their available phonemes, and their later receptivity to new phonemes will be entirely based on hereditary conditions. I argue that it's entirely hereditary, because I did not start my language aquisition at all until after what would have been my critical phase, but yet had I been presented with a better language education than High School German, I would likely speak it as a second native language. (As is, people don't believe that I am in fact American. Come to think of it, it's probably why people are so annoyed at me at the train stations, "how do you not know how to use the trains? are you retarded?" "Well, sort of, I'm American.") While you could attempt to argue against the CPH from your own experience, it would be like trying to argue against gravity by showing a magnet floating in thin air. Yes, what you are showing is defying gravity, but gravity explains more objects than just your single example, and describes them accurately. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6788 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 48 of 60 21 October 2006 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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How come Jerry Dai can speak English so well? Because he worked so hard at pronunciation and he also memorized dialogs. Do you need some special genetic benefits to do that? No. Do you need to work hard? Yes. Can you work hard? No, because you are too lazy. Do you want to work hard? No, because you don't believe. Jerry says you've got to BELIEVE!
This Critical Period Hypothesis is just a bunch of bunk. Have you ever listened to a 4 or 5 year old speak? Yes. Does the child sound like an adult? No. If you only heard his/her voice you would know immediately that it was a child. A child sounds like a child. They don't yet pronounce everything perfectly. Have you ever tried helping an adult learn to pronounce a word in your language? How long did that last? It probably didn't take a minute for them to give up and decide that they'll never get it perfect. Most people aren't going to try that long. How long did Jerry work on Act 1? He worked on it for 6 months. Is he a genius? No, it wouldn't take a genius 6 months. Is he a dedicated, hard worker? Yes. There is no limitation on how well you can pronounce. It is not related to your age. It is only related to your effort. You will have certain hurdles to overcome and those may vary for each person, but there is no normal person who cannot do it. There are, however, the majority of people who will give up. They decide that the effort is not worth it. It is their decision. Learning pronunciation takes attentive effort. It doesn't happen automatically. A few people are more likely to give it more attention than the rest. And that makes all the difference. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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