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Instant language acquisition | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| abr Groupie Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5480 days ago 40 posts - 62 votes  Speaks: Russian* Studies: English, Spanish | Message 1 of 5 22 April 2010 at 9:55am | IP Logged | ||
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How would you feel about possibility of instant language acquisition?
Imagine that one day there will be a device or method with which process of foreign language learning will become a matter of several minutes. And for the sake of the purity of the experiment, lets make it free and available for everyone around the world. Will you be excited or frustrated? Will you regret for the time and effort you already put in on your languages? I, personally, sure want to speed whole process up, say about 2 times. But don't quite certain if i want a magic pill. I already used to English, but still catch myself at incredibility of my understanding of dialogs in Mandarin, though pretty simple ones. It is so unbelievable to hear not a sequence of alien sounds, but the meaning they are conveying, so rewarding to see the results of work that has been done. I do not sure i will be as pleased with the results without making any effort to gain them. Obviously translators and teachers would be upset. Expect some mixed feelings by linguists. On the one hand they get an amazing opportunity to explore all the languages and both ways: on the inside and from outside. On the other it might become absolutely pointless to make any linguistic research. Members of Esperanto community, as far as i understand their motifs, would be the only ones totally pleased. Now, i might be totally wrong with all these guesses, so how would you feel, what would you say? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 5 22 April 2010 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Let' assume that Google translation really becomes dependable, and that you can walk around with a gadget that shows translations on your contact lenses or whispers them in your ears. Then you don't have to learn languages the laborious way, but the effect will be the same as having learned hundreds of languages. Right now those machine translations are still rather imperfect, so translators and interpreters aren't totally obsolete yet - but look what happened the the proofreaders at the newspapers. They are gone, and spell checkers did it (in spite of their deficiencies).
For me it won't have any effect. I learn languages for fun, and I see things like machine translations as something that can be useful for some purposes - like cars and bicycles than can help people to move faster, but don't stop them from walking around. And high quality translations will not be done entirely by machine the next couple of years. But I do foresee a situation where simple run-off-the-mill translations mostly will be done by computer for economical reasons, and where even translators may have to fear for their jobs. Edited by Iversen on 22 April 2010 at 10:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 3 of 5 22 April 2010 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm with Iversen on this one. Learning a language is more than the simple sum of its parts or its visible end result. There's immeasurable fun involved for many in the process, the proud satisfaction of overcoming obstacles by yourself, the joy of learning about a new culture and language, getting to know new people and ideas, and the ability to learn how to see the world from a completely new or different perspective.
I certainly see the use in technological tools to assist us (I'm using some right now), but it's important to remember who serves who here. As much as I love driving and getting to my destination faster whilst the world whizzes by, I'm much fonder of taking a walk in the countryside or chatting to musicians and party-goers in an evening lit street in Barcelona and stopping to look at the beauty and genius of it all. In a similar way, language I feel is also a journey of self-discovery as much as it is enlightenment to new and wonderful perspectives. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dolly Senior Member United States Joined 5790 days ago 191 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 4 of 5 22 April 2010 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Machine translation and language acquisition are two different things. I can't learn Spanish by reading Cervantes in English.
In the future, education and culture might be radically changed by neuroprosthetic devices implanted in humans. The applications in medicine and learning have been anticipated in Science Fiction since Terminal Man and Neuromancer. Effort-free learning through a brain-computer interface might save the world's languages. Why use a lingua franca when everyone's a polyglot? Edited by dolly on 22 April 2010 at 6:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 5 of 5 22 April 2010 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" had it right with the Babelfish, which translated languages between all people and beings and--as a result--ended up causing an intergalactic war because everyone realized what they'd been *actually* saying about each other all this time.
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