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A Gift for Learning Languages | ||
Tags: Talent | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5470 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 17 of 42 29 March 2010 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
I believe talent exists, but is acquired. Meaning, I think that the genetics involved in say intelligence or the ability to learn or whatever you want to call it have a minimal impact and that all that is mostly upbringing and effort, conscious or not. Now usually when people think you're gifted, it's that you make unconscious rather than conscious effort. For instance, I've always been considered a gifted student because I spend few hours doing my homework and got rather good although not excellent grades. But what no one, me included, realised, is that I spent an awful lot of time doing absolutely nothing (which helps organise the brain as well as sleep), a lot of time reading, including in English, and some time as well speaking to myself, inventing stories, etc... My point being, gifted people don't work less at what they're learning, they just work without realising they do because either they do it naturally or it's just very pleasing "work" Plus, the more you learn, the more you can learn. So the more languages you learn, the easier it will be for you to learn new ones (but then of course you'd probably have to maintain your level in older ones) Anyway, if you think studying is too hard, try more passive methods from a certain point on (B1, highish intermediate level): watching, reading... It will actually take as much or more time but will feel like less). And Lapislazuli, if some are better at pronunciation or syntax and others at learning vocabulary, doesn't it make sense that a lucky few would be great at most or all the aspects of learning languages? Edit Sorry, I'm taking up a lot of space on this forum, but I wanted to add that for me all the elements of learning a language that you cited lie in the ability to reaorganise your brain/way of thinking around a new system. It can be very frightening for some people, that's why some people will never get another language's grammar or pronunciation, and easier for others who are not very attached to the systems they already know, are able to "relativise". Maybe that's the secret? Edited by joanthemaid on 29 March 2010 at 6:07pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 18 of 42 29 March 2010 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's a nice way to think, but it's unrealistic. We are all wired differently and have different abilities. People are born with talent and giftedness. And some are born with more talent that others -- however unfair that may be. Desire and hard work are not sufficient to make all of us Olympians, Nobel Prize winners, or what have you. We are all wired differently and some people are particularly gifted in a few or many fields. I don't know how you could sustain the argument that this isn't true. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5470 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 19 of 42 29 March 2010 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Arrekusu:
OK, some people are gifted, but how do you know how much is genetics and how much upbringing? I'm not saying that all six-year olds or twenty year-olds are equally gifted, but that all embryos are . So at this point writing on this forum, yes, some of us are more gifted than others and with the same regimen of everything, they will remain so. Simply because there are things you can acquire when you're a child that you can't catch up on as easily later. But there are also things that "gifted" people do naturally that others can too, and I was just explaining some things I remember doing (and I know a lot of other people here do it too, like speaking to yourselves) About everyone being conceived (and not born, see alcoholism in pregnant women, etc...) equal (more or less, as I said the genetic part is minimal, but I didn't rule it out, so at Nobel-prize level it probably has more influence because at that level everyone probably has had a prime education, which doesn't mean going to Princeton or Harvard). Ok, the genetic factor may exist, how strongly I don't know but I'm pretty sure that the environmental factor is still stronger. Now once a kid or adult has started down the right path, he/she can continue on their own, and then you might say they've got talent, but it comes from somewhere. And about Olympians and Nobel Prize winners: Let's clone Usain Bolt (in imagination of course) and put him in an ideal environment for learning math and computer skills. Now let's clone Bill Gates and put him in an ideal environment physically. From age 6, let's make him run laps and sprint two hours a day. Neither of them will probably get to the other original's level, but I can guarantee you that Bill Gates will run faster than Usain Bolt and Bolt will probably end up an engineer. Edited by joanthemaid on 29 March 2010 at 6:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 20 of 42 29 March 2010 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's not giftedness. That's training. Besides, I bet Usain Bolt would still run faster no matter how much you train Bill Gates' clone. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6852 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 21 of 42 29 March 2010 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Arekkusu I enjoyed the pompous part.
I met one polyglot who was not really intereted in learning languages. It was a Finn who remembered new words the first time he saw them or heard them defined. When he was an exchane student in the US he not only learned English but also 2 languages that other exchange students living with him spoke. I think he spoke 6 or 7 in total. Yet he almost flunked out of high school because of partying. I think he really had a talent for it. I am studying in a field unrelated to languages, which has been my passion for a long time. I spent most of my waking hours studying in order to pass my first year of college. I had to be hardworking because the amount of the material to internalize seemed mind boggling to me (at that time). Meanwhile I spent maybe an hour each day on Spanish on average just for fun.(later with LR more in one sitting, but there were many days when I was overwhelmed and skipped Spanish). I passed my first year of college with average scores, with help of litres of coffee and many sleepless nights. I also became conversational in Spanish. I'm not a natural, and I don't have an exceptional talent, but I think that languages compared to other things come easier to me. If talent is 99% sweat and determination - then I don't have that. I learn languages for fun. If it is a passion for the task allowing you to spend all day doing it - then I fail as well, because although I think I could do it easily, I never do as I don't have the time to do it. So I like to think that I have a little bit of talent, because it makes me feel good about myself even if I don't have one in the true sense of the word. I learned how to play classical guitar by practicing for 6 hour a day for a few years. I agree, it was annoying to meet kids with perfect pitch who played better than me after 2 years, in addition to being able to sing and play jazz piano. as for Usain Bolt: that analogy seems pretty farfetched. Have you noticed that top contenders in any disipline have a very similar build? That's because there are optimal physical conditions for each one of them, and in countries where sport is highly valued kids are selected by talent hunters based on how they develop - because they can potentially excel in their field one day. If they are not selected and encouraged to do it they might indeed end up as engineers. Edited by Kubelek on 29 March 2010 at 7:25pm 6 persons have 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 23 of 42 30 March 2010 at 9:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Being able to sit down and work hard without complaining or falling asleep may also be an inborn talent
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 24 of 42 30 March 2010 at 11:45am | IP Logged | |||||
Not necessarily. I know I worked on my accent. On my half-hour walk home from work I would be clicking and muttering and I taught myself to produce dental and retroflex Hindi sounds, and to make a strong distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants over the course of a couple of weeks. (I never learned Hindi properly though.) I did a similar thing with the consonants and prosody of Basque. (And I never learned Basque properly either.) I now apparently have a "talent" for accent, in that I pick them up quickly. I have trained myself to do this, but I've also trained myself not to need to do this. I did not start from any point of particularly advantage -- I simply read up on phonology and trained myself by brute force. Talent acquired. Or is it? Every time I come across a new sound, I still need to look it up... I think. And if I don't, it's only because I've learnt most of the major elements of pronunciation. I can distinguish voiced and unvoiced; aspirated and unaspirated; approximants from "complete" sounds; dental, aveolar and retroflex; nasals; palatised and non-palatised; glottals; gutturals. I can handle clear vowels, glides, diphthongs and triphthongs, and obscure vowels. So I'm very good at learning new accents, but it still doesn't mean I'm talented, even though everyone thinks I am. I don't need talent as there's not much left to learn. (Tones and clicks, mostly.)
He is an exceptional case. The existence of "rain man" type autistics does not prove that counting ability is a predetermined "talent" -- most of us still have to learn to do it properly. Edited by Cainntear on 30 March 2010 at 11:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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