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A Gift for Learning Languages | ||
Tags: Talent | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 25 of 42 30 March 2010 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
For me it's Korean so far. Which is ... number 7 I think, more or less (one of them I needed to learn, the others I chose to learn.) But every language provides different challenges for me. I've said it before, and I shall repeat my opinion: The ability to comprehend and speak a language is a very complex task and there is no general 'talent for languages'. Some people will learn to hear the sounds of a foreign language faster than the average student. (This talent is proven to exist.) Some people might have a knack for finding cognates that aren't obvious. Some people might find it easier to recognize grammatical patterns and manipulate them. Some people might find it easy to remember words that objectively don't have much importance for them. Some people might be more apt to find way to deal with the areas they are not so talented for. Some people might find it easier than others to deal with a different culture without seeing it as a threat to their own cultural identity, and so they might find it easier to communicate with natives and learn from them than others do. And there's so much more! I personally do have a talent for visual-symbolic recognition which does give me an advantage with logographic scripts. I also have a talent for keeping up my fascination with a topic that makes me pursue deeper understanding than my peers seem to do, and I remember a lot of details. I don't think I have any other talent which might be useful for learning languages; and I especially lack self discipline and good management of my own ressources, have poor auditory memory and I am very easily bored and easily fool myself into believing I know something when I only can recognize it as something seen before. The majority of people should have a number of 'talents' 'average skills' and 'weaknesses', just like me. Some few people might be more gifted, and some few might be less gifted than the broad mass. But that broad mass surely can learn one, two, three foreign languages to a good level of fluency, if they actually have a use for those languages. It just takes work, every single day - for years, usually. Edited by Bao on 30 March 2010 at 6:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nescafe Senior Member Japan Joined 5409 days ago 137 posts - 227 votes | Message 26 of 42 30 March 2010 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think, anyone can learn a language if he or she is not specialy talented. However, there must be some people who are gifted in language, otherwise I can not understand some people show incredible ability in learning language. How can some polyglots speak more than 20 languages? I heard a poliglot said he even did not know how many language he can speak. Unbelievable.
If there is a limit of one's ability to lean languages, that will be the point one do not want to learn a language anymore. Worrying about talent is nonsense! 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 27 of 42 30 March 2010 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I get a general sense that many people simply refuse the idea that a person could be gifted for language acquisition. Perhaps it's so uncommon that most people have never met such a person.
However, there is a difference between being talented in various areas and using these to your advantage, and being gifted. Giftedness is instinctive. It's innate. It's an uncontrolled and subconscious process whereby things just make sense right away. With language, it manifests itself with the ability to instinctively perceive and internalize distinctions and patterns and to make predictions about other parts of the language they have never seen. It provides an instinctive sense of how things might be organized and expressed in the language and this process is so natural that fluency comes effortlessly, right from the start. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 28 of 42 30 March 2010 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One is often tempted to make an analogy between the talent for languages and the talent for learning music. I don't agree because I think they are similar but different skills. Whereas everybody can learn their native language perfectly at pretty much the same age and in the same stages, some music students do exhibit an exceptional ability at a very early age. These are the child prodigies that we see on stage. And some people have perfect pitch.
As others have already pointed out, probably the biggest factor in the acquisition of languages is early exposure. The best way to become multilingual is to be born or brought up in a multilingual environment. Now, for the rest of us mortals who were not blessed with growing up multilingual, some of us, it is true, seem to pick up languages more easily than others. I'm sure it's the case of many people here. But we all know that underneath that veneer of so-called knack there is a lot of hard work that is not always visible. That said, why do some people have it easier than others? My own explanation is that these people have spontaneously developed learning techniques that are more efficient than those of other people. In this forum we constantly discuss the best techniques for learning languages. The people with the so-called knack have simply mastered these techniques in accord with their personality and learning style. Insofar as the spoken language is concerned, in my observation all good adult language learners share common traits: the ability to imitate or mimic, good memory, a keen sense of observation coupled with the ability to see patterns. If you add to that an outgoing personality, voila, you have someone who has a knack for languages. Put that person in a new country and in a very short time, they will start picking up the local language seemingly without effort. These same people can of course pick up pieces of many languages in the right circumstances. To master a language to even just a CEFR:B2 level, however, requires serious work. Which is why I remain very skeptical when I see reports of people who claim to speak a large number of languages. But that's a whole different topic that has been rehashed endlessly. 2 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 29 of 42 30 March 2010 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
How about those who do it effortlessly, with very little need to study? Edited by Arekkusu on 30 March 2010 at 5:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 30 of 42 30 March 2010 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I for one don't study at all, but that doesn't mean that what I do doesn't require effort. Edited by Bao on 30 March 2010 at 6:22pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 32 of 42 30 March 2010 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wish. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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