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Regression and Language Learning | ||
Tags: Forgetting a language | Memory | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| delta910 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5877 days ago 267 posts - 313 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, German | Message 2 of 10 24 June 2009 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I haven't studied German in about 2 years and I can still make sentences and reproduce vocabulary. So I guess it could be true that you never really loose a language. Edited by Iversen on 13 December 2009 at 3:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 10 24 June 2009 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Learning a literary text by heart and learning how to manipulate a language are two different things.
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| Olympia Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5983 days ago 195 posts - 244 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Old English, French | Message 6 of 10 24 June 2009 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I still remember almost everything from the French classes I took in my childhood. They were over a decade ago,
but I remember practically if not all of the vocabulary words and the grammar. Even now when I hear French I seem to understand it well, because the teacher used to speak French to us without teaching us much grammar. For some reason I really soaked it up even though I didn't get much exposure. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 10 24 June 2009 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
What I meant it that the memory is stored differently - though it uses the same resources. Usually when learning something by heart, and doing this so well that you can recite the text years later, you - how to say? You stagger triggers. You remember the second verse only by reciting the first one, and the third only by reciting the second one. This also means that you need the first trigger, otherwise you won't be able to produce a single word of it. To make sure that every trigger works the way it should, you overlearn. In the end the connections between the parts of the text are extremely strong. Vocabulary sometimes uses the same mechanism, triggering linked concepts in collocations. But most words can appear in more than on collocation, in more than one phrase - and usually you learn them in different sentences from the start. Even if you repeat set phrases a lot, most people don't overlearn as much as when learning for a recital. Grammar, on the other hand, should transfer from declarative knowledge to procedural knowledge with exposure and practice. That means grammar might better be compared with motor skills. The easier motor skills might get rusty, but you never lose them (though you might lose the strength and coordination). But more complex motor skills are easy to lose without practice. And it might just as well be that you don't lose the skill itself, but your conscious access to it. That might be a possible explanation why skills get rusty or you have to relearn them (but the process is considerably faster than learning for the first time) BTW this has absolutely no foundation other than me babbling about things I don't even remember where I heard about them. :D Edited by Bao on 27 June 2009 at 1:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Z23146 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6641 days ago 19 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 8 of 10 26 June 2009 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think under certain circumstances it is definitely possible to lose a language. For instance, I knew a woman whose family immigrated to the US from Puerto Rico. Her father spoke great English, but when he had a stroke and his mind weakened, his English just seemed to dissapear. I think cases like this are not too uncommon among elderly immigrants. I also heard about Jewish children who fled to England from Germany in the 30's and couldn't speak any German after the war because they had ingrained themselves so deeply into the British way of life. Associating bad experiences with a language can definitley accelerate the regression of that language in the speaker's mind.
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