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Polyglots "have different brains" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 9 of 15 23 August 2007 at 4:23am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Quinn: even if you can find evidence for differences in the brains of polyglots and monoglots it doesn't prove that these differences are hereditary. They might be a result of years of hard training. Besides it will be a difficult task to prove that any differences that you might find are directly connected with the number of languages of the subject unless the they are limited to the areas in the brain that specifically deal with language (Broca, Wernicke). It is a fascinating subject, but it will take much more research to prove anything.
Research based on the brains of dead people is difficult because you have to wait for people to die, and then you have to get their brains and dissect them. I personally think we are more likely to get results from the kind of research where you put electrodes on the sculls of people and ask them to perform certain tasks. These experiments might show that some people have different activity with every language, others not, or they might show that some people have unusually high activity in their Brocas (as implied in the thread about the superfast speaking lady). If you find such resultd it might be worth to investigate whether the differences in activity have parallels in the physical brain. Edited by Iversen on 23 August 2007 at 7:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 7027 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 15 23 August 2007 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||
I am quite willing to believe that an ability to distinguish sounds will help in learning and remembering words. Even when we read, we vocalize. Ditto for learning and remembering, and eventually reproducing language structure. I also believe this can be trained and in my experience, the more languages you learn the easier it gets. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leonidus Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6325 days ago 113 posts - 123 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 11 of 15 23 August 2007 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Ok then musicians should have an advantage. It would be interesting to find some statistics on how musicians compare to everyone else in regards of language learning.
Still I believe it's more hard work than just having a talent. Once you've got the sound system of a language down, you shouldn't often have a problem decomposing a word into sounds and recognizing it, as long as you know it. But remembering it in the first place is what defines its correct identification. and that already depends on how much time you spent providing yourself with audio input to engrave that word into your brain. Just my 2 cents. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| H.Computatralis Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6303 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Polish*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Latin | Message 12 of 15 24 August 2007 at 5:33am | IP Logged | ||
For a long time neuro-scientists believed that the brain doesn't grow new structures and that the number of neurons in the brain is fixed at birth. From what I've read, more recent research seems to contradict this, but maybe this particular researcher is not aware of that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LeadingQuestion Newbie United States Joined 5177 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English | Message 13 of 15 22 September 2010 at 3:04am | IP Logged | ||
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One year of music practice leads to a clearly broader corpus calllosum.
New neurons are happening all the time, and yes this did overturn decades of dogma some years ago. Currently, people think white matter gets pretty fixed/mature by 35-45. But who knows... people thought you could never acquire traits and pass them on to your kids forever, too (epigenetics). Also, there will be open-source hardware for TMS and there already is for EEG, so you'll have neural input-output and plasticity at some level within a decade, so maybe new growth ...? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 14 of 15 22 September 2010 at 4:17am | IP Logged | ||
When it comes to pronunciation (rather than language learning in general), what I've experienced and read suggests that it's to a large extent a matter of talent. Some people get the pronunciation right from the beginning and others work hard but still can't do it. This does not mean that working on it is fruitless, of course, nor does it say whether this talent is hereditary or acquired during the early years. I haven't seen any research in the area, though. Until now, that is. Very interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hanekawa Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5171 days ago 30 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 15 of 15 27 September 2010 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if this means polyglots are good at playing instruments and stuff...
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