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5 Years old Mabou Loiseau Speak 7 Langs | ||
Tags: Young polyglot | Children | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 4791 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes  Speaks: Korean* | Message 17 of 18 16 May 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree. We must indeed be aware of the limited information from the video presentations, try to read between the lines according to our sensibilities and judgements, and leave making final evaluations till we get sufficiently more information. My impression is that Mabou has a strong basis in French and English with Creole thrown in as a bonus, seems to be able to put together longer sentences naturally in her Spanish, has gained a level of ability in Russian which the native Russian speakers who spent much time with her have affirmed to be good and impressive[need more qualification], and has laid good bases for acquiring Chinese and Arabic. With kids, we must also take into consideration their shyness in front of the camera and other people, and limited level of vocabulary, especially in those languages in which they are not as confident as their strong languages. Different yardsticks have to be applied in evaluating the foreign language level of kids and adults. For example, a kid who has a 300 word vocabulary in Chinese could be compared vocabulary wise to an adult who has 1500 word vocabulary in Chinese. What for an adult might only be a beginner's level could be an intermediate level for a kid. However, the main things which I tried to ascertain in these videos of Mabou and also of Wendy Vo were --how much of each languages was being handled by the related independent language centers, whether or not the different nerve centers had grown within their brain, which handle different languages independently, and if so, how stable they have become; and --how conducive are the learning milieu and methodologies used for them to assimilate foreign languages . Outward signs of the former are mainly manifested in and through the accents, intonation, rhythm and manner of their speech, more so than in how many sentences they can mutter out in what kind of range of vocabularies. To me, this is far more important than their vocabulary level, grammatical understanding of the language or ability to recognize and write in different scripts, whether Arabic or Chinese, because if a kid develops this basis, then he can build up other things very 'correctly' or native-likely rather quickly later on. We adult learners tend to not babble through learning a foreign language. The kids, however, can and does babble through a foreign language if put in a right learning environment, because they do not know better. I, however, do think that 'babbling' and 'kiddie talk' are the signs of proper assimilation of a foreign language at the beginning stage. This is why I would even consider a kid stutteringly and 'kiddishly' blurting out a very basic word or phrase in a foreign language as having a much better foundation in that language than an adult putting a complex sentence together correctly, if I sense that that kid is using an independent language center of the brain. This is why I am quite excited about the phenomenon of Wendy Vo and Mabou. Not so much because of their level of fluency, but --because of the formation of independent nerve centers within their brain and the depth of identification of themselves with other languages; --because of the concrete potentiality to raise up what I think are qualitatively mature and complete polyglots, and even globalglots and panglots; ----because their parents had the concept and audacity to train their kids from a very young age in quite a number of languages chosen from different language families, that is, to train their kids in translingualism and globallingualism, in a way that they will be in a position to progress on to become even mature panglots should they choose to do so. I had dealt with some of the above issues in lieu with the concepts of identification in my thread on "Less Painful and More Effective Chinese" http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=25814&PN=1&TPN=2 "....Identifying yourself with the people of your target language is for forcefully PUTTING A BREAK on your primary language system inside your brain, so that it will not interfere with the linguistic(grammatic, semantic, vocal, cultural-motor) processing of a new language, and for stimulating new nerve cells to grow within your brain into forming a new language center which will INDEPENDENTLY PROCESS your target language. Otherwise you will always go through two step communication process, regardless of how many years you have studied and practiced the target language, that of interpreting your primary language into your target language, and vice versa. The invisible 'TRANSLATOR' in your brain, however, will bring in a lot of unnecessary cultural, vocal, and semantic elements of your primary language into the process of production of speech and thinking in your target language and block its optimal performance. Put it simply, the main idea is to develop an ability to THINK and SPEAK DIRECTLY in one's target language, without the intervening process of 'inner translation', and to transform that language as much as possible into one of your own primary languages. In other words, Chinese becomes one of your primary languages. This is where the principles of identification, sympathization and simulation come into play. To give you an example of this principle at work, it is what a good actor or actress would do in character playing--aiming at complete identification with and immersion into the character, so as to more effectively act and express out the character's little idiosyncracies and peculiarities in manners and speech...." Edited by futurianus on 17 May 2012 at 6:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 4928 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 18 of 18 23 May 2012 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I knew a Haitian living in Cayenne whom speak seven languages: Creole Haitian, French,
English, Portuguese, Spanish, German and Italian. I guess it´s fairly common there. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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