Language Museum Blog

It’s often said that children pick up languages faster than adults, and the younger new languages are introduced, the quicker they learn. A new study now suggests that babies who hear two languages in the womb are already on the path to bilingualism.

The team of psychological scientists at the University of British Columbia in Canada found that language acquisition takes place even before birth, with babies picking up on languages in the womb. They found a correlation between a “sucking reflex” (which apparently shows stimulus or interest) and being spoken to in different languages.

On average, monolingual English babies gave more strong sucks per minute when hearing English, while bilingual babies gave the same number of sucks upon hearing both languages.

Realizing the bilingual babies could have shown equal interest in both languages simply because they didn’t know the difference, the researchers devised a second experiment to determine if the babies were able to tell the languages apart.

The infants heard sentences being spoken in one language until they lost interest. Then they either heard sentences spoken in the other language or sentences spoken in the same language, but by a different person.

The result found babies sucked more when they heard the language change, but not with a different person speaking the same language, suggesting they are able to tell the difference between two languages from early stages in life.

Werker said many bilingual parents are concerned that if they speak two languages, their children are going to be language-delayed or confused — but this research refutes that notion. (Source: Vancouver Sun)

I’ve always wanted to be bilingual and am now struggling as an adult to pick up Spanish. I guess with this news I can blame my lack of language skills on my parents for not speaking to me in anything other than English!

Repetition is a great way to improve your language skills and familiarise yourself with your chosen language. In class, a teacher will often go over the same words in different ways – so you are hearing and repeating the words often and hopefully fixing them in your brain (creating neural pathways, if you want to be scientific about it!).

Outside of class, it’s also helpful to use this technique. You could repeat vocabulary lists to yourself, or write them down, but this may soon become boring. When you are bored, you stop noticing things, and stop learning.

Try listening to audio books, radio, music and television in the language you are learning. Some content may be more appealing than others. Find some things you like a repeat them over and over. You will soon find yourself recognising more words and sentences. Once you are bored or think you have learned all you can, switch to something different.

The key here though, is to not switch too much. You need to find a balance between what you find interesting and acquiring the knowledge or creating the pathways in your brain.

Everyone seems to think their native language is more difficult than everyone else’s. But is it really?

People are fond of stating that English is a difficult language to learn, with all its many idiosyncrasies. Currently trying to wrap my head around Spanish, I’m starting to think it’s more difficult – for a start they use genders, which we don’t in English.

The idea of languages being ‘difficult’ to learn surely has more to do with perception than reality. For native English speakers, Chinese would seem difficult as it has many different tones, which are unfamiliar. The unfamiliar is often a source of bemusement and fear.

This article in The Economist explores the idea of languages being ‘difficult’ and concludes that Tuyuca, a language of the eastern Amazon, is the hardest:

It has a sound system with simple consonants and a few nasal vowels, so is not as hard to speak as Ubykh or !Xóõ. Like Turkish, it is heavily agglutinating, so that one word, hóabãsiriga means “I do not know how to write.” Like Kwaio, it has two words for “we”, inclusive and exclusive. The noun classes (genders) in Tuyuca’s language family (including close relatives) have been estimated at between 50 and 140. Some are rare, such as “bark that does not cling closely to a tree”, which can be extended to things such as baggy trousers, or wet plywood that has begun to peel apart.

Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”. English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.

What’s the most difficult language you’ve come across?

I wear spectacles, but they’re nowhere near as hi-tech (or useful) as these glasses invented by NEC.

The company says it is planning to launch spectacles that can aid real-time translation, allowing chat between users to flow freely. Whilst they’re not exactly like specs (they won’t help you see better); they more resemble a headset with a microphone, and this is how they work:

…the microphone on the headset picks up the voices of both people in a conversation, pipes it through translation software and voice-to-text systems and then sends the translation back to the headset.

At the same time as a user hears a translation, they would also get text subtitles beamed onto the retina. (Source: BBC News)

I’m not so sure about having “subtitles beamed onto [my] retina” (sounds painful!) but this definitely sounds like a useful tool. (https://baycities.com) I can imagine as a language learner you could use it to connect with native language speakers all over the world, turning the translation on and off as and when you want to use it. Sadly, we’ll have to wait til 2011 to find out how useful it really is!

Bad news if your grammar is terrible – even monkeys can recognise your mistakes.

Well… sort of. Researchers have said that a particular kind of monkey are able to hear if the order of syllables in a word is “wrong”.

The cotton-top tamarins were first familiarised with two-syllable terms, and then tested the following day to see how they reacted to familiar and unfamiliar word patterns. The study found that the monkeys “looked to the speaker” when unfamiliar words were presented.

Of course, the researchers weren’t merely having fun playing with monkeys, the results have implications for humans also:

Marc Hauser, who was also involved in this study, told BBC News that the results showed how human language had incorporated memory processes that were not “language-specific”.
“Simple temporal ordering is shared with non-human animals,” he said. “This has an important role. In bird song or whale song, for example, there’s a temporal ordering to the notes and that’s critical for communication.”
And it goes beyond that. “In primates, this ordering is vital for learning,” explained Professor Hauser. “In tool use, primates learn from each other that you do this first, then you do that, then it’s that.”
Professor Hauser described how evident this innate ability is when a child learns language.
“As a child learns to use the past tense,” he said, “they may generalise and use a suffix wrongly, but they will never generalise in the wrong direction. “You never hear them say ed-walk instead of walked. (Alprazolam) ”

Read the full article here, or the full research paper here.

With seemingly endless choices out there, it can often be confusing trying to choose a language school that is right for you. Of course, first you need to consider your reasons for learning as they will impact on what school you choose. For example, are you hoping to progress your career or do you simply need some phrases for a holiday? (https://www.governmentauctions.org/)

Once you’ve done that, here are some further questions to consider, which I have grouped into general categories to make reading easier:

Location and environment

Classes

General

If you are planning to study abroad, it is worth checking if the school is accredited, especially when learning English. In the UK, English schools are accredited by the British Council, and overseas you should look at IALC and EAQUALS.

Finally, this is an interesting article from a writer who has personal experience of choosing a language school overseas.

Learning from a book has a similar advantage to the podcast, in that it’s very portable. Unlike the podcast though, it’s more suitable for those wishing to improve their writing and reading skills, as there is generally no spoken element apart from practicing aloud to yourself.

Although learning from a book is a flexible method – you can learn when and where you like – there is no one to ask questions of if you are struggling. Also, the book cannot correct you if you are making mistakes! Books are generally well-structured, and you can move at your own pace. If you feel you’ve mastered a section, you can quickly move on to the next.

In addition, the initial price of the book is the only cost you’re likely to bear. It’s worth doing some research before buying though, to make sure the book is the correct one for your level and what kind of skills you want to get out of it. Online book store sites often have user reviews, and this site has some reviews for a handful of languages.

Cheryl from Manchester has been learning Russian:

I’ve found my book really useful for learning the Cyrillic alphabet and can now read Russian to quite a good level. I put aside time each week to go through the next chapter, although it’s hard to stick to it sometimes as I have to say no to dinner or going out with my friends. It hasn’t really helped me with speaking skills though, so I’m trying to find someone who speaks Russian to converse with, like a language exchange. (Ambien)