Last week, we had a guest professor in one of my classes, and he talked about some interesting linguistic concepts that I thought would be interesting to share and get some feedback from y’all.
How Children Learn Language
It’s commonly accepted that children learn the basics of language between the ages of 0 and 7. Whether or not this impacts the ability to acquire additional languages after this age is a hot topic right now, but for this class, the professor actually talked about it in more basic terms. Taking the example of the rare cases of “savage” children, who are somehow left in the wilderness and survive on their own, only to be found later and attempt to be integrated into society. These children never fully adapt the ability to speak as the rest of us do, because they didn’t learn how to speak within that first seven-year period of their lives. That is to say, that what differentiates humans’ ability to speak from animals is not the presence of certain organs, but the knowledge of how to manipulate those organs and respiration in order to form such distinct sounds as we have in our culturally and societally-made languages. Therefore, a child growing up away from civilization can only learn to understand certain basic ideas from language and usually not speak it, because they missed the essential period needed to learn how to physically talk. Going along with that is the idea that if one cannot talk, one cannot think, which is definitely debatable. The idea is that if you don’t have knowledge of language in order to conceptualize specific ideas, you simply cannot think them. All of our memories are based on things and events that are associated with words, and therefore language can’t be separated from basic thought. But whether or not this applies to such innate things as survival skills and emotions is difficult to understand.
Even though we usually think of identities being “one nation, one people, one language,” with some exceptions of countries having multiple languages, it’s often forgotten that language doesn’t follow borders, and so personal identities are mixed for those who live in border regions. On one hand, French is the main language for France, but is also a main language of bordering Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, where each country manipulates the language slightly differently. But also, people in France on the border of Germany may speak primarily German rather than French despite the fact that their address is in France, and so their cultural identity could be shifted more towards German culture than French culture. As this goes for every border region, it’s then easy to understand border disputes, not based on politics, but on language and culture identity.
Contrary to popular belief, spoken language is not a “bad” version of written language. Each language actually has two “codes”: spoken and written. Each has its own grammar and vocabulary, and its own logic and context for use. This brings up the argument of whether or not some people "speak poorly" or not; however, I think the answer is that bad education is always bad education, whereas even educated individuals speak differently than they write.
Language Associations When Learning
A lot of teaching methods assert that when learning an additional language, you have to completely put aside all knowledge of your primary language so as to not have unnecessary confusions or make mistakes based on your mother tongue. However, it’s really the opposite that is true. It’s useful to make connections and associations when learning a new language because it’s not an accident that they have linguistic ties. Learning an additional language and noting both similarities and differences between it and your primary language actually reinforces both languages, and not just the new one. You learn things you inherently knew but didn’t fully understand about your mother tongue when you learn a new language. These associations are especially important if both languages are in the same language family. For example, knowing French will help enormously in learning Spanish, Portuguese, Italien, etc. The recognition of differences can be used as a learning advantage!
English as a Language Bridge
English is technically a Germanic language, but because of the intertwined history of Europe, English has an enormous amount of borrowed vocabulary from French. There is so much similarity, therefore, with Romance languages, that English is a language bridge between Germanic and Romance languages, which can facilitate learning. Being a German speaker, one could learn English and then more easily pass on to French and other Romance languages, and vice versa. Or with English as a base, both language families can be entered with a lot of common ground already placed. However, this exceptional tool of English as a language bridge is not necessarily used as often as it could be because of socio-political implications.
Taking the example of the section of Switzerland that speaks French as a first language, Suisse Romande, they learn first German as a foreign language and then start English two years later. For one thing, it’s necessary to learn German simply because the majority of Switzerland speaks Swiss-German and it’s therefore important on a national level. But they also learn German rather than English first, despite English being a bridge, because of the psychological implications it has. Because of English’s role as the lingua franca of today, where it’s used as a common language around the world, if a child were to learn the lingua franca of the world as a second language, he may not be motivated to learn any languages past his primary tongue and English. Because if you have the primary language you speak in your region and a language to communicate with others, where’s the need to learn your neighbor’s language? But Europe is not interested in being so close-minded. Europe encourages plurilingualism- speaking multiple languages- in all terms of culture, politics, intellectuality, etc. Therefore, in this example, German is taught primarily before English in order to psychologically encourage children to be more open to other languages and cultures.
I have found all of these subjects to be very interesting, and I would love to share in some discussion with you on them! Feel free to jump in with any ideas or experiences you have!
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