I am obsessed with this. You see, when I have my kinder lessons, sometimes I have 3 year old babies with their moms in there and I listen to them talking to their moms and saying a lot of things. None of the stuff they talk about is like the stuff you find in Core, KO2001 or anything. These resources focus on adult sentences, etc., but I tend to believe that what the babies talk about is actually more important because is at that age that you learn how to think in your native language. It also seems so much easier and the kind of thing that when you know it differentiates you tremendously from someone that just knows a lot of grammar and vocab. I kinda feel that doing Core or whatever is definitely not the only part of the equation to reach a better fluency and neither is reading books, sure all of that is important, but there is also that 'baby talk' that I am talking about.

Does that make sense to people?

The Japanese kids (age 2-7) I volunteered with spoke very basic and sometimes incorrect Japanese. You're post didn't make a lot of sense so I probably missed the point.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'baby talk'. Do you just mean the kind of things they talk about rather than the way they speak? What's so special about the subjects of their conversations?

On a side note, I think three years old is too old to be called a baby...

pudding cat Wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by 'baby talk'. Do you just mean the kind of things they talk about rather than the way they speak? What's so special about the subjects of their conversations?

I'm not sure if this is exactly the same thing as what OP is referring to, but "baby talk" is a word. And this researcher says it's important for babies' language development:

She talks a lot of interesting stuff about language acquisition in this video such as how interaction is important for kids to acquire a language and how watching TV alone doesn't work. I recommend you watch from start if you're interested in language learning.

bcrAn Wrote:...I kinda feel that doing Core or whatever is definitely not the only part of the equation to reach a better fluency and neither is reading books, sure all of that is important, but there is also that 'baby talk' that I am talking about...

So volunteer for a language exchange with elementary school students. I'm told that some schools have programs like this. You could practice with kindergartners, I guess. But, they'll probably ask you typical questions like: Where are you from? How old are you? How do you make your hair look like that? etc.

magamo Wrote:

pudding cat Wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by 'baby talk'. Do you just mean the kind of things they talk about rather than the way they speak? What's so special about the subjects of their conversations?

I'm not sure if this is exactly the same thing as what OP is referring to, but "baby talk" is a word.

Yeah, that's the meaning of baby talk that I'm used to but like you said it doesn't seem to fit with what the OP is saying

As adults we have adult brains that can make adult connections and we don't generally have the need to start from scratch when we can just make sense of things as we go. I learned to naturally make sense of Japanese in an adult world and I feel like anyone can do the same.

The furthest back I could see being useful to go for an adult would be, perhaps, children's (elementary school) books? Next-to-no Kanji, easy sentence structures, etc etc.

The idea you've got about "understanding" rather than "knowing" is spot on (I think) but starting from baby talk may not be as useful as it seems.

magamo Wrote:it's important for babies' language development

I think people are finding it hard to understand the OP because they are not babies.

But I think it is an interesting point. If we were not embarrassed/not scared about getting locked up by the authorities then we could go along practising like babies do. As it happens, our brains have already had this development so (a) we are probably capable of learning faster and more efficiently and/but (b) as we have got settled into our native language thanks to our original baby learning process, maybe we find it difficult to get out of these native habits and into someone else's.

Also the "Baby Learning" method takes about 7 years, doesn't it. Still not a bad amount of time if you get fluent. Very interesting...

And they are doing it full time with 100% immersion...I think this is definitely an advantage.

So where do we sign up?

mizunooto Wrote:

magamo Wrote:it's important for babies' language development

I think people are finding it hard to understand the OP because they are not babies.

But I think it is an interesting point. If we were not embarrassed/not scared about getting locked up by the authorities then we could go along practising like babies do. As it happens, our brains have already had this development so (a) we are probably capable of learning faster and more efficiently and/but (b) as we have got settled into our native language thanks to our original baby learning process, maybe we find it difficult to get out of these native habits and into someone else's.

Also the "Baby Learning" method takes about 7 years, doesn't it. Still not a bad amount of time if you get fluent. Very interesting...

And they are doing it full time with 100% immersion...I think this is definitely an advantage.

So where do we sign up?

Immersing as much as possible and attempting to "understand" rather than "know" (even in an adult world) works in much the same way as a baby learning from scratch. You won't throw out your pre-formed ideas on language from your L1 no matter how much you try so the best you can hope for is to hold them back while using your developed brain to figure things out (on that same basic level) at a higher rate.

I like to say that my Japanese study is a race between myself and Japanese children born the day I started studying. I'm currently barely 3 years old in Japanese and I can read novels and newspaper, watch and understand most TV and movies as well as native conversation...
I still make mistakes, but they've gone down to an almost insignificant level (though I will continue working to improve) especially considering I'm supposed to be three years old (have you ever looked at the language of a young elementary school student in your own language? It's good for a laugh. 8)).

If I'm not fluent in 7 years (I mean really fluent. Native fluent.) then I will feel as if I've done something wrong. My goal as of no is to do so in 5. I don't see how an adult successfully plugging into a language can take longer than a child to master it.

.

Mmm, I apologize for the seemingly rambling nature of my original post, frustrated + midnight, you get the idea.

Now, I am talking about 'baby talk' as well as the simplest form of the language used by very young people (3 year old and so on). As for 'baby talk' this is how an adult usually changes its language to talk to a baby, an animal, etc. This form of speech is another crucial element that draws the line between native speakers and near-native fluent speakers.

Not so long ago I had the embarrassing realization that my English was not native. Ever since I became effectively fluent in it, it all went downhill from there. Pronunciation-wise I had always been very good, virtually undetectable according to several native speakers I have met across the globe and with completely disparate backgrounds so I take their opinions seriously. Besides, somewhere along the way I acquired AmE lilt and can even imitiate different regional accents so in conclusion I was sure my English was native. Then, as I became more and more interested in language learning (thanks to studying Japanese mostly) I noticed that there was a lot of room for improvement. The main areas were pronunciation; which I took to the next level by studying IPA in depth and exerting everyday practice, vocab; which I am taking care with SRS and dedicating at least 2 hours of silent reading everyday, listening; which I am also taking care of by listening to radio non-stop at least 30 minutes a day and whenever I am not doing Japanese (while English Anki reviews for instance) and practice which takes care itself whenever I hang out with friends.

Yet, something was missing and I couldn't get my head around it. Eventually I came up with a simple plan (that's more recent) and my English has been improving ridiculously. (1) Education in English, I am re-studying school / high school material in English (Khan academy is helping a lot), (2) phrasal vebs, this is incredible useful, memorizing a huge amount of phrasal verbs is super important to come off as natural as possible in conversation and (3) baby talk.

The baby talk thing came up when I watched this video (

). I noticed that I didn't understand a thing about what he was saying. I could read university textbooks and scientific journals but I couldn't quite understand a baby's song.

Honeybunch
Sugarplum
Pumpy-umpy-umpkin
Cuppycake
Gumdrop
Snoogums-Boogums
Apple of my Eye
and 'you are so dear'.

Basically, I was beaten by 85% of the song. Folks, I am sure this kind of seemingly ridiculous knowledge helps erasing the line between true native and extremely fluent native-like L2 speakers.

When I hear these babies talk, I am not sure they make a lot of mistakes, it may sound childish what they say and how they say it but it's still part of the their development and missing that in one's acquisition of LN is why you are never 100% native in LN.

Another thing, is not just the baby talking, is also how her mom talk to him/her. It's that language they use what I want to break down into a list of something like ~200 sentences with vocab. Maybe a Japanese native could help with that.

@bcrAn

Well, I can tell you one thing - in my opinion some of the best native materials in English are super-high-quality children's books. (My own definition of high quality)

My favourites are the "Mr. Men" books by Roger Hargreaves. I actually read these now. I don't distinguish between that and Wittgenstein, or whatever it is. If I want to read something, I read it! These books are absurdly hilarious and brilliantly simple. You should have a look

The language in those books is both simple (as they were written for children) and very complex (native language that doesn't obey rules/is archaic/etc) and is a real literacy test for a foreign learner of English (they will not pass this test).

"This is the messiest house I have seen in all my born days"
"And start they did"
"And off he set"

+Many more examples of eccentric language that I haven't found for you. These are slightly based on an older style of speech (they were written in the 70s so most probably somewhat influenced by 50s speech) so you won't hear anyone saying "in all my born days" now, but you might.

But that's not what you're talking about, is it? You're not talking about Tuppeny, Thruppeny, Catch-as-catch-can, beggar-my-neighbour, and so on. You're talking about "Cootchy-Cootchy-Coo!", am I right?

Or is it somewhere in between the two?

Am I anywhere close to understanding you?

@drdunlap Thinking about what you said...

@mizunooto Are you baby talking to me? Well, yeah I am talking about both. Btw did you just come up with some of those or what?.

Thanks for the suggestion I will take a look at those books. As for children stories I love Dr. Seuss.

merlin.codex Wrote:What babies/children do have, however, is a constant flow of feedback in the form of their parents, siblings, brothers and/or sisters, people around them, teachers, etc... They constantly correct their mistakes and that's why children progress faster.

There's actually no proof that error-correction has anything to do with children learning language (everything I've read says the opposite, that error correction doesn't even work on children acquiring language).

yudantaiteki Wrote:

merlin.codex Wrote:What babies/children do have, however, is a constant flow of feedback in the form of their parents, siblings, brothers and/or sisters, people around them, teachers, etc... They constantly correct their mistakes and that's why children progress faster.

There's actually no proof that error-correction has anything to do with children learning language (everything I've read says the opposite, that error correction doesn't even work on children acquiring language).

I didn't read the actual research paper or whatever but I did read about the idea of correction being mostly pointless in Antimoon. It's probably a mixture of everything, anyway I don't think is completely useless either.

@mizunooto, @people, Is not it intuitive to use children material like Mr. Men or Dr. Seuss to teach English to children, i.e., Japanese children? Somehow, it sounds like a good rounded idea, but then again, when I think about it, that would be just completely crazy, not even the Japanese assistant sensei in the room would understand it.

merlin.codex Wrote:I don't think babies/children have better learning capabilities than adults. In fact, I've read about many researches and none seem to suggest that it's true. Moreover, adults seem to have the upper hand.

I assume you're comparing the ability of young children and adults at learning L2? It doesn't make much sense to compare a baby learning L1 and an adult learning L2+.

For L2, my understanding is that older learners initially learn at a faster rate, but those who started at a younger age will surpass them. Accent in particular is age dependent (other variables being constant.)

I believe it's generally accepted that language learning abilities decline with age. The debate seemed to be whether there is a critical period or whether it's just a gradual decline; whether this decline is language specific or general age-related cognitive decline; how much of a decline there is and what other non-biological reasons might account for it.

Many factors determining how well one will learn another language. Perhaps motivated adults can compensate for advantages children have.

Quote:What babies/children do have, however, is a constant flow of feedback in the form of their parents, siblings, brothers and/or sisters, people around them, teachers, etc... They constantly correct their mistakes and that's why children progress faster.

I recently read something interesting about the effect of the manner of input. For babies and L1, they say that the exaggerated style of speech helps language develop. With respect to L2, at least one academic (someone keen to show that adult L2 learners are capable of learning languages well) speculates that one reason "earlier is better" is that children's input is more likely to be somewhat simplified and exaggerated to some extent compared to adult L2 learner input. (Another reason is, like you say, children might be less inhibited.)

This relates to the often repeated questionable advice to avoid all textbook or other inauthentic language. (Oddly, some of the same folks recommend learning from grammar book sentences and primary school material...?) No one using textbooks or graded material becomes stuck in "watashi ha gakusei desu" or "See Jack run" mode. :-)

Quote:Apparently, they both studied around 2 years in Bulgaria (+a couple of months in Japan) before starting to translate for the ambassador

It surprises me that an ambassador would use such inexperienced translators (interpreters?) Are qualified Japanese/Bulgarian translators so rare?

One of the sources of confusion in (non-specialists) dealing with child language acquisition is that there are really two different things going on -- there's the "acquisition", which is when children are automatically learning grammar and vocabulary of whatever language they're being exposed to. The method by which children do this is still not completely understood, but it seems to be automatic for any (non-deaf, etc.) child that is exposed to language, and it has nothing to do with how often the child is spoken directly to, correction, etc.

However, starting at a very early period, many children are also "learning" their native language in the sense that they are being taught additional vocabulary, and learning to conform their speech to some sort of standard dialect. So, a child doesn't need to be taught what a past participle is or how to conjugate a verb. However, they may be corrected if they use dialectical past forms or past participles like "have drank", "clomb", "seen" (as a past), etc. People often are confused about this process and incorrectly say that if someone uses "seen" instead of "saw", that they don't understand grammar. In fact, they understand grammar just fine, they're simply speaking a dialect where "seen" is the normal past tense of "see".

I think this is the source of a lot of the confusion over correcting children's errors -- it doesn't help them acquire their first language, but it does help them conform their speech to an educated or standard dialect.

.

yudantaiteki Wrote:People often are confused about this process and incorrectly say that if someone uses "seen" instead of "saw", that they don't understand grammar. In fact, they understand grammar just fine, they're simply speaking a dialect where "seen" is the normal past tense of "see".

This a pet peeve of mine. I absolutely HATE it when somebody says "I seen this thing" or "I seen it the other day" I want to grab them by the shoulders and scream at them. And it's defintely not a result of being an dialect-based expression in Australia, because here we don't have dialects as such - it's simply poor English (performance and preformance also bugs me...)

Anyway back on topic, I feel that some of the difference is between the content of what it is you want to say. L2 Adult learners want to be able to express themselves to the same level as what they can in their native language whether it be just general conversation or on topics of politics, economics etc. Toddlers on the other hand, have zero concept of these things and all they want to talk about is the puppy, the dolly, what they want to eat, or what Mummy/Daddy is doing. So essentially all the basics of the language (grammar, pronunciation) are being acquired and used from the very beginning without any additional distractions with language learning.

It's also allowing children to finally think in depth to themselves about things because trying to think without language is virtually impossible. If a child has never seen a helicopter before, and asks what it is, when they are told it is a helicopter, that connection between the big, metal thing with the spinning things on top that flies, and the word helicopter has been created.

SendaiDan Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:People often are confused about this process and incorrectly say that if someone uses "seen" instead of "saw", that they don't understand grammar. In fact, they understand grammar just fine, they're simply speaking a dialect where "seen" is the normal past tense of "see".

This a pet peeve of mine. I absolutely HATE it when somebody says "I seen this thing" or "I seen it the other day" I want to grab them by the shoulders and scream at them. And it's defintely not a result of being an dialect-based expression in Australia, because here we don't have dialects as such - it's simply poor English

Every language has dialects. The term "dialect" is a bit nebulous but it's basically just that when you have a large enough group of speakers that all speak roughly the same way, that's a "dialect". Australia is too big of a country not to have them, and the wikipedia article on Australian English discusses several of them.

The mixing of past-participles and past forms is common across the entire English-speaking world and has been for hundreds of years (some of the past-participles and past forms we have now in standard English would have been considered wrong several hundred years ago). Part of the problem is that many verbs, even in standard English, have the same past and past-participle. A special past participle form isn't really necessary since we already have the auxiliary "have" to mark the aspect. There's nothing inherently inferior about "seen" being used as a past form, it just happens not to be a feature of any standard, educated dialect of English.

"It's simply poor English" doesn't work as an explanation -- there's no such thing as "poor English"; they are either speaking a dialect or speaking "standard English". (The only time you can really have "poor" speech is if someone is trying to speak in a dialect that they are not proficient in.)

I think the reason babies and young children learn languages so well has something to do with the fact that they are not just learning that one language, but are also learning to understand and communicate in language in general and how this is linked to the process of thinking. When a kid understands that the word 'cat' or 'neko' or 'mao' or whatever word refers to the the cute four legged animal that likes milk, that word is going to be incorporated into their thinking process and pop-up in their heads as a kind of abstract pointer to the concept of a cat as language begins to dominate their thinking process. The less existing abstractions there are in a person's brain, the less it filters (biases) their interpretation of sensory input. I think the reason children learn so well in general is because they don't filter everything through preconceived abstract rules, they just continually absorb a lot of sensory data first, and slowly start to build rules based on it subconsciously based on some kind of probabilistic statistical analysis. Unfortunately first time second language learners, perhaps because of conditioning through the school system, tend to want to understand things immediately and therefore focus too much on rules and abstractions when they should just focus on more on internalising a high volume of the language and letting their understanding build slowly. When kids learn a language they start internalising the sounds in their purest form from pure audio alone, it's not clouded by or learned via the writing system and it's not expected to be understood. They are not told told to listen and then answer questions or do dictation exercises. They are not expected to learn and memorise phrases such as "turn left at the next traffic light". That said, language is by definition abstract in that it points to meaning, so if we divorce it entirely from meaning we will never understand it. And this is where adults can out perform children in language learning if they go about it the right way. Kid's start to associate meaning with words via context, and it's a slow process that starts to snowball once enough is internalised. Adults on the other hand can make use of their first language and knowledge of the world to quickly gain a sense for the meaning of a large volume of material rapidly via translations, and then use that knowledge gleaned as context through which to learn via native materials and conversation.

How can I focus on internalizing a high volume of the language? I am not been captious, I mean it, what's your strategy?

There are no shortcuts. In order to internalise a lot of the language, you need spend a lot of 'study' time engaging the language itself, listening to and reading it and/or conversing in it. As long as you have some context through which to connect the words and patterns you're exposing yourself to with meaning, your language level will increase but I think it's beneficial to abandon any expectation of complete understanding for a long time. As for success, I think any strategy that involves consumption of the native language in a comprehensible form whether that's via bilingual materials (including phrasebooks and other learner material) or via heavy dictionary use or via vocabulary study on the side will eventually lead to success. I won't say too much about my methods on this thread because I don't think it's the right place, but I'll just say, I read and listen a lot and focus on steadily growing my vocabulary via L1 definitions. These definitions are just meant to install a minimal sense of a word's meaning such that I have a good chance of understanding it when I see it in context in native materials. I don't bother formally 'learning' any word if I think I would understand in context.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

SendaiDan Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:People often are confused about this process and incorrectly say that if someone uses "seen" instead of "saw", that they don't understand grammar. In fact, they understand grammar just fine, they're simply speaking a dialect where "seen" is the normal past tense of "see".

This a pet peeve of mine. I absolutely HATE it when somebody says "I seen this thing" or "I seen it the other day" I want to grab them by the shoulders and scream at them. And it's defintely not a result of being an dialect-based expression in Australia, because here we don't have dialects as such - it's simply poor English

Every language has dialects. The term "dialect" is a bit nebulous but it's basically just that when you have a large enough group of speakers that all speak roughly the same way, that's a "dialect". Australia is too big of a country not to have them, and the wikipedia article on Australian English discusses several of them.

They can hardly be called dialects though. Not in the sense of what is seen in the UK, US and even in Japanese (where two dialects maybe be incomprehensive to their respective speakers). Yes there are tiny variances in words used in different states (eg swimmers vs togs or backpack vs port) and a few pronunciation differences in various words (although both are heard equally). There is no such thing as a Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane accent as there is Cockney, Jordie, Liverpudlian, London, Manchester, Boston, New York, Californian, Texan or Southern accent. It is all Australian.

Quote:The mixing of past-participles and past forms is common across the entire English-speaking world and has been for hundreds of years (some of the past-participles and past forms we have now in standard English would have been considered wrong several hundred years ago). Part of the problem is that many verbs, even in standard English, have the same past and past-participle. A special past participle form isn't really necessary since we already have the auxiliary "have" to mark the aspect. There's nothing inherently inferior about "seen" being used as a past form, it just happens not to be a feature of any standard, educated dialect of English.

"It's simply poor English" doesn't work as an explanation -- there's no such thing as "poor English"; they are either speaking a dialect or speaking "standard English". (The only time you can really have "poor" speech is if someone is trying to speak in a dialect that they are not proficient in.)

Well in that case then it can be referred to as grammatically incorrect English can it not? "I saw it" is the grammatically correct past form not "I seen it", just as "I went there" is the grammatically correct past tense of "I have been/gone there". I never hear people say "I gone there" so why should they use "I seen there" and it be correct?

@nadiatims for a long time?