Why Can't Adults Learn Languages Like Children? — Transcript

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1. 0:00if learning a language is so easy for
2. 0:01young children why is it so difficult
3. 0:04when you're older we have entire
4. 0:06Industries devoted to helping adults
5. 0:08learn languages the easy way I mean
6. 0:10never mind there isn't an easy way for
7. 0:12adults to learn language and never mind
8. 0:14the different people learn in very
9. 0:16different ways there are a hundred
10. 0:18companies that will happily take you
11. 0:19money I've tried a couple they didn't
12. 0:22work all that well my French is just as
13. 0:23stumbling as it was when I tried to
14. 0:24learn it in school probably worse given
15. 0:27that I've forgotten half of what I had
16. 0:28to learn then but children just learn
17. 0:30languages automatically don't they
18. 0:32surround them with language speakers and
19. 0:34they'll just pick it up easily well
20. 0:36first of all easily I mean a baby spends
21. 0:39about a whole year with nothing but
22. 0:41input before it even starts producing
23. 0:43any sort of coherent sound while an
24. 0:46adult can concentrate for an hour or so
25. 0:47and get a few basic sentences memorized
26. 0:50and that baby is learning constantly
27. 0:52almost every minute it's awake adults
28. 0:55have a heck of a lot of other things to
29. 0:56do including communicating and thinking
30. 0:59in the language of as we already
31. 1:01know there is something called the
32. 1:03critical period hypothesis the idea is
33. 1:06that for the first couple of years of
34. 1:08life the brain is particularly good at
35. 1:10picking up languages Nom chumsky
36. 1:12proposed a language acquisition device
37. 1:15in the brain that switched off as he got
38. 1:17older now that hypothesis is well known
39. 1:19enough to be taken as fact by the public
40. 1:21at large but linguists are still
41. 1:23debating it Chomsky moved away from his
42. 1:25language acquisition device towards the
43. 1:27idea that we steadily narrow down the
44. 1:28parameters of the language with raught
45. 1:30from a long long list of possibilities
46. 1:33that theory is still getting a lot of
47. 1:34criticism in fact if you ask the big
48. 1:36question how do children acquire
49. 1:39language then the answer is nobody
50. 1:41really knows but some linguists have
51. 1:43really strong opinions on it we know
52. 1:46that language must be partly based on
53. 1:48genetics and partly based on
54. 1:49surroundings no matter how much you talk
55. 1:52to a gorilla it's never going to be able
56. 1:54to understand more than a few words and
57. 1:56there are serious questions about
58. 1:57whether any of the great apes have
59. 1:59actually managed that even the smartest
60. 2:01animal with the best tutor will never be
61. 2:04a conversation partner so there must be
62. 2:07something fundamentally human about
63. 2:09language but at the same time there's
64. 2:11nothing genetic about which language you
65. 2:13can speak if I had been adopted at Birth
66. 2:15by French speaking parents I would be
67. 2:16speaking and thinking in French there's
68. 2:18no Gene for the English language there
69. 2:21is one thing that's clear though we are
70. 2:22born with the potential to speak any
71. 2:24human language but after a while
72. 2:26surrounded by just a few languages or
73. 2:28maybe even just one we work out what we
74. 2:31need to listen for and we stop listening
75. 2:33for anything else many languages on the
76. 2:35Indian subcontinent have a distinction
77. 2:37between p and p so P will be different
78. 2:40from P do you hear the difference the
79. 2:42second one is aspirated it's a bit more
80. 2:45air coming out my mouth so P versus P if
81. 2:48you don't speak one of those languages
82. 2:50do you reckon you could hear a subtle
83. 2:51difference like that when there's
84. 2:52someone speaking at full speed do you
85. 2:55reckon you could produce that difference
86. 2:56reliably without thinking about it
87. 2:59millions of people billions of people
88. 3:01can and do and they learned it
89. 3:03automatically but try and pick that up
90. 3:05as an adult and it's going to take you a
91. 3:07long long time it's called categorical
92. 3:10perception our brain takes this strange
93. 3:13input these electrical signals based on
94. 3:15changes and air pressure and we look for
95. 3:17particular categories within them and
96. 3:19once we' filed something into those
97. 3:20categories well the other details don't
98. 3:23matter but it's not all over if your
99. 3:26brain is too set in its ways like mine
100. 3:27is adults are really quite good at
101. 3:30learning vocabulary the same way we're
102. 3:31good at memorizing anything else most of
103. 3:33the language courses aimed at adults
104. 3:35emphasize that they use flash cards and
105. 3:38translation exercises and don't worry
106. 3:40too much about getting production
107. 3:41perfect you may never sound or even
108. 3:44think like a native speaker but that
109. 3:46doesn't mean you can't at least make
110. 3:47yourself understood