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Comment by tn13 | Hacker News Reader

No this is not obvious. Throughout human history and even today algebra, writing and reading are hard skills for humans which require years of training to master.

Ability to speak however comes very naturally without special training. Human societies independently developed isomorphic grammar. For example Navajo Indians helped American soldiers translate their messages into Navajo and back so Germans wont understand it.

This sort of evidence lead scholars like Chomsky to believe that human brain might have some in-built ability aided by evolution to parse some basic grammatical rules.

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> Ability to speak however comes very naturally without special training.

It literally takes years of practice for children to speak well. Maybe it's natural but we tend to dismiss the difficulty because it happens early.

I would think if we had dedicated hardware for grammar subsequent languages wouldn't be so difficult to learn either. It's easier to learn algebra than a second language.

It is believed that second language acquisition is "harder" than first language for a number of reasons, such as the placidity of the brain crystallising as we age and, potentially, that any special hardware we may have has a finite capacity (because physics). People research this (my wife is doing her PhD on it currently) and the evidence is neither obvious nor conclusive.

Children learn language without instruction. That is all. Clearly, there is innate linguistic capability in humans.

Without instruction? They are watching people speak for years. They even have people "teach" it to them. Can you say, "Daddy"? While slowing down and enunciating.

We are unfortunately very aware that when isolated, kids don't learn to speak. So it isn't innate.

Children learn to build with magnatiles without instruction. That is all. Clearly, there is innate magnatile building capability in humans.

My granddaughter (1y 8m) uses flossers without instruction. Clearly, there is innate tooth hygiene in humans.

No, what's happening is she's mimicking the adults in the house. She's observing and repeating. She's done the same thing with dolls: put them on her shoulder, pat them, make shushing noises ... because we do that with her; because she see's others do that with other babies.

"Instruction"? No. But the only "innate" behaviors this child has involve eating and curiosity. Everything else is spurred by that innate curiosity.

Then why teach grammar at all if we know kids pick it up naturally? There seems to be a threshold beyond grammer needs to be taught? Or was the hypothesis that there is no such thing.

There's a difference between formal and conversational grammar

you dont need to learn "grammar" in school/lessons to know how to speak a language.

Language planning/standardization - ensuring prevalence of standard varieties of a language, suppressing non-standard varieties or at least letting people understand how and why they're non-standard

(David Foster Wallace wrote a long piece about this in 2001 called "Tense Present" http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0... and there's also a long story about nationalist movements trying to design, and teach, a standard prestige version of their national languages, which does require grammar instruction to create and maintain because it's somewhat different from all or most students' home language varieties)

Written vs. spoken language - may have different grammatical norms

Non-native speakers - want explicit instruction because they lack native-speaker intuition about some aspects of grammar

Appreciating language intellectually - curiosity and appreciation about how your language works, independent of your ability to produce sentences other speakers accept as correct

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