Comment by deepprocess | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deepprocess | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> but because I see it as a brain "hack" that goes against the grain.

The current, modern, and typical grain if you will: language learning is vocabulary, vocabulary and maybe conversation (maybe).

Although early on in childhood, as we develop "receptive language", we are going against this grain naturally by learning phonetics first then moving onwards to vocabulary through conversation.

I was in the auto parts store and a little boy saw me bring in a battery. He said "that wuks heavy!". I replied "that does LOOK heavy". Such a correction is abnormal from adult to adult. We have more grace depending on age.

For me, an average adult, with a busy schedule, learning the difference between the English T and the Spanish T made some great headway in my language hobby. Moving onward in that direction it has helped me understand spoken language - further aiding my memorization of the actual vocabulary. My "grain" if you will: Phonetics - Vocabulary (Anki with imagery) - Conversation (with natives, when I'm able to, it's a hobby)

The current, modern, and typical grain if you will

There is no "modern grain". Our brains haven't changed in any fundamental way over the past 10,000 years of civilization. Humans have been learning language as children the same way, for the entirety of history. The modern method of teaching language goes against the way humans naturally learn languages.

Look, talk to anyone who learned a language in school. None of them are anywhere near as good as a native speaker.

He said "that wuks heavy!"

I wonder how often children who make mistakes like this either have a hearing impairment or have parents who think it's "funny" to imitate their children's mispronunciations. Baby talk is a widespread thing and I think it's harmful to children.

When I talk to kids I treat them like an adult. I try really hard to speak the same way to everyone. If someone doesn't understand, I generally pick it up from their body language and go over what I'm saying in more detail. I ask questions to test their understanding.

> Humans have been learning language as children the same way

But you can't disregard the fact that an adult's brain is different from a child's brain. An adult's brain has a lot of prior knowledge that a child doesn't possess. Concepts such as freedom, money, market are easily grasped by an adult whereas a child has to focus on the meaning rather than the words (the representations).

I think adults can take advantage of their prior knowledge to speed up language acquisition.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com