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Comment by educationdata | Hacker News Reader

There is something special about language though. Existing language can be a barrier in learning new language, especially pronunciation. It is well known that some people just cannot perceive certain syllables (therefor also cannot produce those syllables) because of the language they already known. So there is something special about kids learning a language.

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I think you just need the right teacher. It's true that some people (such as myself) can perceive and imitate a large variety of sounds and therefore 'sound native' in any language (which isn't actually indicative of true language ability in my opinion - one might just know a single phrase), but for the people who can't do this, you just need the right teacher, someone who will take the time to drill with you over and over and also provide the right type of instruction for the student (such as curriculum learning to move towards producing difficult sounds).

What may be special about kids learning a language (or anything, really), is that they have no preconception of a 'correct' way to do things, including how to move their tongues.

That being said, I can't whistle to this day.

I'm not buying that explanation. Hearing, just like seeing, is something that you need to practice. If it's the first time you're hearing a specific sound then you might not notice the intricate details in it. If you stick around those sounds for long enough then you'll hear the details as well.

When I was younger I knew a girl whose voice I did not understand when I first met her. It took me some time before I was able to understand what she was saying, because I hadn't heard a voice like that before. Based on that event, I think that the reason people can't hear the specific details of pronunciation is because they're not used to it, but they can learn with more experience.

Agreed. Create audio samples of all relevant phonemes and listen to them 10x per day for a week or two. That should be enough to discriminate them -- or I'll eat my hat.

'Course it would then take further training to be actually able to speak them.

I listened to someone trying to mimic the vowel sound in another language and fail totally.

Then they got vowel exactly correct by mimicking in English one of the English language accents!

The various different English accents cover a huge variety of vowel sounds, and quite a lot of consonant sounds.

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