Learning languages is a workout for brains, both young and old
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"Learning and practicing something, for instance a second language, strengthens the brain"
So it is not just languages, but generally learning stuff. Who would have thought...
But learning _anything_ is good for the soul...and as Blake said, there is a universe in a grain of sand.
Yeah, we are in the realm of people trying to demonstrate obvious stuff. LaPalice would be proud.
Translating a piece of text from one language to another consists of abstracting the core ideas and meaning from the text using the first language and reimplementing them in a natural way in the second. This is a very similar mental process to taking real-world concepts and reimplementing them in software.
Among the languages I learnt was Latin, which is a very "elegant" language. Ie, it conveys much meaning in few words. Being able to do the same in software still gives me a buzz after 25 years.
I'll argue that to parse any language requires a specific cognitive skill. Ever sentence diagram, look up a word in the dictionary, or look up what specific programming "words" do in a computer?
I recommend learning Russian, which is much easier than English to learn, partly because its grammar is a lot simpler than Latin (or Romance languages) while at the same time having a much more regular vocabulary than English.
I think one reason why the authors chose language learning as an example is that mastering a language, even part way, is a long term commitment over many years, and that it is the frequent and long term effort that has the effect on the brain.
Foreign-language bibles were one of the tools used by the inimitable sci-fi writer R.A. Lafferty (http://ralafferty.org) to gain a reading knowledge of ten languages.
I mean, if you're learning English, would you want to start with this?
> Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
> When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+1%3A24-...
Let's look at your "modern" example. Now, I'm not a native English speaker, but I strongly doubt any English speaker of today would use "He took his wife." to mean "He accepted her as his wife." It would most likely be interpreted as "He brought along his wife." or "Person A kidnapped person B's wife." And "knew her not"? Very few people speak like that, and even fewer would mean "did not have sex with her".
These little details add up much faster than a native speaker may realize.
Perhaps more important is the amount of detail that will never show up in the Bible. Read the entire Bible, and I'm sure you'll never learn what "Never mind, I'm OK.", "Nice to see you again.", or "This section is under construction." means. So, you only learn a small fraction of modern language usage, and you learn it in a mostly anachronistic fashion.
That's true, but I don't think anyone was suggesting this as a technique for learning location-specific idioms or other conversational usage.
One can certainly find more entertaining and less corrected texts :)
> Only if you learn ancient dead languages
You may be surprised by how much of modern communication is influenced by Latin and Hebrew. Mainstream lack of awareness of "old" languages only makes the mainstream more susceptible to influence, as that which cannot be named cannot be firewalled.
You have to be someone who loves these scriptures to be motivated into using them this way.
Many people want to learn a living language: take part in conversation and learn how to say everyday things, and not how to summon locusts upon the land.
Also, judging by the archaic English that is used in English translations of the Bible, I would not recommend them to new speakers of English. You need a thoroughly modernized text which replaces usage like "thy" with "your" and so on.
There is likely a similar issue going to other languages using these texts.
What are some old but non-religious texts which have received careful translations into many languages? Plutarchs Lives, Aesops Fables, folk tales ...?
There are two potential problems, as I understand it. First, learning a language, particularly an ancient language, involves learning ancient words for things that have no analog in modern life, whereas translation involves mapping those very things onto their closest equivalent in a modern language. It would be too easy using the interlinear method to start thinking that the Greek word 'krater' means a bowl or cup, when really it is a specific type of bowl used for mixing wine. That can really only be learned by consulting a dictionary, and probably a few pictures.
The second issue is only really a problem for people who are particularly familiar with the text in translation - it's very very easy to start mentally reciting the translation you're familiar with instead of actually parsing the original text. This is one reason that Attic Greek is preferred to Koine (New Testament), even though Koine is generally simpler. Even a secular person usually has enough familiarity with the Bible to make this an issue.
I certainly wouldn't say that this method can't be used profitably, but rather that one should be careful not to fall into those particular traps. The same criticisms could be made to relying on the Loeb editions.
Also, minor nitpick: The New Testament isn't really written in Classical Greek, it's in Koine. Going from Koine to any classical dialect is going to be much more difficult than going from any classical dialect to Koine, due to the simplified grammar and vocabulary of Koine Greek.
I'd like to reiterate that using interlinear translations or Loeb editions wasn't a contraindicated practice, per se. There are just certain problems inherent in the practice that we were advised to look out for. It is certainly a useful tool sometimes.
I think what it all comes down to is what I mentioned above: reading a text and translating a text are fundamentally different. Both require you to interpret a text, but translating a text - particularly an ancient text - require you to interpret it in more and in different ways. So if you're relying heavily on a translation to understand a text you're using tools that mediate between you and the original more than, say, a reference grammar and a lexicon.
Also, while it's true that you're better off learning Attic first, learning some Koine can give some the vocab. and conceptual grounding in the inflections to get a handle on Attic, so long as you don't stick with Koine for years it's not such a bad approach.
"Of the subjects learning the new vocabulary, those who were more successful in attaining the information showed a more connected brain network than both the less successful participants and those who did not learn the new vocabulary."
Those who were successful showed a real improvement. But what of those who weren't successful?
"The researchers also found that the participants who were successful learners had a more connected network than the other participants even before learning took place."
So... people could be grouped into success or failure even before the learning.
Those who weren't genetically set up for it, got little advantage.
Maybe we can infer that if you try to learn somethign which you don't have the brain capacity to learn, it will be of no use. But if you try and learn something at your level of brain capacity, it will improve your brain.
Therefore, to improve your brain you need to challenge it everytime with something it's capable of solving. Sounds a lot like it's saying, just actively practice your brain.
I wonder if his confusion over the 3 languages pay the major part for his late speaking abilities, or if he got too much of my left brain genes, or a bit of both. Anyone here with experience teaching their kids 3+ languages since birth? What was their speaking ability like around this age?
one person = one language
If you speak both English and Chinese to your son, he might be later confused on what words are from which language.
I would recommend you only speak Chinese to him. For our kids, English is now their strongest language but it was only taught by their 'environment' i.e. kindergarten / school and they started with English only at age 2-3. Now they talk English with each other (before they went through a period in which they talked German or Thai with each other). So you should not underestimate the 'environment language'.
Also, you might consider having some other relatives speaking certain specific languages with your son (e.g. grandparents). This could reinforce their language skills.
Personally, I do not believe that learning languages from TV is effective. Learning languages is about relationships and interaction. I think the 1 hr per day would be better spend on interacting with your son in the respective language, e.g. by playing memory game etc.
Regarding late development of speaking. We did not experience this with our kids. But they might be a bit delayed when learning to read and write because of different phonetic rules of the respective languages.
Playing memory game is a good idea, we haven't done too much of that.
I was told this by many people but I am not sure why they say this.
My wife and I always spoke a mixture (German/French) together so of course did so also with our kid (plus English/Spanish outside the house). He had no problem, and in school or was quite orthodox in regards to which language to speak with which person. But at home or with relatives and polyglot friends he would switch back and forth. His classmates seemed to be the same.
I have seen my mother, in her 70s, switch mid sentence when arguing with her brother. Then turn and speak to my father in English.
When I was child we had re-transmitted children German tv shows, I could speak German a bit without actually learning it for other sources.
Disclaimer: I'm not from Finland, but had discussion with one of the teacher in there.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbing_(filmmaking)#Finland
To me, a child learning from listening to the TV is like a form unsupervised learning. It probably helps them build an internal representation of language structure, but doesn't teach them much if anything about proper use of language. If I had to guess, I'd say it is probably mildly helpful when the child is very young (especially if the alternative is silence), but it probably stops providing any value fairly quickly (by about a year of age for the typical child would be my very uneducated guess). At this point, I'm guessing improvements in language facilities probably require focused interaction (supervised learning).
The older kid said her first sentence consisting of three words at 18 months, but the younger kid did not. By that stage, both had a large vocabulary of words to express themselves, and even larger vocabulary of words that they understood.
EDIT: Missed the detail about "since birth". So no, my example does not answer your question, since they were exposed to only one language --- Marathi --- until 18 months.
I personally was brought up with 3 languages (English, Cantonese and Malay), which would be common if you grew up in a multi-cultural country.. no one ever thinks it's a problem there.
Key in the early learning stage is the relationship of person to language and to repeat it
one person = one language
Our family conversation is happening in English and that is their native language by a distance. The girls do have daily Chinese afterschool program and with my wife using it daily it kept them very proficient. My German use is limited and I can tell they are getting a little rusty.
I use Duolingo for learning new language(s).
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition
I believe Duolingo uses this technique to some extent.
By the way, I've been dabbling with iOS language learning apps. I've been trying to add simple games to help with the repetition that's required to learn a new language. Plus, I recently add a thousand images so people can learn by associating the foreign word with a picture. I think it can be better than associating the word with your native language. I've built apps for several languages (French, German, Italian,Russian,...). Here's my Spanish app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?...
I also started building a language site to gather my notes in one place and try out new ideas: http://thespanishsite.com
I'll throw out a recommendation for Memrise (http://memrise.com) as well.
I made good progress with a webapp called VocLab (http://www.voclab.com/). Once you studied for a while you can track your learning progress with some detailed statistics and then tweak your forgetting curve to make sure the words are presented at the right time.