7 ms·

IMO one of the most prominent reasons - and one that I never see mentioned - that learning a language as an adult is more difficult is that the older you are, t

IMO one of the most prominent reasons - and one that I never see mentioned - that learning a language as an adult is more difficult is that the older you are, the more socially-unacceptable it becomes to point out grammatical and vocabulary errors. When you're a child, elders correcting you is so natural it scarcely even breaks the flow of conversation: child: "Me and Tim went -" adult: "Tim and I went." child: "{pause} Tim and I went..." As an adult, you simply do not get this kind of feedback. There's no chance in hell I would interrupt another adult to make the above correction. It's simply too disrespectful. And yet it is precisely this disrespectful interruption and correction that enables children to have tight feedback loops which result in fast, effective learning.

contexto_ 6y ago
Along the same lines, as adults, we often take these corrections personally (perhaps as a matter of habit) and therefore avoid situations where they may occur (conversation groups for new speakers, explicitly asking native speakers to correct you etc).
ratww 6y ago
Interesting, my German friends do it to me sometimes and I'm very grateful for it.
- MrsPeaches 6y ago
  Haha nice to see this isn't just me! Maybe it is a specifically German thing.
aeyes 6y ago
There is another reason: People understand you, interrupting with corrections hurts the conversation. I often ask for corrections but nobody ever does it. When I'm unsure how to say something I sometimes ask to get some feedback. Sometimes I only understand 70% of what a person is saying (mostly due to dialects), I rarely need to ask them to repeat it because the brain is capable of piecing it together. Another problem is that unlearning something you always did wrong is extremely hard. You need to get it right from the beginning. That's the beauty of language school, they point out your mistakes early and you can learn from the mistakes of other students in your group. If you take the time and take real classes, you'll have that tight feedback loop you need.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  In my experience, people are helpful. Sometimes, in Norway, it means folks speak English with me. Not so much now, but once I struggle, out comes English :D But it also means that folks will let me know the right words for things or help with sounds. But at other times, folks will let things slide as long as I can be understood. I can't recommend actual language classes enough. I was in Norwegian classes for two years - immersive classes for adults, taught by native speakers, about 15 hours a week in class. All in Norwegian, from the beginning. It was so wonderful getting real-time corrections and as an added bonus, a lot of culture/civics was worked into the lessons as well, in no small part because vocabulary centered around fairly practical subjects. If I ever need to learn another language, I hope I can have something similar.
  - schoen 6y ago
    Say Broken_Hippo, where did you take your Norwegian classes? In Norway, or in another country? A particular language school? Nevøen min lærer norsk fordi han vil bo i Norge, og I want to suggest some more resources or options to him.
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      I took them in Norway: Part of my immigration required that I take Norwegian classes. They were free for me, and were the ones offered through the kommune (here in trondheim) though I think they cost around 9000kr per 6 weeks. The class was mostly filled with folks with family immigration and folks fleeing bad situations in other countries (at the time, a lot of folks from Syria and Eritrea). We used the books "På vei" and "Stein på stein" the first year. The second year I took "helsenorsk" and we used different materials, but for the general learning we mostly used "Norsk gramatikk", which, as you guess, concentrates on about a B1-B2 level of grammar. The first year books come with optional audio, which we used in class, and both have workbooks. I used one other book, but I don't remember the name. If he's determined, he can work through the books but understanding folks is going to be difficult (some dialects are still difficult for me). NTNU offers a free online beginning course: They also offer classes, but those are filled with current students first. I'll add that the level of Norwegian he'll need depends on what he'll be doing here: If he happens to be getting married and is from outside the EU/Schengen area, he'll probably have classes. If he goes to university, he'll need Norwegian for a bachelor degree, but a lot of classes above that are in English. Work really depends on the field, but even in fields with lots of English in the professional realm, knowing some norwegian will help lots.
camillomiller 6y ago
That's why as a non-native I'm glad I have a native girlfriend who's also an English teacher. She definitely corrects me, especially about pronunciation, and I'm grateful for that, because I can see improvements I didn't think I needed.
- ngokevin 6y ago
  I'm in a relationship with a native speaker too (I'm American, she's Chinese), and am actively learning. I talked to a lot of couples and some people have patience to teach and some don't. It's nice though that couples are close enough to correct each other and help each other out. I had a friend learning French that was French teacher, and she gave up after two sessions, not having the patience. Actually, I just started working on an app to help couples improve each other's languages. You're pretty fluent already, I wonder in what other capacity's your girlfriend who is an English teacher helps you!
ngokevin 6y ago
Perhaps it's more likely if you are in a deep relationship with a native speaker, since often that's a reason why people want to learn a language. This is sort of a plug, but I just started a new project to help couples to learn each other's languages (https://learncoupling.com https://learncoupling.com). Since my wife is Chinese herself, and I've been learning Chinese for quite a while. Most couples around me have tried and failed to learn each other's language as well since they expect each other to be their sole on-demand language teacher. For me, I think it works if I do mostly self-study with Anki. We schedule a certain time of day for like 5 or 10 minutes where I'm just running through my flashcards and my wife can correct me or clarify things. And if the corrections can asynchronous through an app, it'd feel less awkward as you say.
- shard 6y ago
  One issue is that often it takes someone who has had language instruction experience to properly explain nuances. I've often asked my spouse questions about grammar usage, and since it is instinctive for her and not a premeditated decision like it is for me, she is unable to clearly delineate the proper context and edge cases where a certain grammar would apply. Same with vocabulary. When you have a dozen synonyms, each with a different nuance, it's often tedious and difficult for a non-language instructor to provide clear explanations.
  - golem14 6y ago
    I have a similar experience trying to help someone speak German.
    - ngokevin 6y ago
      What pitfalls did you run into? From what I heard, the learner often expects the other person to become their personal on-demand language teacher. And then patience burns out quickly. I think it works if the learner is committed to self-study but only relies on others for a bit of reinforcement, clarification, and practice.
ghaff 6y ago
Look on this board. The person who corrects breaks to brakes, loose to lose, etc. is going to be viewed as at least mildly pedantic. Granted, people make mistakes typing they wouldn't make speaking but the principle is at least similar.
- irrational 6y ago
  I’m one of those who feel the urge to correct to/too, their/there/they’re, etc. errors. But, I recognize that the main issue is I don’t know who is on the other side. Is it someone for whom English is a second language? Is it a native English speaker that doesn’t know or doesn’t care to know proper grammar? Is it someone who knows proper grammar but just made a simple mistake? Is it someone who welcomes correction?
toufka 6y ago
Not only this, but play talk seems “silly” to adults and is not widely seen as acceptable. Trying to learn new vocabulary during a hearing or negotiation just isn’t going to happen. I recall being overseas and hanging out with 1st and second graders and none of us had any shame just asking “what is this?!” And pointing at a rock or a tree or a ball and correcting each other. I learned more practical vocab in a few hours from a 6yr old than from studying in a book over a week.
billforsternz 6y ago
Sadly it seems there's a whole generation that's been raised without anyone correcting them on this specific point (that it's "Tim and I"). Not that this means I disagree with your greater point.
- saghm 6y ago
  To be fair, a decent number of people also overcorrect and use "Tim and I" for the objective case as well (e.g. "The teacher told Tim and I that our grammar was incorrect"). I think simply giving the correct construction for the case that the speaker actually used isn't sufficient for using proper grammar; one needs to be able to identify which case is which to be able to use "correct" grammar.
  - billforsternz 6y ago
    Nicely put, I didn't realise it but I am, as you say, overcorrecting in this way myself. Interestingly I have a friend who has quietly tried to point this out to me (a counter example to the greater point) but you have explained it better.
  - taylodl 6y ago
    The real fun is when someone corrects you for saying "The teacher told Tim and me" and then you give them a grammar lesson to the use of the objective case. I'll admit to a little bit of smugness when that happens. Otherwise no, I don't correct people's grammar unless they've specifically asked me to review something.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Whether something is “correct” or not in this particular grammatical regard comes down to cultural factors, not objective linguistic ones. If we look at the languages of the world, we can see plenty of cases where the nominative form of the 1st person singular pronoun was gradually replaced over time by the accusative or oblique form. Therefore, people coming to say “Tim and me” instead of “Tim and I” is a completely natural linguistic change and complaining about it is simply being pedantic.
saghm 6y ago
> As an adult, you simply do not get this kind of feedback I think that's partially because most adults react pretty strongly to someone telling them that they're wrong about something, especially something considered as trivial as grammar. Kids are just more open to being corrected in general (whether through natural disposition or conditioning, I'm not sure).
- FrojoS 6y ago
  I would say that kids are more dependent on the adults that correct them, hence they can’t act as offended as an independent adult can.
  - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
    As parent of growing children, definitely this :/)
emmanueloga_ 6y ago
Recently learned about LEX [1], they have a method that attempts to fight exactly this issue. Also, they attempt to learn as crazy number as 11 languages or so at at time, and apparently, it works... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippo_Family_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippo_Family_Club
MrsPeaches 6y ago
This is very much an english speaking country phenomenon. We are used to having lots of people speak english, often incorrectly and are much more tolerant of people making mistakes (and therefore don't correct them). You should spend some time in Germany. I once had my German corrected by a casheir at a fast food restaurant. So from my experience, I don't think this is the reason that people stop being able to learn languages.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Well, the real point is that children have full-time tutors, their parents. Adults don't. Closest you can get is date someone who wants to help you out.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Well, the real point is that children have full-time tutors, their parents. That's not universal, though. Many children are neglected to various degrees, and my understanding is they'll still work out their language if they get adequate exposure to it. You probably only need a tutor the master the intricacies of the more prestigious registers, but that's a different thing than fluency.
    - throw0101a 6y ago
      >> Well, the real point is that children have full-time tutors, their parents. > That's not universal, though. Also: children whose parents immigrated. The parents may never end up learning the language of the new country, but their children often will.
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- forinti 6y ago
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
I correct my father all the time and yet he keeps making the same mistakes
rootbear 6y ago
If I corrected all of the incorrect grammar I hear on a daily basis I'd be exhausted. I'm not too polite to correct, I'm too busy...
- OJFord 6y ago
  > If I corrected all of the incorrect grammar I hear on a daily basis I'd be exhausted. AmbiguousParseError: consider punctuation, or for 'on a daily basis' try 'throughout the day'. > I'm not too polite to correct, MissingObjectError: unknown direct object of 'to correct'. -- (Just kidding :))
  - rootbear 6y ago
    I was really hoping someone would offer corrections! Thanks!
    - wccrawford 6y ago
      I don't actually agree with the corrections, though. Those phrases are similar, but subtly different. It depends on whether you meant you hear them every day, but not always a lot... Or whether you hear them constantly throughout the day, every day.
      - OJFord 6y ago
        Yeah, maybe 'each day' or something would have been a better fit - regardless, my preferred recommendation was a comma or two. And mostly I really was just kidding, actively looking for anything to nitpick on in a comment talking about correcting people's grammar. 'to correct' without a (with an implied) direct object is also fine in colloquial speech, or internet comments.
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dheera 6y ago
Personally, I don't think that is the primary reason adults have a hard time learning languages. Neural plasticity isn't the biggest reason either, IMO. Rather, the biggest showstopper is that adults tend to always be busy, and fall back to their native languages to get the busy stuff done, and only end up practicing their new language during positive interactions when they have time. Which is really only a very small fraction of their life. For example, I routinely see people in cross-cultural relationships try to learn each others' languages but fail miserably at learning when they get into disagreements and have that disagreement in English instead of the language either person is trying to learn. And thus, they don't learn. In order to truly learn a language to native fluency you need to be forced to use it for every common life situation, not just the occasional positive interactions. Children are more or less forced to be using the new language 100% of the time.
- domenicd 6y ago
  +1. It seems like it would be a lot easier to learn a second language if you were: - Surrounded by 1-2 people whose full-time job was to take care of you, and who could only communicate with you in that second language - Unable to do basic things by yourself without communicating those needs to your caretakers - Unable to entertain yourself with any material written or spoken in your first language - Somehow deprived of the ability to form verbal thoughts in your first language Immersion gives a very weak version of this, e.g. if all the signage or menus you read are in the second language, and if you engage with service industry folks in your second language. You can make it better by trying to restrict your entertainment material to the second language, but this usually involves seeking out kids' shows to try to find something comprehensible at your small vocabulary level, and to me it ends up feeling more like work than entertainment.
  - dheera 6y ago
    > Immersion gives a very weak version of this Agreed. Many adults attempt immersion by e.g. moving to a place where the language is spoken but then set themselves up in an expat bubble, which is roughly equivalent to wrapping a sponge in plastic and then immersing it in water. In order to truly immerse yourself you need to actually need to have a life, friends, coworkers in that language, and the things that occupy your mental energy for 80% of the day (probably work, but in the case of children, schoolwork and homework) need to also be in that language. Adults also often get "homesick" and create those expat bubbles for themselves to have a piece of home. Understandable, but children don't get homesick in the same way -- they didn't have any prior culture to think back to, and they don't have a concrete sense of self-identity until later in their childhood. In many cases one may find that the locals actually are a force against immersion if their English is better than your knowledge of their language. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem but I do feel the right time for adult immersion should probably be after you've surpassed the local average English level, which then turns the local language into the preferred working language. If you haven't gotten there yet, you may find that you move, and then everyone wants to use English with you because time is money (and in some cases they want to practice their English, but less so in the workplace). And then -- you don't learn. Children are at a huge advantage here, because schools mandate a certain language be used regardless of who knows what other languages to what level.
allenu 6y ago
I don't think it's the lack of feedback that's the issue. I think it's more that people are less willing to risk using the language wrong as they get older (regardless if there is or is not feedback coming). Growing up in Canada, we had to learn French. I was not fluent in it, but clearly knew enough to get by if I ever visited France. Well, when I was 28 I did visit France. When I got there, I did not want to try any of my French for fear of getting it wrong. (And yes, it was about 10 years since I had been using it in school.) However, I encountered an American who had been in France for a couple of months by that point and he was using every bit of French he had in all conversations, even if it was broken. I was jealous because he was actually communicating and putting an effort into it. He didn't have the fear of getting it wrong, so he would try and try and try. Meanwhile, I would just keep my mouth shut and not learn at all for fear of failure. That experience did stick with me when I tried learning some other skills years later. I realized I had to push myself to fail and get things wrong before getting them right, otherwise I would never make any progress. I'd think of that guy and his attempts that sometimes wouldn't land, but that he'd make progress.
jodrellblank 6y ago
With no support except armchair making things up, I think that children talk to themselves a lot, describing what's happening through the day. "Now we're going to get into the car and drive to the shops, right mommy?" "yes, dear". Adults who talk to themselves are seen as insane, and as an adult you get into the car and drive to the shops on autopilot without using any words for it, and go your whole day without thinking of the words for anything you touch - plates, bowls, cutlery, doors, clothes, vehicles, places, bus tickets, and you can get by day-to-day in a foreign country by already knowing wordlessly how to exist. Children don't know how to exist, and are continually asking, describing, or being told, the ways of daily life in their native language(s). Adults don't have that either.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Adults can do that, and they don't even need to vocalise. In fact, it's exactly how I learn languages. Detim to xunyam wa lang, mogut fo to showxa sif. (language learners should talk to themselves) A while ago we had a thread on production vs recognition for learning in general, not just languages...
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    It isn't just talking to yourself that I mean, your childhood family will say things you wouldn't think of. In the same way the parent comment says that adults won't correct grammar because it's impolite, adult visitors to your house won't tell you to pick up your toys, or lift your arms up to put a sweater on, or brush your teeth, or how to set the table. You won't get constant feedback on the day-to-day minutuae of life - and the constant use of sentences around the vocabulary. If you don't know what "toothpaste is" you're unlikely to stop brushing your teeth and go and look it up. If you do, and you make up sentences and say them to nobody, outside a specific classroom environment nobody will tell you if you're making mistakes. Just imagining a situation of child immersion vs adult immersion vs adult trying to make sentences up: Adult making sentences up: "I am put on coat. Two arm". Adult immersion: "What is the word for coat?" "'coat'", "Thank you. I am put on coat". "nearly, we say 'putting on my coat <blah blah>" "Thanks, I am putting on my coat". Child immersion: "Come here and put your coat on, we're going out, you will get cold", "No I don't want to gone", "don't want to go, say it", "don't want to go", "ok but we're going, so blue coat or rain coat?", "blue raincoat", "warm coat or small coat?", "warm", "good, now put down what you're holding, how will you get your arms in?",... It's so much more everything, more words, more contexts, more sentences, more connections, more interactions, more moments of feedback, more continuous through the day, through every day, more immersive. It's tempting to make up sentences you know, using words you know, harder to make up sentences using words you aren't sure of and sentence structures you aren't sure of. Easy to do in situations where you have some free time and remember to do it, hard to have it ongoing even when you're busy. And with scant feedback. Surely more effective than not generating anything, but equally effective? Can it possibly be?
vaccinator 6y ago
It is not disrespecful if done correctly....
- sumedh 6y ago
  Some people dont like to be corrected
stephenhuey 6y ago
My linguistics professors tended to believe children pick up languages more easily not because they’re being coached more but because they practice with fewer inhibitions than adults. Whereas adults might feel more self-conscious about making mistakes, kids more often don’t worry about it and just try to communicate all day with whatever tools they have, and practice—even with lots of mistakes—helps the brain get better at using the language.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  The disinhibition is why pub conversations are so effective for language learning. Imbobo xunyam gut. Imbobo rowm oso, keya? (The classroom is important. But also the pub, innit?)
xapata 6y ago
As a tourist in Greece, locals would stare in bewilderment as I sounded out all the words like a 5-year-old. I guess most tourists either know Greek or don't try.
outworlder 6y ago
> the older you are, the more socially-unacceptable it becomes to point out grammatical and vocabulary errors That is a factor. It can't really account for how amazingly fast children are. I've witnessed from absolute zero to conversational English in 3 months. Fluency within a year, with no discernible foreign accent (even got the local accent) It took me years (late teens to early twenties) to achieve the same level that was attained by a child in a single year. My brain wasn't even old by any means. I got plenty of exposure, daily (advanced) classes, where I would be corrected by experienced teachers. Plus I had some early exposure to written English. The kid got... a normal class at a public American school. Nothing special apart from an exercise book we got from a teacher, to help with basic concepts. It is astonishing.
mac01021 6y ago
Noone corrects my child's grammar. She just figures it out.
hakeberio 6y ago
Similar theory I have is that it's acceptable for most children to learn their language full-time; whereas for adults, usually it's a side thing on top of their full-time work. If given the opportunity to immerse in language learning full-time for 3 years (time it takes for most children to speak somewhat coherently) and with an open mind, adults can react fluency, I think. Maybe even faster than children, since adults have more context to bind and commit new information to long-term memory. As a kid, memorizing vocabulary words was a brute force task because I had no relevant context (Latin/Greek, history, etc), but now I can pick up words, even foreign words pretty quickly because I have "hooks" in my mind to which I can attach them.
- porknubbins 6y ago
  I think your theory has been pretty well proven with the huge online polyglot community who learn foreign languages regularly as a hobby, as well as other adult language learners like diplomats, random expats etc. You can even look at institutions like the US govt defense language research institute who give specific times to learn specific languages for a native adult English speaker.
burtonator 6y ago
This goes across other topics too.. Most people don't like being corrected or being wrong because of their ego.
elchief 6y ago
My bus driver incorrectly corrected me once, when I was in university: "this money is for me and him" "for him and I..."
pizza234 6y ago
Schooling in an extremely significant factor. By the teenage, a child has undergone more than ten thousands hours of schooling (say, 6h * 250d * 8y), in the language of the country they grow up in. It's an extensive and, by an adult learning a second language, irreplaceable experience. Children who have one parent from a foreign country, even if they communicate extensively with such parent, will have a considerably more developed native language.
anuila 6y ago
> I would interrupt another adult to make the above correction. I interrupt my girlfriend all the time for this very reason and I wish more people would correct me. Nobody's been correcting me for years so I assume it's-a-perfecto, when it's not.
xwolfi 6y ago
But it can be compensated by much higher cognitive skills, like mapping grammar rules theoretically without even using sentencing, or knowing what to ask exactly to reach the point you re trying to make. I ve had both successes and failure learning languages as an adult: english was easier because close to my mother tongue, vastly interesting, nearly mandatory for what I do. So I could listen to podcasts all day, chat with trolls at night, watch movies on the weekend, read novels and eventually move abroad anywhere to finally speech practice etc. I had less success with Japanese: I could quickly learn the writing, because of cognition (kids spend years, an adult can just spend months 2 hours a day), grammar was a matter of habitual exercising, but then the fact it s not mandatory, not everywhere and not as interesting an opening as english was, well I gave up eventually and dont even care: that s what s hard in language learning at any age.
watwut 6y ago
That is not people interact with kids. Most of these linguistic errors are ignored.
cblum 6y ago
I've authorized a friend to correct me like that whenever he sees fit (I'm ESL and I really want to be able to speak English like a native speaker), and I've learned a ton since then.
etripe 6y ago
Having learned a different language through immersion at adult age (30+), whether or not you get the feedback is culturally dependent. In France, you would get this feedback more often than in, say, the Dutch or Swedish language areas. That said, I think it's not just getting feedback that counts, it's also being open to feedback. Relative to an adult, a child doesn't mind getting embarrassed as much. Adults often don't want to lose face, and are then less likely to learn the language with full abandon. Natural language learning ability aside, I made quicker advances than other people because I didn't care about making silly/stupid mistakes but others did.
kmm 6y ago
I don't think that's very plausible. I believe children don't consciously think of the language they're learning, let alone about linguistic abstractions like gender, tense, case,... The concept of a correction doesn't occur to them, in my experience when children are corrected they don't understand that the sentence fragment uttered applied to what they said. Besides, in many cultures children's speech is never corrected, and they all turn out speaking fine at the same rate. The example you give is a bit ironic too, the linguistic shift from "X and I" to "me and X" happened centuries ago and even though it's become a classical example of an "error", there is little hope in ever reversing it. It's always been curious to me that this "error" is pedantically pointed out, but nobody cares about the same "mistake" being made in "Who wants cake? Me!", "He is older than me", "They are going to the beach, but me, I'm staying here" and of course "It's me". By the same reasoning of applying case, in all these sentences "me" should be "I", and especially the last one should be "It am I" (as it is in German and Dutch, translated word-for-word).
wodenokoto 6y ago
Steven Pinker argues against that stance in The Language Instinct. There are plenty of cultures where it is not normal to correct children in conversation and there are even cultures where you generally don't talk to children before the child starts talking.
losvedir 6y ago
I think your example is instructive. That's not really an "error", so much as a rule people learn in school about how English "should" be spoken and may or may not pass along to their children. But consider this conversation: child: "My brother said me -" adult: "My brother told me" child: "{pause} My brother told me..." That conversation just doesn't happen. Those are the real grammatical rules of English, and the ones that native speakers of Spanish, in this example, violate. But a child doesn't learn that from an adult interrupting them and correcting them, they just internalize it and know it on their own.

contexto_ 6y ago

Along the same lines, as adults, we often take these corrections personally (perhaps as a matter of habit) and therefore avoid situations where they may occur (conversation groups for new speakers, explicitly asking native speakers to correct you etc).

ratww 6y ago

Interesting, my German friends do it to me sometimes and I'm very grateful for it.

MrsPeaches 6y ago
Haha nice to see this isn't just me! Maybe it is a specifically German thing.

aeyes 6y ago

There is another reason: People understand you, interrupting with corrections hurts the conversation. I often ask for corrections but nobody ever does it. When I'm unsure how to say something I sometimes ask to get some feedback. Sometimes I only understand 70% of what a person is saying (mostly due to dialects), I rarely need to ask them to repeat it because the brain is capable of piecing it together. Another problem is that unlearning something you always did wrong is extremely hard. You need to get it right from the beginning. That's the beauty of language school, they point out your mistakes early and you can learn from the mistakes of other students in your group. If you take the time and take real classes, you'll have that tight feedback loop you need.

Broken_Hippo 6y ago
In my experience, people are helpful. Sometimes, in Norway, it means folks speak English with me. Not so much now, but once I struggle, out comes English :D But it also means that folks will let me know the right words for things or help with sounds. But at other times, folks will let things slide as long as I can be understood. I can't recommend actual language classes enough. I was in Norwegian classes for two years - immersive classes for adults, taught by native speakers, about 15 hours a week in class. All in Norwegian, from the beginning. It was so wonderful getting real-time corrections and as an added bonus, a lot of culture/civics was worked into the lessons as well, in no small part because vocabulary centered around fairly practical subjects. If I ever need to learn another language, I hope I can have something similar.
- schoen 6y ago
  Say Broken_Hippo, where did you take your Norwegian classes? In Norway, or in another country? A particular language school? Nevøen min lærer norsk fordi han vil bo i Norge, og I want to suggest some more resources or options to him.
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    I took them in Norway: Part of my immigration required that I take Norwegian classes. They were free for me, and were the ones offered through the kommune (here in trondheim) though I think they cost around 9000kr per 6 weeks. The class was mostly filled with folks with family immigration and folks fleeing bad situations in other countries (at the time, a lot of folks from Syria and Eritrea). We used the books "På vei" and "Stein på stein" the first year. The second year I took "helsenorsk" and we used different materials, but for the general learning we mostly used "Norsk gramatikk", which, as you guess, concentrates on about a B1-B2 level of grammar. The first year books come with optional audio, which we used in class, and both have workbooks. I used one other book, but I don't remember the name. If he's determined, he can work through the books but understanding folks is going to be difficult (some dialects are still difficult for me). NTNU offers a free online beginning course: They also offer classes, but those are filled with current students first. I'll add that the level of Norwegian he'll need depends on what he'll be doing here: If he happens to be getting married and is from outside the EU/Schengen area, he'll probably have classes. If he goes to university, he'll need Norwegian for a bachelor degree, but a lot of classes above that are in English. Work really depends on the field, but even in fields with lots of English in the professional realm, knowing some norwegian will help lots.

camillomiller 6y ago

That's why as a non-native I'm glad I have a native girlfriend who's also an English teacher. She definitely corrects me, especially about pronunciation, and I'm grateful for that, because I can see improvements I didn't think I needed.

ngokevin 6y ago
I'm in a relationship with a native speaker too (I'm American, she's Chinese), and am actively learning. I talked to a lot of couples and some people have patience to teach and some don't. It's nice though that couples are close enough to correct each other and help each other out. I had a friend learning French that was French teacher, and she gave up after two sessions, not having the patience. Actually, I just started working on an app to help couples improve each other's languages. You're pretty fluent already, I wonder in what other capacity's your girlfriend who is an English teacher helps you!

ngokevin 6y ago

Perhaps it's more likely if you are in a deep relationship with a native speaker, since often that's a reason why people want to learn a language. This is sort of a plug, but I just started a new project to help couples to learn each other's languages (https://learncoupling.com https://learncoupling.com). Since my wife is Chinese herself, and I've been learning Chinese for quite a while. Most couples around me have tried and failed to learn each other's language as well since they expect each other to be their sole on-demand language teacher. For me, I think it works if I do mostly self-study with Anki. We schedule a certain time of day for like 5 or 10 minutes where I'm just running through my flashcards and my wife can correct me or clarify things. And if the corrections can asynchronous through an app, it'd feel less awkward as you say.

shard 6y ago
One issue is that often it takes someone who has had language instruction experience to properly explain nuances. I've often asked my spouse questions about grammar usage, and since it is instinctive for her and not a premeditated decision like it is for me, she is unable to clearly delineate the proper context and edge cases where a certain grammar would apply. Same with vocabulary. When you have a dozen synonyms, each with a different nuance, it's often tedious and difficult for a non-language instructor to provide clear explanations.
- golem14 6y ago
  I have a similar experience trying to help someone speak German.
  - ngokevin 6y ago
    What pitfalls did you run into? From what I heard, the learner often expects the other person to become their personal on-demand language teacher. And then patience burns out quickly. I think it works if the learner is committed to self-study but only relies on others for a bit of reinforcement, clarification, and practice.

ghaff 6y ago

Look on this board. The person who corrects breaks to brakes, loose to lose, etc. is going to be viewed as at least mildly pedantic. Granted, people make mistakes typing they wouldn't make speaking but the principle is at least similar.

irrational 6y ago
I’m one of those who feel the urge to correct to/too, their/there/they’re, etc. errors. But, I recognize that the main issue is I don’t know who is on the other side. Is it someone for whom English is a second language? Is it a native English speaker that doesn’t know or doesn’t care to know proper grammar? Is it someone who knows proper grammar but just made a simple mistake? Is it someone who welcomes correction?

toufka 6y ago

Not only this, but play talk seems “silly” to adults and is not widely seen as acceptable. Trying to learn new vocabulary during a hearing or negotiation just isn’t going to happen. I recall being overseas and hanging out with 1st and second graders and none of us had any shame just asking “what is this?!” And pointing at a rock or a tree or a ball and correcting each other. I learned more practical vocab in a few hours from a 6yr old than from studying in a book over a week.

billforsternz 6y ago

Sadly it seems there's a whole generation that's been raised without anyone correcting them on this specific point (that it's "Tim and I"). Not that this means I disagree with your greater point.

saghm 6y ago
To be fair, a decent number of people also overcorrect and use "Tim and I" for the objective case as well (e.g. "The teacher told Tim and I that our grammar was incorrect"). I think simply giving the correct construction for the case that the speaker actually used isn't sufficient for using proper grammar; one needs to be able to identify which case is which to be able to use "correct" grammar.
- billforsternz 6y ago
  Nicely put, I didn't realise it but I am, as you say, overcorrecting in this way myself. Interestingly I have a friend who has quietly tried to point this out to me (a counter example to the greater point) but you have explained it better.
- taylodl 6y ago
  The real fun is when someone corrects you for saying "The teacher told Tim and me" and then you give them a grammar lesson to the use of the objective case. I'll admit to a little bit of smugness when that happens. Otherwise no, I don't correct people's grammar unless they've specifically asked me to review something.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Whether something is “correct” or not in this particular grammatical regard comes down to cultural factors, not objective linguistic ones. If we look at the languages of the world, we can see plenty of cases where the nominative form of the 1st person singular pronoun was gradually replaced over time by the accusative or oblique form. Therefore, people coming to say “Tim and me” instead of “Tim and I” is a completely natural linguistic change and complaining about it is simply being pedantic.

saghm 6y ago

> As an adult, you simply do not get this kind of feedback I think that's partially because most adults react pretty strongly to someone telling them that they're wrong about something, especially something considered as trivial as grammar. Kids are just more open to being corrected in general (whether through natural disposition or conditioning, I'm not sure).

FrojoS 6y ago
I would say that kids are more dependent on the adults that correct them, hence they can’t act as offended as an independent adult can.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  As parent of growing children, definitely this :/)

emmanueloga_ 6y ago

Recently learned about LEX [1], they have a method that attempts to fight exactly this issue. Also, they attempt to learn as crazy number as 11 languages or so at at time, and apparently, it works... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippo_Family_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippo_Family_Club

MrsPeaches 6y ago

This is very much an english speaking country phenomenon. We are used to having lots of people speak english, often incorrectly and are much more tolerant of people making mistakes (and therefore don't correct them). You should spend some time in Germany. I once had my German corrected by a casheir at a fast food restaurant. So from my experience, I don't think this is the reason that people stop being able to learn languages.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Well, the real point is that children have full-time tutors, their parents. Adults don't. Closest you can get is date someone who wants to help you out.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Well, the real point is that children have full-time tutors, their parents. That's not universal, though. Many children are neglected to various degrees, and my understanding is they'll still work out their language if they get adequate exposure to it. You probably only need a tutor the master the intricacies of the more prestigious registers, but that's a different thing than fluency.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    >> Well, the real point is that children have full-time tutors, their parents. > That's not universal, though. Also: children whose parents immigrated. The parents may never end up learning the language of the new country, but their children often will.
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forinti 6y ago

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

I correct my father all the time and yet he keeps making the same mistakes

rootbear 6y ago

If I corrected all of the incorrect grammar I hear on a daily basis I'd be exhausted. I'm not too polite to correct, I'm too busy...

OJFord 6y ago
> If I corrected all of the incorrect grammar I hear on a daily basis I'd be exhausted. AmbiguousParseError: consider punctuation, or for 'on a daily basis' try 'throughout the day'. > I'm not too polite to correct, MissingObjectError: unknown direct object of 'to correct'. -- (Just kidding :))
- rootbear 6y ago
  I was really hoping someone would offer corrections! Thanks!
  - wccrawford 6y ago
    I don't actually agree with the corrections, though. Those phrases are similar, but subtly different. It depends on whether you meant you hear them every day, but not always a lot... Or whether you hear them constantly throughout the day, every day.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      Yeah, maybe 'each day' or something would have been a better fit - regardless, my preferred recommendation was a comma or two. And mostly I really was just kidding, actively looking for anything to nitpick on in a comment talking about correcting people's grammar. 'to correct' without a (with an implied) direct object is also fine in colloquial speech, or internet comments.

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dheera 6y ago

Personally, I don't think that is the primary reason adults have a hard time learning languages. Neural plasticity isn't the biggest reason either, IMO. Rather, the biggest showstopper is that adults tend to always be busy, and fall back to their native languages to get the busy stuff done, and only end up practicing their new language during positive interactions when they have time. Which is really only a very small fraction of their life. For example, I routinely see people in cross-cultural relationships try to learn each others' languages but fail miserably at learning when they get into disagreements and have that disagreement in English instead of the language either person is trying to learn. And thus, they don't learn. In order to truly learn a language to native fluency you need to be forced to use it for every common life situation, not just the occasional positive interactions. Children are more or less forced to be using the new language 100% of the time.

domenicd 6y ago
+1. It seems like it would be a lot easier to learn a second language if you were: - Surrounded by 1-2 people whose full-time job was to take care of you, and who could only communicate with you in that second language - Unable to do basic things by yourself without communicating those needs to your caretakers - Unable to entertain yourself with any material written or spoken in your first language - Somehow deprived of the ability to form verbal thoughts in your first language Immersion gives a very weak version of this, e.g. if all the signage or menus you read are in the second language, and if you engage with service industry folks in your second language. You can make it better by trying to restrict your entertainment material to the second language, but this usually involves seeking out kids' shows to try to find something comprehensible at your small vocabulary level, and to me it ends up feeling more like work than entertainment.
- dheera 6y ago
  > Immersion gives a very weak version of this Agreed. Many adults attempt immersion by e.g. moving to a place where the language is spoken but then set themselves up in an expat bubble, which is roughly equivalent to wrapping a sponge in plastic and then immersing it in water. In order to truly immerse yourself you need to actually need to have a life, friends, coworkers in that language, and the things that occupy your mental energy for 80% of the day (probably work, but in the case of children, schoolwork and homework) need to also be in that language. Adults also often get "homesick" and create those expat bubbles for themselves to have a piece of home. Understandable, but children don't get homesick in the same way -- they didn't have any prior culture to think back to, and they don't have a concrete sense of self-identity until later in their childhood. In many cases one may find that the locals actually are a force against immersion if their English is better than your knowledge of their language. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem but I do feel the right time for adult immersion should probably be after you've surpassed the local average English level, which then turns the local language into the preferred working language. If you haven't gotten there yet, you may find that you move, and then everyone wants to use English with you because time is money (and in some cases they want to practice their English, but less so in the workplace). And then -- you don't learn. Children are at a huge advantage here, because schools mandate a certain language be used regardless of who knows what other languages to what level.

allenu 6y ago

I don't think it's the lack of feedback that's the issue. I think it's more that people are less willing to risk using the language wrong as they get older (regardless if there is or is not feedback coming). Growing up in Canada, we had to learn French. I was not fluent in it, but clearly knew enough to get by if I ever visited France. Well, when I was 28 I did visit France. When I got there, I did not want to try any of my French for fear of getting it wrong. (And yes, it was about 10 years since I had been using it in school.) However, I encountered an American who had been in France for a couple of months by that point and he was using every bit of French he had in all conversations, even if it was broken. I was jealous because he was actually communicating and putting an effort into it. He didn't have the fear of getting it wrong, so he would try and try and try. Meanwhile, I would just keep my mouth shut and not learn at all for fear of failure. That experience did stick with me when I tried learning some other skills years later. I realized I had to push myself to fail and get things wrong before getting them right, otherwise I would never make any progress. I'd think of that guy and his attempts that sometimes wouldn't land, but that he'd make progress.

jodrellblank 6y ago

With no support except armchair making things up, I think that children talk to themselves a lot, describing what's happening through the day. "Now we're going to get into the car and drive to the shops, right mommy?" "yes, dear". Adults who talk to themselves are seen as insane, and as an adult you get into the car and drive to the shops on autopilot without using any words for it, and go your whole day without thinking of the words for anything you touch - plates, bowls, cutlery, doors, clothes, vehicles, places, bus tickets, and you can get by day-to-day in a foreign country by already knowing wordlessly how to exist. Children don't know how to exist, and are continually asking, describing, or being told, the ways of daily life in their native language(s). Adults don't have that either.

082349872349872 6y ago
Adults can do that, and they don't even need to vocalise. In fact, it's exactly how I learn languages. Detim to xunyam wa lang, mogut fo to showxa sif. (language learners should talk to themselves) A while ago we had a thread on production vs recognition for learning in general, not just languages...
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  It isn't just talking to yourself that I mean, your childhood family will say things you wouldn't think of. In the same way the parent comment says that adults won't correct grammar because it's impolite, adult visitors to your house won't tell you to pick up your toys, or lift your arms up to put a sweater on, or brush your teeth, or how to set the table. You won't get constant feedback on the day-to-day minutuae of life - and the constant use of sentences around the vocabulary. If you don't know what "toothpaste is" you're unlikely to stop brushing your teeth and go and look it up. If you do, and you make up sentences and say them to nobody, outside a specific classroom environment nobody will tell you if you're making mistakes. Just imagining a situation of child immersion vs adult immersion vs adult trying to make sentences up: Adult making sentences up: "I am put on coat. Two arm". Adult immersion: "What is the word for coat?" "'coat'", "Thank you. I am put on coat". "nearly, we say 'putting on my coat <blah blah>" "Thanks, I am putting on my coat". Child immersion: "Come here and put your coat on, we're going out, you will get cold", "No I don't want to gone", "don't want to go, say it", "don't want to go", "ok but we're going, so blue coat or rain coat?", "blue raincoat", "warm coat or small coat?", "warm", "good, now put down what you're holding, how will you get your arms in?",... It's so much more everything, more words, more contexts, more sentences, more connections, more interactions, more moments of feedback, more continuous through the day, through every day, more immersive. It's tempting to make up sentences you know, using words you know, harder to make up sentences using words you aren't sure of and sentence structures you aren't sure of. Easy to do in situations where you have some free time and remember to do it, hard to have it ongoing even when you're busy. And with scant feedback. Surely more effective than not generating anything, but equally effective? Can it possibly be?

vaccinator 6y ago

It is not disrespecful if done correctly....

sumedh 6y ago
Some people dont like to be corrected

stephenhuey 6y ago

My linguistics professors tended to believe children pick up languages more easily not because they’re being coached more but because they practice with fewer inhibitions than adults. Whereas adults might feel more self-conscious about making mistakes, kids more often don’t worry about it and just try to communicate all day with whatever tools they have, and practice—even with lots of mistakes—helps the brain get better at using the language.

082349872349872 6y ago
The disinhibition is why pub conversations are so effective for language learning. Imbobo xunyam gut. Imbobo rowm oso, keya? (The classroom is important. But also the pub, innit?)

xapata 6y ago

As a tourist in Greece, locals would stare in bewilderment as I sounded out all the words like a 5-year-old. I guess most tourists either know Greek or don't try.

outworlder 6y ago

> the older you are, the more socially-unacceptable it becomes to point out grammatical and vocabulary errors That is a factor. It can't really account for how amazingly fast children are. I've witnessed from absolute zero to conversational English in 3 months. Fluency within a year, with no discernible foreign accent (even got the local accent) It took me years (late teens to early twenties) to achieve the same level that was attained by a child in a single year. My brain wasn't even old by any means. I got plenty of exposure, daily (advanced) classes, where I would be corrected by experienced teachers. Plus I had some early exposure to written English. The kid got... a normal class at a public American school. Nothing special apart from an exercise book we got from a teacher, to help with basic concepts. It is astonishing.

mac01021 6y ago

Noone corrects my child's grammar. She just figures it out.

hakeberio 6y ago

Similar theory I have is that it's acceptable for most children to learn their language full-time; whereas for adults, usually it's a side thing on top of their full-time work. If given the opportunity to immerse in language learning full-time for 3 years (time it takes for most children to speak somewhat coherently) and with an open mind, adults can react fluency, I think. Maybe even faster than children, since adults have more context to bind and commit new information to long-term memory. As a kid, memorizing vocabulary words was a brute force task because I had no relevant context (Latin/Greek, history, etc), but now I can pick up words, even foreign words pretty quickly because I have "hooks" in my mind to which I can attach them.

porknubbins 6y ago
I think your theory has been pretty well proven with the huge online polyglot community who learn foreign languages regularly as a hobby, as well as other adult language learners like diplomats, random expats etc. You can even look at institutions like the US govt defense language research institute who give specific times to learn specific languages for a native adult English speaker.

burtonator 6y ago

This goes across other topics too.. Most people don't like being corrected or being wrong because of their ego.

elchief 6y ago

My bus driver incorrectly corrected me once, when I was in university: "this money is for me and him" "for him and I..."

pizza234 6y ago

Schooling in an extremely significant factor. By the teenage, a child has undergone more than ten thousands hours of schooling (say, 6h * 250d * 8y), in the language of the country they grow up in. It's an extensive and, by an adult learning a second language, irreplaceable experience. Children who have one parent from a foreign country, even if they communicate extensively with such parent, will have a considerably more developed native language.

anuila 6y ago

> I would interrupt another adult to make the above correction. I interrupt my girlfriend all the time for this very reason and I wish more people would correct me. Nobody's been correcting me for years so I assume it's-a-perfecto, when it's not.

xwolfi 6y ago

But it can be compensated by much higher cognitive skills, like mapping grammar rules theoretically without even using sentencing, or knowing what to ask exactly to reach the point you re trying to make. I ve had both successes and failure learning languages as an adult: english was easier because close to my mother tongue, vastly interesting, nearly mandatory for what I do. So I could listen to podcasts all day, chat with trolls at night, watch movies on the weekend, read novels and eventually move abroad anywhere to finally speech practice etc. I had less success with Japanese: I could quickly learn the writing, because of cognition (kids spend years, an adult can just spend months 2 hours a day), grammar was a matter of habitual exercising, but then the fact it s not mandatory, not everywhere and not as interesting an opening as english was, well I gave up eventually and dont even care: that s what s hard in language learning at any age.

watwut 6y ago

That is not people interact with kids. Most of these linguistic errors are ignored.

cblum 6y ago

I've authorized a friend to correct me like that whenever he sees fit (I'm ESL and I really want to be able to speak English like a native speaker), and I've learned a ton since then.

etripe 6y ago

Having learned a different language through immersion at adult age (30+), whether or not you get the feedback is culturally dependent. In France, you would get this feedback more often than in, say, the Dutch or Swedish language areas. That said, I think it's not just getting feedback that counts, it's also being open to feedback. Relative to an adult, a child doesn't mind getting embarrassed as much. Adults often don't want to lose face, and are then less likely to learn the language with full abandon. Natural language learning ability aside, I made quicker advances than other people because I didn't care about making silly/stupid mistakes but others did.

kmm 6y ago

I don't think that's very plausible. I believe children don't consciously think of the language they're learning, let alone about linguistic abstractions like gender, tense, case,... The concept of a correction doesn't occur to them, in my experience when children are corrected they don't understand that the sentence fragment uttered applied to what they said. Besides, in many cultures children's speech is never corrected, and they all turn out speaking fine at the same rate. The example you give is a bit ironic too, the linguistic shift from "X and I" to "me and X" happened centuries ago and even though it's become a classical example of an "error", there is little hope in ever reversing it. It's always been curious to me that this "error" is pedantically pointed out, but nobody cares about the same "mistake" being made in "Who wants cake? Me!", "He is older than me", "They are going to the beach, but me, I'm staying here" and of course "It's me". By the same reasoning of applying case, in all these sentences "me" should be "I", and especially the last one should be "It am I" (as it is in German and Dutch, translated word-for-word).

wodenokoto 6y ago

Steven Pinker argues against that stance in The Language Instinct. There are plenty of cultures where it is not normal to correct children in conversation and there are even cultures where you generally don't talk to children before the child starts talking.

losvedir 6y ago

I think your example is instructive. That's not really an "error", so much as a rule people learn in school about how English "should" be spoken and may or may not pass along to their children. But consider this conversation: child: "My brother said me -" adult: "My brother told me" child: "{pause} My brother told me..." That conversation just doesn't happen. Those are the real grammatical rules of English, and the ones that native speakers of Spanish, in this example, violate. But a child doesn't learn that from an adult interrupting them and correcting them, they just internalize it and know it on their own.