Language learning is easy and natural for humans

If I say that people can learn any language easily and quickly, age is no barrier, you maybe consider that I was slightly mad.Because the evidence around us seems to have shown us that only children can pick up a second language quickly and easily, and adults can’t.However,have you ever noticed that some of adults can learn another language quickly and easily?Could it be that they have not yet lose their ability to learn a new language?Did you think about why is that?

One of my colleagues picked up a new language in Tibet,and that haven’t taken her too long time.At that time, we all admired her and said that she is a language genius and must have language talent of some sort.And she couldn’t tell us why she can do this, maybe because she didn’t know the reasons as well.Anyhow,she can speak fluent Tibetan,and learn other new words of this language that she have not yet known naturally and easily just like a native Tibetan speaker.

This is not the only example that adults can learn a new language effectively.The author of The Third Ear,as an adult, picked up Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese which are perceived as amongst the hardest to learn within a short time.

Can you imagine that we just can’t stop learning language?Micheal,a CEO of a medium-size operation in Hong Kong,enrolled in a two-week accelerated Mandarin course.He attained a very good sense of how Mandarin works as a language.He could understand a lot and his vocabulary was building.But only one problem was that he kept speaking with a strong Cantonese accent,despite the fact that he did not know Cantonese.And he wasn’t the only one.Three people in the class had all lived in Hong Kong for a number of years, and each of them had the same problem.They were mispronouncing many of the Mandarin words, using exactly the same pronunciation that a native Cantonese speaker would use.It was almost as a Hong Kong Chinese person was speaking Mandarin Chinese for the first time.Strange!They had picked up Cantonese at an unconscious level!

Have you ever noticed how you sometimes hear words, even when no word was intended?Maybe a noise from a machine sounds like a word.Or it could just be the sound of the wind.Certainly,when someone is speaking in a foreign language, we can often hear sounds that seem to be the same as words in our own language.You could, perhaps,imagine being a small child…hearing all the sounds and words around you…and from that mess of sound,piece-by-piece,discerning the words.We are wired to hear in that way.

In my experience,any person can hear any new language and identify the presence of words, knowing where one begins and another ends.Which seems normal and natural.And it is.However,up until today computers can still only get 95 per cent accuracy of voice-recognition,and to do that they need very clear input, with very little noise. So, more and more money get invested.

You and I were born with the ability to do this same task, somehow, with no training.If we didn’t have this ability we would not be able to understand somebody speaking in the middle of the thunderstorm, or over the noise of traffic, or in a conversation with three other people speaking at the same time.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where somebody said something to you, and you didn’t understand, and so you asked the person to repeat it? Then,when they did you realised that you had understood it the first time?Somehow,we seem to understand the meanings that people communicate without needing to break phrases into words,at least not consciously.

This applies equally in situations where a person is in a place where a foreign language is being spoken.Somehow,you could at least pick words out from what people were saying?

What about distorted massages?A phone message can be very distorted,and we can still understand what is being said.The brain takes the information,filters out the distortion, and makes sense of the whole thing.

The more we study language, the more it becomes possible to accept that people are hard wired to learn language.In the same way that pigeons are programmed to find their way home, we may be born with an inbuilt ability to learn language.Whether or not we are ‘hard-wired’ to learn language, everyday experience points to the amazing ability that people have to decode language and give it meaning.Any language. Any time. We can’t stop ourselves from hearing words in much of the sound that is around us.Especially,the sound is made by human mouths.The brain naturally hears sounds and turns them into words,breaking them up in just the right place.Think about the baby.No grounding.Doesn’t know any language.And is able to hear single words picked from a sentence and play them back immediately.A task that computers are only just beginning to come to grips with.

What might happen if you just accept the possibility, for a few months, that today you have the ability to learn a language just as you did when you were a baby,naturally and easily.