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Learning a Foreign Language · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Guten get routin Blowing and welcome to the podcast. Come Josh,
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: there's Chuck and it's just the two of us today,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: which is why we're feeling a little crazy.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I just did a cow bell as donk donk.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I think it's flunk.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Came through, It came through. There's a bit of a
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: dunk to it.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I owe a big apology to uh, what's his name,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Rick Allen? Is that his name? The drummer def Leppard's drummer.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds like it sounds right.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, can you believe that a major rock band's
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: drummer lost his arm and learned how to play without
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: that arm? Well, not only that like an amazing story.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: It is amazing because they were like right right about
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: to hit their peak. They were like rocketing up and
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: again you'd think that was just the end of it,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: but nope, can't keep him down.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: What a story. I think when I was a kid
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and that happened, I was like, oh wow, that's cool.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: But now that I'm an adult and I'm like, if
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I have a bad ankle sprain, I'm done. It's just
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: amazing to me that he lost an arm and like persevered,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: just incredible.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: What's also cool, I think is that this is in
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: the eighties and somebody was sharp enough to develop software
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: that could kind of like help him with the extra
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: beat that he couldn't get to with just one arm.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Like that was just amazing in and of itself as well.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Well, I thought he used the other foot, right, isn't
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: that what he did?
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I believe there was software involved as well.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know that. I thought he just learned
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: how to incorporate that.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Oh no, are you like, well, I'm not really impressed.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: After all, I have to look into that more.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: This has nothing to do with what we're talking about,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: except for the sort of German that's not even German.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Is it? They're British?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I know, But that those are even real words, are they?
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: No? I don't think so. It seemed like a Swedish
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: chef kind of thing.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Oh goodness, we're talking about learning foreign languages, because that
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: is something Ed helped us out with this, and he
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: very quickly points out that's a real mark of and
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: always has been like, oh you know, they speak four languages.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, that means boy, they're super smart and
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: they're very worldly, and you know it. It certainly requires
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: some intelligence to speak many languages. I think to be
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: a polyglot, But it's always something that people tout and
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I don't blame them. If I speak four languages, that's
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: the first thing I'd say, Hey, I'm chuck. I speak
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: four languages.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: By the way, it almost rivals telling people that you
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: went to Brown or Harvard.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: That's only two languages.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So do you speak anything other than English these days? Well?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: No, We've talked a little bit about our language background.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I took high school German and then college German and
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: did a little traveling in Germany because because I did
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: my European tour, but I don't remember much of it.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: I don't ever practice it, but it is it was
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: something that I would pick up, you know, quicker than
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: if I tried to learn Spanish, which is on my
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: list to try and do. Yeah, I really want to.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: It's just like do I have the time, and then
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the answer is yes, I just have to do it,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: you know. But I really would like to learn Spanish
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: because Spanish.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Spanish is on my list.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: But before we talk about what people in the biz
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: call L two. We should talk a little bit about
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: L one, which we've talked a little bit about before,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: But L L one is like when you when you're
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: just a little dumb baby and you learn how to talk,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: which I can now attest as a parent is one
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: of the most remarkable things you can witness as a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: human learning language that's really neat, seemingly by themselves, because
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: you're not saying like this is how you say spoon.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Kids learn language quickly and it seems like innately, and
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about all that now.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: I remember learning to read, and it almost seemed to
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: me like overnight, like it just started clicking. And I
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: think first grade. Jeff always wondered, isn't that kind of late?
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: No? Okay, good, No, it's not at all. If you're reading,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: you're doing fine.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: I got to impress everybody with what age I started
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: reading at the No.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: In fact, if you're reading like pretty well at six,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: that's pretty good.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say pretty well. But all of a sudden,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: it was like books went from just lines of scribble
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: to sensible, sensical things that I could decode and interpret.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And I was like, wow, that's neat.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: No, No, that's good. Six is great?
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, good you look at you. Thank god you're a parent,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: because I'd be totally lost if you weren't.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: All right, So we'll talk about some of the language
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: theories the first, like whether or not they're still relevant
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: or not. The first is called critical period hypothesis. Long
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: standing debate about this. It was proposed by a dude
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: named a neurologist named Wilder Pinfield along with Lamar Roberts
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: in a nineteen fifty nine book called Speech and Brain Mechanisms.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: And this is the idea that there is a critical
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: period in a young person, a young human's life where
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: your brain has the plasticity that's just off the charts
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: and it can learn language then, and after that, learning
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: a new language is a lot harder.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, which seems to be what generally people think of today, right.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I mean sort of. I think critical period hypothesis made
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: it seem like it was really, really, really hard after
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: this because they didn't really believe in They thought plasticity
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: stopped at a certain point.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, I got you. Yeah, Because there was a time
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: where people thought that you had all the neurons you
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: were ever going to have when you were born and
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: you just you know, smoked hashish and lost them over time.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I was about to say the same thing. Oh yeah,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: like you smoked them away a few at a time
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: or what exactly.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that all of your neural connections were formed,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: you know, in your by your teens maybe, and then
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: after that you just got dumber and dumber. Right, So
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: this is this is that that that's that school of thought.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that that basically things are pretty fixed after that
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: certain age, and that that's why it's so hard to
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: learn language later on. But we now know that that's
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: not true, and your brain can still be very plastic.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: But it's remarkably close just in its principle, in the
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: basis of its idea, it seems.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty hard.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: What were the names of the two guys again.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Wilder Pinfield and Lamar Roberts.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: They sound like an alternate universe Steely Dan, you know,
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: like those are the members of Steely Dan in the
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: eighth dimension.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Pinfield and Roberts. I like it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I just made myself laugh.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Sponge theories next, and that's one that has really gone
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the way of the DODO, right.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They used to think that you just kids just
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: absorbed everything like sponges. Like you were saying, it was
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: remarkable and magical to watch Ruby just suddenly learn to speak. Yeah,
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: that was noteworthy enough to enough people that they're like,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: we didn't teach this kid anything. They just absorbed it, right,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: And there's a certain degree of that. But one of
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: the problems with sponge theory, which has generally been discarded,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: like you said, is that it really underestimates the importance
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: of active learning. It's basically saying passive learning. I read
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: there's like a New York Times blog post about kids
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: learning l one and somebody was saying they were pointing
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: out just how poor an analogy the sponge theory is
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Bye Bye. They put a picture up during one of
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: their talks. There's a bucket of water and then a
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: sponge like on the table next to it, right, and
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: it's like their proximity isn't enough, Like there has to
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: be some sort of action and activity as well.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: You gotta dip it son. The other another good analogy
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Ed pointed out is like that's like saying, if you're
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: just an American household and but you'd let your kid
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: watch nothing but Spanish speaking television, that they're just gonna
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: learn Spanish.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but apparently that works if you're an adult.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: No, okay, no, but watching foreign language movies can be
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: a tool.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: I have a friend from way back. He taught himself
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: French by watching French movies, got himself a job with UPS,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: worked there for eight months, and then put in for
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: a transfer to Paris and moved to Paris.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: What.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was very cool. He went on to become
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: the bass player and the number two most popular rock
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: band in Turkey according to a Pepsi cola full of
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: that nation years after he moved on from Paris.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Is a friend of yours. Yeah, that's amazing.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was very cool. I don't know what became
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: of film. I lost him after he moved to Turkey,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: but yeah, good guy.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: That happens. Yeah. So behaviorism is the next one, and
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: that is BF. Skinner was a big proponent of this,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and he wrote that language learning was akin to verbal behavior.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: So basically your blank slate and learning a language is
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: like learning any other behavior. You learn it through reinforcement,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: through either being praised or being punished, and like really
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: working at.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: It right and then if you, like you said, it's
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: the reward in punishment is really really important, you know. Yeah,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: that's how you learn what's right and what's wrong. That
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: has a little bit of basis in reality too, Like
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: all of these competing theories, if you just carve a
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: little bit out of each one and put it together,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: you've got learning language.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's with a lot of theories, like
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: people aren't usual one hundred percent wrong.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Sure. So the opposite of behaviorism, by the way, is
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: called nativism. It says no, no, no, we're not born
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: as blank slates, and we just learned by observing and
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: through trial and error, reward and punishment. There's our brains
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: are basically pre wired to not only give rise but
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: then also interpret and use what's called the universal grammar.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: That humans have some sort of inborn ability to speak
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: languages to one another. And this was a cornerstone of
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Noam Chomsky's career, if not the whole thing.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he talked about and I know we talked about
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: this in another episode. The language acquisition device, which is
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: not a sort of a real body part, but it's
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: like a hypothetical tool, right that no chomps chomps key,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Why is a T in there? It's already a baggy name.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Who names are Kidnome?
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know, but I mean it really works. Those
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: two names together work really well.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know much about this guy, but it's a
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: name that I've heard three thousand times in my life,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: so I need to brush up a little bit.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: He was, in addition to being a linguist who's very
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: very opinionated, very far left leaning cultural critic as well,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: who made him some really great points. But he, you know,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: anybody like that attracts scorn and ire. Sure there's a
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: lot of critics of Noam Chompsky as well, but he
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: was very interesting. He was a public intellectual. As a
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: way to put it, I guess.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So about phonemes, Yeah, phonemes. I always
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: want to say phenomes. I know, I just scooped up.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Josh corrected me. We did that that part. Phonemes, Yeah, phonemes.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Ed points out that a language, maybe let's say a
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: language has like forty ish phonemes phonemes.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Are you doing this on purpose now?
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I'm really not. I'm sort of losing my mind right now.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm watching an unravel.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: It's fast, but babies start to grasp these or at
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: least the relevant ones of their language is early at
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: six months and baby talk, the little gobbledygook sounds that
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: babies make are different than like an American baby's gobbedygook
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: is different than a child than a little baby in
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Africa's gobbledygook.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: That is so cool.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: So those are the kind of the big theories about
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: language acquisition. L one acquisition, right where you just learn
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: your native language and you become fluent in it for
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: whatever reason. Apparently we don't have that quite figured out yet.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Now we move into L two acquisition, and one of
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: the fundamental hallmarks of learning a second language in particular
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: is that it seems to be way easier for kids
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: than it is for adults.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: That is true, Why I don't think that it's that
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: like they've, like you said, earlier, discovered that plasticity can
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: occur in adults. And it's not like an impossibility or
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: really really really hard like they used to think. It
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: is definitely easier for a kid. A kid can learn
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: many languages. There really is not like a limit. There
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: are outliers where kids, you know, like these little phenoms
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: learn you know, six seven, eight languages. Those are outliers
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: for sure, But like your average just sort of bilingual
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: kid raised in a bilingual household is very common these days,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: and it's not the case where like well, but if
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: you're teaching your child Spanish, you know when are growing
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: up as well as English, you're not the time you're
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: spent talking about Spanish is taking away from the English
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: that they're going to fall behind, and that is just
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: proven to not be the case.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would think, if anything, it would make you
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: excel a little more in other stuff.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: It does. Supposedly bilingual kids do better at problem solving situations.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about some other stuff like socially, but they
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: don't experience learning delays or issues. It's just not something
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: that they've seen happen.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: And the fact that there's outliers like you were talking about,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: who who learn multiple languages as children makes you kind
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: of wonder, what is there an upper limit two languages
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: that a kid can learn? And the answer is yes,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: apparently it's three.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Oh I said there was none?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Is there there's oh?
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Non outliers? Okay, I got you right.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Practically speaking, three is the max because language experts aka
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: linguists suggests that you need to spend about twenty to
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: thirty percent of your waking time practicing learning a language.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: If you're learning another.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Language, so do the mas, right, and that would.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Leave time for I'm never doing that again. That would
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: leave time for nothing else. If you were focusing on
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: learning three languages at once, that would be the upper limit, right,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: at least learning them at once.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, that makes sense.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: But there are people out there, just real quick, Chuck,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: who have learned tons of languages. There's a guy, a
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Canadian named Powell Janulus or Powell Janulus. He's credited with
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: knowing forty two different languages. What another guy named Ziad
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Faza he I think is the current record holder at
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: fifty nine.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: These are kids are just people people, okay.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: And then back in the eighteen fifties, the governor of
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Hong Kong, Sir John Browning, was reputed to know two
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: hundred languages and speak one hundred of them. What so
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: that's what everybody said when they met him.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he said, would you like to hear that
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: in a hundred different ways? Before we break real quick.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I did want to mention because one of the things
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: I when I was sort of assigning this article out,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: was like, is there you know, is there any like
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: research on why Americans tend to be less multi lingual?
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: And there's really not research that I've seen, but it
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: seems to be that there's just like you don't think
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: of it when you live in a big city and
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: you're you're you have people that speak all kinds of
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: languages in big cities, but lots and lots of America
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: doesn't do that.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Well, They're not exposed to it as much.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: That's what I mean. It's like lots lots of towns
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: and lots of cities in America, you don't get a
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: lot of foreign languages. So if you don't have that exposure,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: then you're you're probably not going to be as interested.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: And then there are also and I'm not like call
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: anyone out, but like there are also a lot of
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: people that still think like, well, no, gosh darn it,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: like this is what you speak here, and this is
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: what you're gonna learn here, and I don't want you
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: to learn in any Spanish or anything like that.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: People used to say that publicly. Yeah, I'll bet though
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: it would be easy to study if you you know,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: went along the border with Mexico, you probably find way
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: more bilingual people than say in Atlanta or the border
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: of Canada, you find more people who spoke Canadian and English.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: It'd be easy to study, is what I'm trying to say.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know why.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Anyone should we take a break? Sure, all right, let's
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: break and we'll go learn a language and we'll be
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: right back.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: So check. I got fascinated with this critical period stuff
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: that we kind of went over. The critical period hypothesis.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: It makes a lot of sense to me. It's backed
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: up by some research. Apparently. What the problem with the
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: seely Dan guy's hypothesis was that they went too far.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: They made it too absolute. And it's just not the
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: case that people can't learn things as adults. I mean,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: they should have probably figured that out from the outset.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: But it is much harder to learn a language as
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: an adult than it is to learn an L one
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: language as a kid, or even L two language as
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: a kid.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I used to hear when I was younger,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: because fluency is a funky word that I don't even know,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: like everyone agrees on what that means. Because when I
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: was younger, I used to hear you know, and this
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: is just that probably playground stuff, you know, when you're
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: just talking linguistics on the playground by the jungle Jim Like,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: I used to hear two things. One is you can
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: never be fluent in another language because you're always translating
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: it in your mind, and to be truly fluent means
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: that you are thinking in that language. Not true. You
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: can thinking in another language is a learned skill. As
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: it turns out, you can teach yourself to do that.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And then the other thing I heard was you can
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: never be fluent or maybe a sign of fluency is
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: if you dream in a different language, And that isn't
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: true either, because I look that up today and apparently,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: even like basic knowledge of another language, you can dream
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: in that language. I think if you know how dreams go,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: if you're like thinking about that free fall a sleep,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: you might dream in a language and it apparently has
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with fluency.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: God, is there anything that you heard on the playground
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: that you could trust?
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, is that your father could be sued for all
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the money that he's got very easily by a child.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Apparently sure? Oh no, I think the kid's parent would
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: usually sue my dad's gonna sue your dad. It's work.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, typically, I mean even as a kid, you knew
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: that you had very little standing in the court of law.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: That'd be a funny sketch for a sketch show, like
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: like a juvenile court if their dad's going to sue
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: your dad and then they actually take it and adults
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: try the case.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: If there were funny sketch shows on TV anymore, that
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: would be great.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Oh but there are. Oh yeah, yeah, I think you
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: should leave with Tim Robinson.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Oh that's true, very funny with the party Hardison too.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Have you seen her Instagram stuff? No?
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Is that an account I should follow?
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: She? Yes, for sure. I don't know if that's I
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: think that is her handle on Instagram. But she's a writer.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: She's also on his show, like as a character here there,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: and she's hilarious. But yeah, she's great too.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I think I might know who you're talking about.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Do you remember? I think in the first episode of
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: the first season they're doing kind of like a shark
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: tank thing and one of the sharks is like, I'm
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: rich because I've won the lottery. Now I drink wine
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: all day long. I can't get enough wine. Do you
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: remember that that one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's them.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: And I can't remember their real name, party Hardiston is
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: just their handle, but I think it's like Patty Harrison
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: or something.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: It is, it's Patty Harrison and I knew her from
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Adie Bryant's show Shrill. That was so great.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Oh I saw that one.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I need to follow It was good. I need to
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: follow Harrison's account though, because she like every time I
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: see her on TV, I'm like, she is one of
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the weirdest comedians. Yeah, all the best ways.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. But yeah, I think you should leave.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Is amazing.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: So where were we? Uh you were talking about critical period?
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So the whole idea of why it's
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: harder for a kid or for an adult to learn
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: a language, a new language then it is a kid,
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: is because supposedly there is this critical period. There's a
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: window of time it's estimated to end anywhere from five
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: to your mid teens, where your brain is like, I'm
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: down for whatever. Teach me whatever you want, I'm going
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: to I'm going to learn it. You just have a
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: higher degree of neuroplasticity, right, you can form in adjust
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: new neural connections, which is the basis of learning and
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: like memorizing and retaining new things.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we talked about the fact that now we
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: know that we can regenerate new neurons, make new neural connections,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: all the good things that you can do as a
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: child in that critical period you can still do as
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: an adult. Should we talk about inhibitory neurons.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: I want to do at least a short stuff on them,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: if not a whole episode. They are fascinating.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we've talked about them before, for sure.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: These are neurons that basically say, you know, is this
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: new input that getting worth making a neural connection for?
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Or am I just watching another dumb sketch show. And
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: they give weight to like new things and novel experiences.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: So I would think that those inhibitory neurons are if
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: they're still around when you're an adult, then learning a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: new language is new and novel, So they would fire up, right.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: You would think so. But apparently they have kind of
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: set your language in stone. And the only explanation, because
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: I had the same question as you, is like, that's novel,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: that's new, those are new combinations of sounds. Why wouldn't
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: it activate your inhibitory neurons to just stand down, right,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: And the best I could come up with this is
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: just me editorializing, I'll admit it, okay, is that those
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: new novel sounds are still following the same neural pathways
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: that say, English does. It's like the neural pathways you
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: established for languaeuage, right, and that it's not distinguishing a
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: signal a different signal coming from that same neural pathway,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: whether it's in Spanish or in English, it's still traveling
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: that same neural pathway. And the thing is so well
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: worn that the inhibitory neurons like, it's going to take
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: a lot for me to let you fire anymore because
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: you know this stuff.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: That kind of makes sense because I was reading that
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: L two acquisition as an adult. It kind of giveth
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: and receiveth the fact that you already know a language,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: because there's one school of thought that's like, well, since
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: you've done it before and you know what language is
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: and what grammar sort of is, and let's say English,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: that it might be easier to pick up as a
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: concept because you already know that stuff. And then I've
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: also read other schools of thought that says, well, no,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: it's just more difficult because you've ingrained those things, right.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: But the thing is is you can overcome that. You
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: can be like, no, no, brain, I need you to
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: pay a little more attention. This is novels stuff we're
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: trying to do. And apparently as an adult, if you
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: put adults in kids head to head in a test,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: which is hilarious strength, yeah, it always reminds me of
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Billy Madison, like smacking that blocking that shot from that
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: little kid on the playground. Yeah. If you put adults
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: and children head to head. In language acquisition, adults just
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: dust kids in almost every category. The difference is kids
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: develop a richer understanding or acquisition of language. Adults as
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: a second language are acquiring something more intellectually than you know,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: more fundamentally.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. By the way, I've never seen Billy Madison.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Oh does he block a shot on the playground of
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: a kid?
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, with them to the Ramones beat on the brat.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: It's perfect because Bill Murray does that in Rushmore. Did
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: he copy that?
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I'm pretty sure Billy Madison was out Yeah,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: long before Rushmore for sure.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Although I just saw Asteroid City and I was just
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: reading up on that and other Wes Anderson stuff. Rushmore
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: came out twenty five years ago.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Dude, oh my god, please.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Don't that crazy things like that. I know, my god.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: So we should probably go over there, like and I
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: know we talked about this a little bit, so we
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: can kind of speed through it. But the language learning
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: parts of the brain.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Oh wait, I had one more thing on inhibitory neurons.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, let's hear it.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: So there's a key trait in Alzheimer's disease, which is
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: your hippocampus or hypothalamus, one of the big h regions
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: starts going like an overdrive, like really becomes super active.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: And they long thought that it was basically your brain
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: trying to compensate for just the degradations of its functions.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: It's really trying to do whatever it can, and it
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: does that as the hypothalmus or hippocampus. They think now
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: that what's happened is your inhibitory neurons in your hippocampus
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: or hypothalamus have worn away, and that's what your brain
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: would be doing if it weren't for inhibitory neurons. They're
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: the ones that set the pace in the rhythm for
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: your brain waves from nanosecond to nanosecond, and somehow they're
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: all coordinated with one another to give you your experience
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: of consciousness because you have tons of data coming at
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: you all the time. They're the ones that decide what
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: makes it into your conscious awareness and what doesn't. How
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: how do they do that? They're neurons. There's one called
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: a basket neuron that wraps itself around other neurons so
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: it can control it more directly. And it looks like
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: a basket just wrapped around a neural cell. It's amazing stuff.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Is that a comforting thing? Or is it scary that
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: there'shions now that you can be enveloped in two ways?
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: You know? Oh no, that's scary for sure. Okay, I
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: don't like anything enveloping anything else. It's just creepy.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Even a hug from you, from your most beloved creepy.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, everybody knows being touched is creepy.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. So, like I said, we're gonna go
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: over sort of the parts of the brain that have
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: to do with language acquisition that we've talked about before.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: But they are three areas. Broca's area Wernicke's area and
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: the angular gyrs. Yeah, two out of the three. Broke
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: As area handles the creation of language. That's the stuff
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: that is really active, you know when you're the bb
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Wernicke's handles comprehension, and then the angular gyrus is a
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: bit of a hub that connects things together.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And we know that there's these distinct regions that
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: do these distinct things because you can have damage to
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: one region and the others will keep going. There's one
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: called Wernicki's aphasia, which is where your Broker's area is
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: perfectly fine. You're able to say things, you're able to
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: generate speech, you're able to talk, but the comprehension area
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: is damaged, so you're not making any sense. And I
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: think the yeah, it was the National Institutes of Health
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: gave an example of what a sentence like that would
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: sound like, are you ready?
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's hear it.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: You know that snoodle pinkred and that I want to
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: get him around and take care of him like you
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: want before. That's what like somebody would say if they
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: have that type of aphasia, and you just be like what,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: and they might not have any idea what they're trying
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: to say either because their comprehension region is damaged both ways.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: So you comprehend what you're saying, you also comprehend what
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: other people are saying, and so in that sense, it's
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: very disconnecting. Although Broke's area is disconnecting too, But apparently
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: you can still get out enough, like in a word
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: or two, that people generally know what you're saying. With
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: where Nikki's aphasia, they can have no clue what you're
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: saying at all.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that was what can happen when
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: you have a stroke sometimes.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Right, that's how it usually comes about.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's because my granddad when I was little, he
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: had a stroke and he could understand what you were saying,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and he would talk at you using you know, walking, walking, secure,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: rock and rocking and they weren't even words, they were
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: it was just stuff like that.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: But they were like enunciated and like individual like you
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: could see that these are distinct things that he's saying.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: They're just nonsensical, right, yeah.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was very frustrating for him, which is
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: an imagine.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Especially if he knew what he was trying to say and.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: People that's you know, yeah, I think that's the thing.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: It always reminds me of that that newscaster outside of
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: the Emmys or the Oscars or whatever, who had, like
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: I said later, it was a migraine, but she's like
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: a very very heavy bairtation. And I have no I've
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: never seen anybody say like, this is what she was
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: trying to say.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I have no idea like a translation. Yeah, I know,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: And at the time, I remember people are like shaming,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: people are like that she had a mini stroke and like,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: how dare you laugh? But I don't think that was the.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Case, right, No, she had good migraine.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Heavy, she had heavy Britat Barry.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Barry heavy bartation. I'm not sure that's gonna survive the
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: final edit.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure we'll see. I saw the video not
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: like sometime within the past year. Again, somehow, Yeah, it
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: holds up.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: You know what else holds up is Arthur the weather
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Man saying pretty much everywhere it's gonna be hot. And
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: then I don't.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Know if I know that one.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Oh you do too. We talked about Arthur the weather Man,
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: and then the news anchor goes, then I don't need
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: a jacket, and then he just starts laughing like maniacally.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: He's a he's a I guess, the one of the
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: weather people in Haiti, and that was his forecast pretty
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: much everywhere it's gonna be hot.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, maybe I have seen that you have now that.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: That was like two thousand and seven or something.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think when you said Haiti, it kind of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: zeroed it on it. I pulled it up from my
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Haitian file. So as far as those those language areas
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: of the brain, though, one thing that's sort of interesting
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: is two out of the three of those are on
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: the left side of the brain, on the on, yeah,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: the left hemisphere, and so for like an adult human
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: language generally is on the left, but when you're a kid,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: your brain is its firing all over. So they've done
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: fMRI scans that shows that both hemispheres are going wild
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: when kids are learning their language, which is interesting.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty cool. What also strikes me is interesting
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: is that kids learn in a general pattern that you
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: can predict people like basically make charts. Like I was saying,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: like it is reading in first grade, you know, okay, right,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: like these milestone charts. The idea that you can be like, oh,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: your kid's going to be saying this age you know,
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: eighteen months, well, you know, by twenty four months, they'll
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: be putting two words together to make a sentence or
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: something like. I just think that's really neat, and I
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: think it kind of underscores the idea that there is
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: some sort of innate ability or desire to learn languages. Yeah.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: I mean I think it's like it's it's got to
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: be evolutionary because it's a survival thing, Like you have
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: to learn that language to know how to survive the
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: world that you're born into.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: But then that supports behaviorism. You can be like, this
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: is so important that you're born with a blank slate,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: no language acquisition skills or anything, but it's so important
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: that you learn it just by observing and everything because
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: you know that this is how you're going to survive.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Or that it is innate and that you are born
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: with an ability because it's you know, passed down to
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: you through natural selection. Yeah, am I thinking of it wrong?
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: I think the only way to settle this is for
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: us to get in a skinner box and debate. Okay,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: between electric jolts.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: That sounds good. Uh, we'll take a break in a sec.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: But before we do, Like you were talking about that
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: sort of process. For kids, their vocabulary grows, you know,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: very quickly from the time they start learning up until
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: about the age of eight, and their vocabulary still grows
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: for sure, like it never stops. I still learn your
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: words all the time. But by the age of eight,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Supposedly by that time, if everything is on track, then
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: a kid has has basically mastered how to speak at
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: least and understands basic grammar and basic concepts, sometimes even
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: complex top concepts. But I think the vocabulary is the
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: outlier where like you will always be learning words.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you're just not exposed to as many.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I think there's like three hundred main words used in English,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: more than you know, like the vast majority of English
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: is just a few hundred words, a couple hundred words.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I tell you the true sort of check yourself
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: moment as a parent, as when you're kid is constantly
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: asking what a word means when they're like Ruby's ah,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: she's about to turn eight? Is well yeah, uh it
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: really because it's hard to define a lot of words.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: So as you know, you like, you know, what does
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: this mean, I'll be like, oh, well it means, well,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it means, like how to define it.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: So I'll either look it up or I'll do my
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: best and then look it up. You know what I'm saying,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: what's your score?
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: How often are you like?
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, I mean I'm It's tough, though, because some words
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: are just hard to define in words, you know what
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: I'm saying.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I know what you're saying.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I'm even having trouble putting this into words. So let's
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: take that break and we'll be right back by the way.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: I think the reason I was struggling was I was
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: trying to think of an example recently where she said
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: what does this mean? And I couldn't think of how
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: to define it. Yeah, it was like it happens all
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the time though.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: Chewing gum and tap dancing at the same time. It's
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: hard to do. You were talking while trying to recall
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: an incident at the same time.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Or it's just you know, some words are just
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: conceptually hard to really just sort of say in a
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: few words that a kid would understand, you know.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Sure, like what irony, it's a great example.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Here are some tips. Well, I guess we should talk
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: a little bit about your expectation as an adult to
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: learn L Two. There was a paper in twenty eighteen
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: that basically said, you know, up to about seventeen or eighteen,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have a much easier time. After that, it
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: is much more difficult to obtain what they call native
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: like fluency. But like we've been saying the whole time,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: it's not like it's impossible. It's just something that you're
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: gonna have to work at harder than when you would
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: have when you were sixteen or seventeen or ten.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because you're overcoming those inhibitory neurons. And apparently the
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: way you do that is by making a concerted intellectual
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: effort to stridy and learn this language.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are lots of different ways the immersion technique.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: As Ed points out, there's nothing magic about it. Immersion
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: just means you're just exposed more and more, and you're
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: repeating a foreign language more and more, in hearing a
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: foreign language more and more. So, like we said earlier,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: watching that foreign language TV show that can be a
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: nice little training tool. But one thing Ed points out
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: which I never really thought about, is the second part,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: which is input and output. Like just watching that movie
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: and saying like, oh, I'm understanding this, Like that's great,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: but you got to be able to say it. You
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: got to be able to write it. So maybe watch
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: that movie and then like write a little summation of
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the movie in that language.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty neat. You also need to know vocabulary. It's
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: just it's important.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Got to do it.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you can point to something, it's
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: almost like having broke as of phasia. You can point
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: to something generally kind of say the word. People get
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: what you mean. You can build from that and learn
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: grammatical rules over time, But the vocabulary is the basis
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: of speech for sure.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no way around it. You were going to
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: be looking and memorizing lists.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: But that's cool. I mean the key here that I
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: think people who teach languages have found in the last
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: few decades you do not do this in like any
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: kind of marathon cramming way. You break it into manageable
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: pieces lessons that are short enough and interesting enough to
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: keep the person's attention who's learning this extra language.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw another thing too, where it's easier. They
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: found in studies they do it in a non threatening environment,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: and that I knew you're gonna laugh. It sounds funny
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: because threatening means, you know, you get the idea of
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: you know, someone's like yelling at you to learn a language,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: or like.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: You're learning a language in like a dark alley.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But what that really just means is like,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: like they did the study of Malaysian kids learning English
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: and they found that they did better when it was
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: done through like children's stories rather than like grammar lessons.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I see, and like the grammar lessons would be like
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: a threatening thing. And it's probably not a great use
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: of the word, but like threatening meaning just sort of intimidating.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: I think maybe is the better word.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: No, for sure, but if you hadn't used that word,
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: this would not be the classic episode that it is.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: That's right, because I did see to go to kind
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: of tie in with that. As native speakers like when
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: they are come across someone who is maybe like in
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: their country and someone is trying to speak their language
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: very in a rudimentary way, then you will often go
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: into what's called like foreigner speak or teacher talk, and
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: it's akin to that baby talk where they will sort
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: of sort of dumb down and slow down their speech
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: a little bit and what they're really doing is making
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: a non threatening environment.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, that makes sense.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Another thing you want to do that I found very
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: difficult is mimicking the sounds that you're hearing. And apparently,
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: even if you're not getting it quite right, you're still
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: getting your mouth used to saying, making the sounds the
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: phonemes of that language, and then you'll they'll just get
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: better and better, or you'll get better and better at
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: it over time with practice. But it's not something you
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: just jump into necessarily. You can learn by imitating like
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: a kid.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Is this the same thing as like when my mom
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: would speak a little like a British person when she
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: would meet someone who was Brittish.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Oh did she do that? Is she like Madonna?
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: She did that occasionally?
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Wow?
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Or a couple of times that we didn't know a
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: lot of British people growing up. But I remember on
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: vacation a couple of times meeting people and my mom
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: was like, all of a sudden, saying words that they
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: were saying that she's never said before, And I was like,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: what's going on?
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: She's like frushing you drink Kaefner.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of trying to fit in but with the imitation,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: and I'm not trusting me. My impressions are not great.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: But I've always been able to like mimic a sound
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: pretty well since I was a kid, And so when
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: I was taking German, I always got complimented on my
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: pronunciation of my diction because I could just roll the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: R and I could make it. I could make it
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: sound like My teachers are always like, hey, listen, you're
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: not the best German speaker, but you sound fairly German
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: when you're speaking it. And other kids in there, remember,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: especially in the South, you would get these people speaking
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: German with like a Southern accent and yeah, and just
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: couldn't make that separation. And I think I always had
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a leg up because I was
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: always trying to mimic or impersonate it or do impressions
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Since I was a kid.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: Did you end up wearing one of those kind of
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: alpine caps with the feather in it in high school?
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: You take it to that extreme.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I was not the Saint Pauly girl or boy. I
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: didn't have later hosen, but a pretty good pronunciation.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: That's impressive. Nice nice work, Chuck, But.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: That kind of goes to what you're saying is just
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: like practice the sounds of that language, because the sounds
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: of that of German are can be very different than
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: English exactly.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: And then there's there's so there's so many apps out
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: there it's crazy to just learn that have figured out
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: how to break these down into like digestible sections. And
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: if you want to learn a language as an adult,
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: there's never been a better time to do it, or
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: an easier time even, I would say, but there are
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: some reasons you might want to learn a language as
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: an adult. If you're not traveling, if you don't have
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: a significant other who speaks another language, there's if you
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: stop and think about it, there's not that many reasons
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: you would think of to learn another language other than
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: to show off. But in showing off, I'm sure is
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: there one reason some people learn languages, But there's other
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: things that Studies have shown people who learn additional languages
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: exhibit more than others who are monolingual, and one of
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: them is empathy.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Apparently, Yeah, that makes sense. They've done studies and it's
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: proven if you're bilingual you are more empathetic. Then if
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: you speak one language.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, try to dispute that you can't do.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: It try it in two languages.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: That sounds to me just it just smells like one
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: of those social psychology studies for sure, But I like
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: to think that it's true.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: It makes sense. It also said supposedly that if you're bilingual,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: you're better at conflict management I said before problem solving,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: and that kind of ties in with the next on
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: the list here, cognitive abilities. There are a variety of
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: things cognitively that you supposedly perform better on if you're bilingual.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like semantic conflict tests where they show you the
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: word red but it's colored in blue when they ask
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: you what color it is, and your brain's like does
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: not compute if you're bilingual or multi lingual. Apparently you
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: score better on tests like that. It's not entirely clear why,
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: but that kind of goes to show that it supports
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: that showing off idea. People just inherently know that you're
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: smarter and superior to them if you know more languages
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: than they do.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And like you were talking about earlier with Alzheimer's,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: if you it's a workout for your brain, So any
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: anytime you were doing something so sort of intimidating and
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: drastic is learning a completely new language a little later
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: in life? You are giving your brain a real, really
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: solid workout.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Supposedly, all bilingual Alzheimer's patients had onset five years
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: later on average than monolingual Alzheimer's patients.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Man's that's reason a lot of years.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you got anything else about learning a language?
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Nine good pick.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: By the way, nice work, hiks. If you want to
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: learn more about learning a language, go learn another language
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: and you can figure it out firsthand. And since I
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: said that, of course it's time for listener mail.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this Josh ohs Chuck and apologies that
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: that's a boy.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: This sounds familiar.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah again, Hey, guys, this is from a trucker. We
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: heard from a lot of truckers, which I knew we would,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: which is great. Shure. Hey, guys, really enjoyed the trucker episode.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: I thought it was funny and ironic when you two
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: had a disagreement of the pronunciation of Steve Adore during
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: listener mail. Chuck infested not questioning Josh when he used
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: it earlier in the show, thinking it was better to
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: not appear ignorant than Josh pontificated about how's pronounced exactly
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: like it's spelled Steve Dor. But I got news for
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: you guys. It's most assuredly Steve Door. So Josh please
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: apologize to Chuck. Sorry, Chuck, no problem. Thanks for the fun, guys,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: yours knowingly.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: That's a great sign off, Steve Door.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Oh Man, I wish Tom Hubert in Seattle, Washington.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Tom Hubert's another name for a longshoreman. No is it
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: Tom Hubert? No?
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: I think it's tomay Hubert.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks Tom. We appreciate you big time, and keep
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: on trucking. Tom was a trucker, right, I don't know.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: I think it is in the industry somehow. Okay, Well,
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: if you want to be like Tom and you're in
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: some sort of industry that we've touched upon, you want
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: to correct us, that's cool. We're always open to that.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: You can be like Tom and be very nice about it.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: We appreciate those the most. But either way, you can
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: For more podcast guests my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows