[Vision2020] Ques. For you: What is Most Important in a Relationship?

[Kenneth Marcy]

On 7/20/2012 6:42 AM, Donovan Arnold wrote:
<[snip]>
> PS. Learning another language is an excellent idea, but has to be done 
> at a very young age. Otherwise it is just memorization and the words 
> don't have the emotionial conncetion they are intented to, they are 
> simply functionial. I can learn Spanish written but not spoken because 
> I cannot hear certain sounds used in the Spanish language that are not 
> in the English language. After a certain age, your brain reassignes 
> the portions of the brain that were dedeicated to hearing and 
> speaking certain sounds for other functions if not used in childhood.

Language learning can be done at any age. It's true that younger people 
may have more facile learning abilities because of less-developed 
language centers in their brains and more energy to do everything, 
language learning included. But that does not imply that adults can not, 
especially via well-developed methods, learn languages to as effective 
and as satisfactory levels of communicative ability as are desired.

Methods used may vary somewhat depending on personal preferences, but 
generally a method that follows natural language acquisition patterns 
will work best if followed consistently. The natural method consists of 
listening to hear all of the sounds used within a language, whether or 
not those sounds have been previously learned for another or native 
tongue, and then reproducing those sounds through speaking words, 
phrases, sentences, and conversations with those sounds as a part of the 
speech. After a learner can reproduce all of a language's sounds, and 
can converse at a elementary level with a modest vocabulary, then 
vocabulary building can be emphasized through readings and more advanced 
conversations. After some reasonable level of oral and verbal fluency 
has been achieved, then the student can start learning more about the 
language by beginning and practicing writing in that language.

There is an active, and growing, natural language learning community on 
the Internet, especially YouTube, comprised of individuals who are 
actively pursuing multilingual capabilities for themselves. By way of 
introduction, I will mention just a couple of web sites for people 
interested in learning languages, multilingualism, polyglottery, and 
polyliteracy:

The How to Learn Any Language site, including various language forums:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/index.html

The Foreign Language Expertise site, created and maintained by Dr. 
Alexander Arguelles:

http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/


Ken
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