Has anyone ever accidentally learnt a foreign language?

[Sarafina]

I was thinking about this the other day. I had one friend who learnt Hindi because she would spend watching Indian movies for hours on end and sometimes some of the Indian films that she would watch on YouTube didn't have any English subtitles but she still enjoyed them nonetheless. Then she had two epiphanies when she watched one film in Hindi and realised she didn't really need the subtitles and another time how she was able to understand a conversation in Hindi spoken on the bus. A couple of classmates who were fluent in Hindi being a little skeptical and they 'tested' her and she was able to accurately translate what they said and some random videos in English. But that friend was also a heritage speaker of Tamil so I don't know if that helped at all.

I also had another friend who had a really good comprehension of Mandarin because she spent most of her childhood watching Chinese films. However in her case, she is a heritage speaker of Cantonese but she can't really speak Cantonese so I don't know how much that was a help.

I had a mini-experience with Swiss German. I went on an exchange to Switzerland for some time. My school mislead me in saying the trip would be beneficial in improving my French only to stay with a host family in a town that was literally 30 minutes walk from Germany. My host family didn't speak any English except for my exchange partner who couldn't be with me for majority of the time. I spent a lot of the time with her Mum and I also did work experience in this massive Swiss adventure park so I was hearing Swiss German constantly. Even though I made absolutely zero conscious effort to learn Swiss German, I found myself picking bits and bobs until one day I was able to have a conversation with a customer entirely in Swiss German much to the surprise of my exchange partner and myself in the span of a week. From that point, she didn't need to translate back and forward between the costumers and me. I was able to understand my host Mum a lot more and have basic conversations.

I imagine that I could have ended being fluent if I stayed in that environment considering I was constantly immersed with Swiss German and I was frustrating not being able to communicate to people that I spend a lot of time interacting with. I always thought that language learning was something very consciously done and required a lot of disclipine and efforts. But in my case with Swiss German, it was an unconscious process. (Although I have since forgotten whatever Swiss German that I acquired).

I was wondering if anyone had experienced something else to this or knows any stories of similar experiences.

I know that there have been previously threads that have discussed individuals who have tried to learn a language solely through 'immersion' or 'native input' or putting a 'minimal amount of effort'. But the cases of my friends and I, we did not set out with the intention of learning x language but it was something that happened but we did not make an active or conscious decision to try to learn another language in that way. In the case of people that do experiments to learn a language by watching films or television, they are still actively and deliberately choosing to learn a foreign language following x specific method.

[pilot_2270]

I think it depends. And I think it's a bit of a red herring to wonder whether one can 'accidentally' learn a language. But it might be useful to look at heritage speakers who receive input and do, at least partially, learn the language simply by being around the language. I'm a (weak) heritage learner and I kind of understand some Korean, but I still have to study it because I rely too much on context clues to understand meaning. Despite hearing Korean all my life, little of it is comprehensible to me. But in my opinion picking up some textbooks has been incredibly helpful and illuminating.

Here's a good video on heritage speakers by linguist Maria Polinsky in which she discusses receptive bilingualism and people who 'overhear' the language and thereby acquire some of it. It accords with my own experience.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKtSAirA_T8[/youtube]

[aokoye]

There was a really interesting talk I went to at AAAL by Liss Kerstin Sylvén this year called Motivational Drives Behind Self-selected Bilingualism in Young Individuals. There's an abstract here (the link currently works but who knows if it will keep working). Essentially she discussed two Swedish sisters who she followed for at least a year (including speaking to their school teachers) who randomly came upon a video on Youtube when they were looking for cookie recipes with their mom, who speaks next to no English.

The two girls then ended up watching more and more videos in English and have English that is indistinguishable, at least in terms of speaking, to L1 English speaking children who have a neutral American accent. Their vocabulary, as tested via the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test which is meant for L1 speakers, is also through the roof (both girls tested above age level). The youngest's exposure to English is almost solely through Youtube videos and playing with her sister (their language of play is English), though I think the older one had some English at school before they found the cookie recipe. Neither of their parents speak much, if any, English and they have actively tried to get their daughters to no speak English at home (though they were unsuccessful in their attempts).

[lavengro]

I believe reineke's inadvertent learning history (come for the Fantaman cartoons, stay for the inadvertent Italian language learning) is on point.

On a probably unrelated point, I have first-hand experience that watching Peppa Pig episodes in a foreign language can readily lead to madness.

[aokoye]

On a probably unrelated point, I have first-hand experience that watching Peppa Pig episodes in a foreign language can readily lead to madness.

I'm pretty sure that isn't unique to watching Peppa Pig in a foreign language

[DaveAgain]

I had a mini-experience with Swiss German. I went on an exchange to Switzerland for some time. My school mislead me in saying the trip would be beneficial in improving my French only to stay with a host family in a town that was literally 30 minutes walk from Germany. My host family didn't speak any English except for my exchange partner who couldn't be with me for majority of the time. I spent a lot of the time with her Mum and I also did work experience in this massive Swiss adventure park so I was hearing Swiss German constantly. Even though I made absolutely zero conscious effort to learn Swiss German, I found myself picking bits and bobs until one day I was able to have a conversation with a customer entirely in Swiss German much to the surprise of my exchange partner and myself in the span of a week. From that point, she didn't need to translate back and forward between the costumers and me. I was able to understand my host Mum a lot more and have basic conversations.

I imagine that I could have ended being fluent if I stayed in that environment considering I was constantly immersed with Swiss German and I was frustrating not being able to communicate to people that I spend a lot of time interacting with. I always thought that language learning was something very consciously done and required a lot of disclipine and efforts. But in my case with Swiss German, it was an unconscious process. (Although I have since forgotten whatever Swiss German that I acquired).

How long was your stay in Switzerland?

[Sarafina]

I had a mini-experience with Swiss German. I went on an exchange to Switzerland for some time. My school mislead me in saying the trip would be beneficial in improving my French only to stay with a host family in a town that was literally 30 minutes walk from Germany. My host family didn't speak any English except for my exchange partner who couldn't be with me for majority of the time. I spent a lot of the time with her Mum and I also did work experience in this massive Swiss adventure park so I was hearing Swiss German constantly. Even though I made absolutely zero conscious effort to learn Swiss German, I found myself picking bits and bobs until one day I was able to have a conversation with a customer entirely in Swiss German much to the surprise of my exchange partner and myself in the span of a week. From that point, she didn't need to translate back and forward between the costumers and me. I was able to understand my host Mum a lot more and have basic conversations.

I imagine that I could have ended being fluent if I stayed in that environment considering I was constantly immersed with Swiss German and I was frustrating not being able to communicate to people that I spend a lot of time interacting with. I always thought that language learning was something very consciously done and required a lot of disclipine and efforts. But in my case with Swiss German, it was an unconscious process. (Although I have since forgotten whatever Swiss German that I acquired).

How long was your stay in Switzerland?

It was less than a month but after a week I was able to interact with customers without needing too much assistance/have a basic conversation.

[Ariel]

I sort of had this experience with Esperanto. While I originally started learning it out of interest, as soon as I started going to events it just became completely natural. I stopped "studying" and just spoke it with friends, read books I wanted to read, went to events...

Several years down the line I turned around and realise that I had inadvertently reached to C1 level without really trying. I know heaps of obscure vocabulary in Esperanto because I've just talked it enough with other Esperantists.

Many people have said surely it's difficult to learn because there aren't many speakers, but I find this actually makes it easier to learn. If you go to France on holiday for two weeks, and you don't know anyone, random people on the street aren't going to want to talk to you. Whereas when you go to an Esperanto event it's really easy to make new friends and you can be immersed in the language 24/7 for as long as you're there.

It's not nearly the same level, but I've picked up a lot of Italian just from having Italian students and listening carefully. One student even asked me how I spoke such good Italian and I had to tell her that I've never really studied it and didn't speak it, I could just fake it well. But that's hardly surprising give the level of similarity with Spanish and French, which I do speak.

[Axon]

So far the anecdotes seem to be describing two general situations: someone accidentally learns a language closely related to a language they know well, or a bilingual child accidentally learns a third unrelated language.

All of the accounts that I know personally fall into these frameworks: a bilingual Tagalog/English child learned excellent Japanese and Korean from tons of TV and music as a kid, a bilingual Cantonese/English child learned Mandarin from endless soap operas, an Indonesian with limited knowledge of Hakka learned to speak fluent Mandarin from pop songs, etc.

I wonder how many monolinguals have achieved this? There's an Easy Russian video where they talk with a woman who says she learned Turkish from soap operas, but she didn't mention her previous language background.

The oldest account I know of, incidentally, is from the Chinese linguist Yuen Ren Chao. His wife moved to Shanghai from somewhere else in China and made no effort to learn to speak Shanghainese since she could get by with Mandarin. Years later they were playing a "dialect switching game" and she realized she could speak fluent Shanghainese!

[sporedandroid]

So far the anecdotes seem to be describing two general situations: someone accidentally learns a language closely related to a language they know well, or a bilingual child accidentally learns a third unrelated language.

All of the accounts that I know personally fall into these frameworks: a bilingual Tagalog/English child learned excellent Japanese and Korean from tons of TV and music as a kid, a bilingual Cantonese/English child learned Mandarin from endless soap operas, an Indonesian with limited knowledge of Hakka learned to speak fluent Mandarin from pop songs, etc.

I wonder how many monolinguals have achieved this? There's an Easy Russian video where they talk with a woman who says she learned Turkish from soap operas, but she didn't mention her previous language background.

The oldest account I know of, incidentally, is from the Chinese linguist Yuen Ren Chao. His wife moved to Shanghai from somewhere else in China and made no effort to learn to speak Shanghainese since she could get by with Mandarin. Years later they were playing a "dialect switching game" and she realized she could speak fluent Shanghainese!

I also heard from a Serbian woman that her sister learnt Turkish from soap operas.