How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby blaurebell » Mon Jun 26, 2017 11:21 am

The distinction between fact and belief is actually a complicated one and whole books have been written about it, so trying to pull the different levels of confusion apart would be far beyond the scope of this discussion I believe. Nevertheless I agree with tarvos: Most people don't really know how science works. Even the scientists themselves are usually not aware of all the politics involved, because they have never studied Philosophy of Science. They are usually also completely oblivious of the real implications of their findings. In some cases they might be aware, but then exploit the naiveté of journalists and funding bodies to promote their work beyond its actual merit. And then some "sciences" aren't scientific enough in their methods strictly speaking. In the social sciences for example there are lots of published studies that would make any proper statistician cry. That's why I generally don't take quantitative studies seriously unless the stats were done by someone with a proper science background (almost never the case) and prefer qualitative studies in general. Qualitative studies in the social sciences are essentially based on anecdotal evidence, i.e. single case studies and those tend to hold more truth than most quantitative studies, because many of them simply use the wrong kind of statistical methods to analyse the data. This isn't only the case in the humanities though, one can poke holes into many studies in the sciences as well because of too small sample sizes, confirmation bias and so on. Medicine is the worst offender usually, because the studies are paid by the pharma industry and have an extreme financial interest in positive results. Completely agreed, PM! And then there is of course the big problem that 99% effective or 99.999% without serious side-effects usually means that I'm the 0.001% case, because I tend to be super unlucky in all medical things. It doesn't really matter whether 99,999 other people came out of a treatment alright, when you're the one person who now only has 20% kidney function left. Statistical approaches have their limitations, especially for people who fall outside the norm, a big flaw in medical research where the consequences usually matter much more than in other fields of research. And by the way, the preference for positive results is actually a problem in all of science in general, negative results are usually unpublishable.

tarvos wrote:(that's why Lamarckian genetics isn't used any more, but other genetic models are).


Actually, Lamarckian genetics is coming into fashion again without his name being invoked much due to the usual "politics": Epigenetics is huge right now and that's pretty Lamarckian. Of course Lamarck wasn't entirely right, but one can't say that he was completely wrong either, because development indeed influences the expression of genes. I'm sure Lamarck will get a place of honour again once Epigenetics makes its way into school biology books, although that will obviously still take a while. Another problem in the sciences: Some terms simply get a bad reputation for a while, because they don't fit current fashions. And scientists who don't follow current fashions are pretty much unemployable. Certain terms or findings of certain scientists come in and out of fashion in waves and usually a whole generation of scientists prefers one theory over another. Latour writes a lot about these movements in science. And Latour himself is of course hugely fashionable in the humanities right now precisely because he pulls the sciences down to the same level as the humanities: unreliable, dependent on fashions, heavy on interpretation and so on.

Basically we're on unstable ground wherever it comes to "knowledge". And when you keep that in mind, the whole notion of "scientific proof" becomes an unattainable ideal. In the end, knowing and believing is generally much closer together conceptually than assumed by the general population AND the scientists.
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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby aravinda » Mon Jun 26, 2017 2:32 pm

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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby aokoye » Mon Jun 26, 2017 4:06 pm

tarvos wrote:Some people here truly haven't the foggiest how science actually works (experience and anecdotes actually can and do form a part of data sets and empirical reasoning), but I don't want to get into that debate even further here when it comes to politics and so on.

Most science, even that that takes an ethnomethodological or ethnographic approach, goes far further than just stating anecdotes.
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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby blaurebell » Mon Jun 26, 2017 4:24 pm

aravinda wrote:Blaurebel, it is always a pleasure to read what you write and you are an amazing L2 learner but you don’t count . Ah, ok, I’ll count you. One. No, seriously, isn’t your “more than 20000 people” against desitrader a bit far-fetched? As this is uncharted territory for me, I will be cautious. On a German native-non-native spectrum, your 20000 Luxembourg speakers seem to sit pretty close to the native end if not right there. And by the way, without going into politics, wouldn’t Luxembourgish be considered just another dialect of Dachsprache Standard German rather than a language if there was not a separate country by the name of Luxembourg?


Technically speaking it is actually a different language because it has a standardised written form and is considered a language by a nation state. Also, most Germans can't understand Luxembourgish even if they try very hard, because the pronunciation is really rather different even from the closest German dialects. I can guess maybe about 60-70% when I hear it spoken after quite a bit of exposure, but most people don't understand anything and I don't understand much in the written form either. They use some very strange words too. Also, and this is probably the most important point: One of my Luxembourgish friends used to make mistakes in German when he was very drunk and those were not the kind of mistakes a German native would ever make, even when completely plastered. There seem to be some grammatical differences that don't appear in any other German dialect I've ever heard. But then, I'm no expert, so I can't tell you exactly what the precise differences are.

It's true that not every Luxembourgish native speaker ends up speaking with perfect German pronunciation, it actually depends where they go to study and their particular circumstances, the TV preferences of their family, and so on. But then there aren't many possibilities to study at university level in Luxembourg, so more students go abroad than stay in Luxembourg. Many go to study in Germany for their whole university education, so about 5 years and they definitely all speak perfect German. I found some numbers and about 25% of the students went to study in Germany in 2013. Even if we take 25% of Luxembourgish native speakers we're already at almost 100,000 people. I would guess that this is an underestimation though because even the guys I met in England who studied English literature spoke perfect German. I think about half is actually a pretty conservative guess.
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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby tarvos » Mon Jun 26, 2017 5:23 pm

aokoye wrote:
tarvos wrote:Some people here truly haven't the foggiest how science actually works (experience and anecdotes actually can and do form a part of data sets and empirical reasoning), but I don't want to get into that debate even further here when it comes to politics and so on.

Most science, even that that takes an ethnomethodological or ethnographic approach, goes far further than just stating anecdotes.


I totally agree, but they have their role.
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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby aokoye » Mon Jun 26, 2017 5:25 pm

I've also met a fair amount of L2 English speakers at my university who I wouldn't guess were L2 speakers. I've met even more who I could tell based on their accent were L2 speakers but function in English at well above a C2 level.
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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby aokoye » Mon Jun 26, 2017 5:26 pm

tarvos wrote:
aokoye wrote:
tarvos wrote:Some people here truly haven't the foggiest how science actually works (experience and anecdotes actually can and do form a part of data sets and empirical reasoning), but I don't want to get into that debate even further here when it comes to politics and so on.

Most science, even that that takes an ethnomethodological or ethnographic approach, goes far further than just stating anecdotes.


I totally agree, but they have their role.

Indeed - I said just that last last night (my night your morning) :)
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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby rdearman » Mon Jun 26, 2017 5:54 pm

LesRonces wrote:
aravinda wrote:

....The first response to, desitrader’s post starts with the words “ total nonsense”.....

I don't understand what people's problems with honesty is. Do we have to tiptoe around and put things nicely-nicey all the time ?

Why can't something which is total nonsense be called total nonsense any more ? Are we really that sensitive as a people ?

I for one refuse to apologise for it however blunt it may be perceived as.

If someone says it's impossible to run the 100m in less than 10 seconds i will call that total nonsense as well, because it is.

It is possible to disagree with someone without being rude or blunt. Yes, we do have to be nicely-nicey all the time because it is in the rules and because manners and courtesies, customs and conventions are there to make life more amenable and relationships more bearable in difficult times. At the very heart of good manners is consideration for others. Good manners are based on an authentic concern for the respect of others.

We should try to be gracious when someone could feel embarrassed by our statements. Graciousness is the art of being kind and gentle and since we're all here because we want to learn to speak with others, I think it would be a good idea to always try to be gracious and nice regardless if the conversation is in real-life, or online forums. There is an Irish saying; "Manners cost nothing".
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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby Bluepaint » Mon Jun 26, 2017 6:04 pm

Let me put this more simply: you can follow the rules or you can choose not to participate.
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Re: How many years does it take to learn the second language as your native?

Postby aaleks » Mon Jun 26, 2017 6:09 pm

aravinda wrote:the “secret” dream of many language learners (myself included) of passing as a native speaker in the target language some (distant) day.

I don't have such dream and I don't remember if I ever have. Of course, I want to learn my TL to a decent level, but a native-like level it's a bit different thing. But I disagree with desitrader's claim anyway. He said that:
desitrader wrote:Reading / writing like a native: Entirely possible.

Listening / speaking like a native: Impossible.


Well, I guess I myself am another anecdotal evidence which proving he is wrong on both counts: I doubt that I ever will be able to write as a native (English) and at the same time I believe that my listening skill is good enough to understand most of English media. So in my case it should look like this: reading and listening - 'entirely possible' and writing and speaking - 'impossible' :)

But I believe that other people, more talented or more persistent than I am, can reach that very high level of language proficiency. I think that only "impossible" thing here could be speaking, since many people can't get rid of an accent completely.
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