It would be so fucking funny if this backfired so spectacularly that it resulted in the total collapse of the "China bad" narrative in the US.
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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chapotraphouse
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No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
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It would be nice. More probably, it also gets banned before that happens.
Making a top level comment cause lots of people in this thread just spreading blatant misinformation regarding the ability to learn languages as a child versus an adult. No investigation no right to speak.
https://www.nature.com/articles/1301553
Unique childhood plasticity has been demonstrated particularly in the areas of vision, audition, motor, and language abilities
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10149040
The ability to learn certain aspects of language, however, is limited after early childhood. This sensitive period for language learning makes it an important model system for the study of developmental plasticity in children.
Another clarifying example is when people who immigrate to a new country at different ages attempt to learn a second language. When the amount of experience with the new language is held constant, there is an advantage to being younger than 8 years old for acquiring the second language to proficiency.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2920538/
Test performance was linearly related to age of arrival up to puberty; after puberty, performance was low but highly variable and unrelated to age of arrival. This age effect was shown not to be an inadvertent result of differences in amount of experience with English, motivation, self-consciousness, or American identification. The effect also appeared on every grammatical structure tested, although the structures varied markedly in the degree to which they were well mastered by later learners. The results support the conclusion that a critical period for language acquisition extends its effects to second language acquisition.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/427544/
Synaptic density increased during infancy, reaching a maximum at age 1--2 years which was about 50% above the adult mean.
I’m not disputing any of this, however a lot of this is balanced by the fact that babies have to learn how to learn and what language is. You do not.
If you moved to China, and your full time job was learning Chinese, and also your household chores were taken care of so you could focus on learning Chinese, by the end of the year you would be better at Chinese than a 3 or 4 year old born in China. You have a base understanding of how language works and don’t have to relearn the existence of grammar and sentence structure.
If you and your 7 year old child were both put in that environment, the child would probably learn faster than you, I won’t dispute that. But the larger limiting factor is time spent.
Yeah sorry if it felt like I was jumping on you, the only comment that bothered me enough to do this was the .ml user calling Saeculum a liar/making excuses
3 months is enough to learn enough to bully fellow gwailos. Set realistic goals. ;D
One of the first things I was served upon opening the app was a Frieran meme. China really pointed at me and said "weeb".
Whole lotta folks are gonna find out they have more in common with the FOREIGN ADVERSARY™'s citizens than with their own government
I have a Chinese buddy who studied in America and now lives in Hong Kong. He tried to teach me how to pronounce stuff in Mandarin and oh my god its so hard.
My chinese ex trying to teach me to say hello:
ex: "say 'ni hao'"
me: "ni hao"
ex: "no, more like, 'ni hao'"
me: "ni hao"
ex: "almost, try again: 'ni hao'"
me: "ni hao"
ex: "great! perfect!"
me: "ni hao"
ex: "oh no not at all like that"
and so on
which iss all to say I really respect people who are able to learn languages as adults. it is difficult!
"how hard can it be if babies do it" is usually my mantra when I try learning languages
It’s mostly the pronunciations and teaching my tongue, palate, throat, etc. new ways to make sounds. For instance, I can’t roll my Rs either and I know a fair bit of Spanish.
As I understand it, babies are initially able to produce and hear differences in basically any sound, but will in due time come to hone in on whichever sounds are used in the language they're being raised with. Listening for only a few sounds and remembering how to produce only a few sounds reduces the cognitive load, basically.
I'm able to make a pretty broad range of sounds, but I'm not sure how exactly I gained this ability. A part of it was certainly taking the time to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet and actually consciously learning the mechanics of making different sounds, but another part of it I think was just always enjoying making weird mouth noises, beatboxing, mimicking things, or doing silly voices or accents. Growing up with two languages probably also helped, but I'm told I have a "slight foreign accent" in Norwegian, so the exact extent of that help is a bit questionable.
Anybody, in any case, is able to learn to make new sounds and distinctions. It's probably easier than you might think, although it also might take some perseverance for some people, and you might never get perfect native-like pronunciation — but why should you want that, anyways? Own your accent, I say.
I think the problem with learning new sounds is oftentimes just having bad teachers, though. For instance rolled R's actually are fairly common (non-phonemically) in American English, especially in "what'd" or sometimes other contractions ending in -t'd: /wətəd/ → /wəɾəd/ → /wəɾəɾ‿/ → /wəɾɾ‿/ → /wər‿/ — this coalescence of /ɾəɾ/ to /r/ is considered to be more widespread in African American Vernacular English compared to other forms of American English, though. Like if you've seen that viral video "I've Never Seen Cops Run This Fast" you probably noticed how the cameraman very prominently says "outta there" as "ou[r]ere" and "speed it up" as "spee[r]up".
I summon our resident linguist to explain this in a much better way than I ever could
WHO DARES WAKE ME FROM MY MORTAL SLUMBER‽
Babies have special brain shit going on the helps them learn super fast. My ancient and decaying brain matter is no match.
Nah babies are just able to dedicate most of their waking time to learning language, adults with jobs and responsibilities aren’t.
If we could lock you in a room for a year and all you could do was sleep and practice Chinese, you’d be way better at it at the end of a year than a baby after 1 year.
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I don't know fam, most adults with very directed study/practice can become fully fluent in a language in about a year. Babies take like whaat, 5 or 6 years before they start to become regularly coherent? And their vocabulary still sucks for years after that.
You have the advantage of already knowing way more than babies so you've got more to build on.
3-5 years for the first language to a general level of fluency. The impressive part is that they can generally pick up fluency in a second language in a year with minimal instruction, and they can learn multiple at the same time.
Unless it's the only thing you're doing, you're not going to be fluent in a second language as an adult after a year of study.
On a chemical level, children's brains work differently to adults when they're learning, it's not a question of effort.
You are correct, don’t listen to the user telling you this is just a lie/excuse.
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i am worse at many things than babies
im still undefeated pants shitting champion though 
for now
If even .01% of the Americans joking about learning Chinese actually dip a toe into the language, culture, and (god forbid) history… mega self own from the us state
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