[lojban] Re: Fwd: lojban and raising a child bi-lingual

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Monday 14 September 2009 21:27:10 MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com wrote:
> In a message dated 9/14/2009 16:42:46 Eastern Daylight Time,
>
> selckiku@gmail.com writes:
> > Learning a language is difficult for anyone, even a child.
>
> Hardly.  Children learn a language with no effort at all.

As one who remembers (though faintly, it was over 40 years ago) learning 
languages as a child, I beg to differ. I remember being puzzled by the 
English genitive plural, which in most nouns sounds like the genitive 
singular (speakers of South Slavic languages probably have the same problem). 
I remember struggling with hard sound sequences like [ɲw] in "baignoire". I 
remember repeating tongue twisters over and over again until I got them right 
(which I still do, inventing new ones as well).

"One reason that small children are slower at learning languages than 
teenagers and adults is that they still haven’t learned to segment the world 
yet. They have to learn which person is mama and which is dada; where the arm 
ends and the hand begins; what shade is blue, what shade is green and what is 
in between; and thousands of other things. This is a huge task that people 
don’t have to repeat when learning a second language after they’re a bit 
older." -http://czechmatediary.com/2009/01/15/even-experts-dont-know-how-children-learn-languages/

Pierre


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