I find it amazing that if a child is brought up in a community/country different from the origin of the child, the child is still able to pick up and speak their language fluently. Our ability, as humans, to imitate and communicate is incredibly complex regardless of where we are from.
So my question is, is there a language that cannot be spoken like this? One which only people with a certain genetic advantage can speak fluently during upbringing.
Of course anyone can learn a language by putting effort into it. My question is only for one learnt during upbringing (native language).
(Not sure why my responses are downvoted. I’m a non-native English speaker. Sorry if I didn’t communicate something properly. It’s just a scientific curiosity.)
Anyone can eventually speak any language fluently with enough practice.
There isn’t really anything a human cannot learn simply because of where they grew up, its not limited to language only.
Sorry that is not what I’m asking. Of course anyone can learn skills. But there are certain mannerisms that are imprinted on us because we are from a certain community.
My question is if there exists a language that let’s say among two children (one from the same country, but one from a different one) going through the same upbringing, but the non-native child cannot be as fluent as the native child ?
The human vocal tract is about the same across ethnic groups, if that is what you are asking.
May be. Would things like facial structure impact the fluency of the language ?
But I’m wondering more about communities than ethnicity. For example, my native language is difficult (not impossible) for someone brought up outside the community to speak.
My question is are there languages that one cannot be fluent in even if you are brought up in that community.
I guess there can be cultural differences that are reflected in language but I still don’t understand quite what you are asking. Do you mean same locality but different culture?
No. Non native. But brought up in the same culture. I guess it didn’t make a difference then. Chatgpt gave a weird response, so I thought I’d check with people with more knowledge about this.
Protip: Don’t rely on ChatGPT for any knowledge. Much less esoteric questions like this.
I know. It is useful for laying some context though
Usually, difficulty to learn a language is caused by:
- not speaking a similar language. Because then there’s less features to correctly transfer from your other languages to the target language.
- relative lack of resources available to learn said language. Including native speakers willing to chat with you in the language, instead of shifting to a common language.
- how much time and effort you spend productively interacting with that language, and how necessary it is for you to learn it.
Another thing, relevant in the light of other comments: language is mostly what’s inside our heads, not our mouths. Small differences in the vocal tract can affect a bit our pronunciation - like the pitch, or ability to pronounce specific sounds, but in the big picture they’re mostly irrelevant and “abstracted out” - it’s like when you’re writing, it doesn’t stop being written [Mandarin|English|Spanish|etc.] because you used a red pen instead of a black pen, you know?
No. Kids work out language from exposure. Baby babbling is them working out how to make the sounds they hear. Sounds which don’t exist in a first language are hard for adults to learn but any child brought up hearing those sounds will be able to make them and, if they were exposed for long enough in early childhood, they will know how they go together to produce meaningful speech.
Young children brought up with two or more languages will take a little longer to reach various speech milestones than their monolingual peers because they have a much more complicated puzzle to solve. But they’ll end up sounding like a native speaker in both languages.
Outside of a physiological abnormality, there is zero reason any human would be incapable of being entirely and completely fluent in any particular language.
The only potential differences could be: accent or maybe sentence structure. However if both were raised from talking age in the same place where birth origins are different those differences would never exist. Those potential differences are only for those who may learn it later in life. Even then, only a maybe.
I’m getting some serious eugenics vibes from the OP
I did see some comments by OP, whether feigning ignorance or truly unaware, I wanted to make a comment that was unambiguous and very clear.
It seemed OP was unhappy with some of the other responses or felt like it wasn’t entirely answered so this way hopefully there is no confusion that the concept they were asking about just does not exist. If it was ignorance, hopefully they learned and move on. If not, well that’s a choice they made and there’s nothing us internet people can do beside answer honestly and condemn poor viewpoints like eugenics.
Ok. I thought I’ll clear things up. Yes I had received the relevant responses and I’m happy with the answers I got.
But I’d like to bring attention to comments like yours or the one prior to it, because I see such comments throughout lemmy. It assumes the worst from someone’s post/comment and gives a negative spin for the discussion.
My question was genuine and if you must know it arose from my curiosity that if there will be a language that I cannot be 100% fluent in even if I try. Thought I’d ask with others.
But now I’m wondering if any of my comments were offensive and reading through them again I don’t think I was (hence this response). Again since I’m a non native English speaker, I apologise if it were.
But the whole discussion has moved away from the original point. I had never heard of Eugenics, which from the little I read now, are deeply disturbing concepts. I’m sad that my question could be compared to it.
The point is to ask stupid questions here. And mine was stupid enough. I got my responses from others. But please stop this trend of putting words into people’s mouths and negativistic spin on things. It doesn’t brew a healthy community. People will fear asking questions here (or anywhere in Lemmy).
But please stop this trend of putting words into people’s mouths and negativistic spin on things.
No.
Google “sealioning” and “JAQing off” to understand why not.
I see people accusing others of sealiening in order to dismiss their argument more often than actual sealioning.
If you don’t do your homework and you ask in bad faith, you don’t deserve explanations.
Well if you can’t tell the difference. There is nothing more to say.
Hope you can look at the world more positively and leave the rest of us alone.
Hope you can look at the world more positively and leave the rest of us alone.
Hope one day you wake up, get out of your fantasy world and join us in the real one. Making it better requires looking clearly at reality, not wearing pink colored glasses.
Less dreaming, less prayer, and more reality.
You seem to misunderstand what I said and why I said it. In my response to the other person which is what you are responding to, I simply was giving you a concise answer based on your other replies.
I made no claims as to your intentions and offered only clarity. My response was specifically that. If you did not know here is clarity, hopefully you learned and moved on. Otherwise there is not much internet strangers can do. I did specifically mentioned I did not know your intentions which is why I wrote it, for clarity.
If you felt my response was negative than you failed to understand what I wrote and there’s nothing I can really do about that
You might get some personal variation based on cultural influences and the like too, but it isn’t significant enough to affect fluency.
Like saying like a lot.
Although I am a little bit curious about how accents might work if someone’s first language was something completely different to their second. If they spoke a click language, for example, would that carry over? Or the inverse.
If they spoke a click language, for example, would that carry over? Or the inverse.
Clicks are simply a category of consonants. They “carry over” as much as any other consonant. That is:
- if your L1 doesn’t have clicks and your L2+ does, you’ll probably have a hard time pronouncing them
- if your L1 has clicks and your L2+ doesn’t have anything similar, you simply don’t use them.
It would be theoretically possible that, if your L1 has clicks and your L2 has a consonant that your L1 doesn’t, you end replacing some consonant there with a specific click. In practice I wouldn’t count on that.
Are you trying to recreate the race theory ? There isn’t enough difference among human ethnicity to have sounds that you can’t do biologically.
However, as brain plasticity diminish with age, there is tons of sounds that non native can pronounce, look at French trying to speak english and struggling to get the th sound correctly Ze Ding is Tat or English speakers unable to get the french u sound properly Excousez moi. And this is for 2 countries which are pretty close geographically and culturally. I let you imagine what happen when an European try to learn an east-asian or sub saharian language, especially as an adult. IT’s not about genetic, just about not being used to these sounds
No idea what race theory is. But what you say does makes sense. As an adult, yes it is mostly dependent on not being used to. But as another user pointed out, there are some languages with clicks in it that are difficult for someone outside the community to speak.
That’s just another sound. Each language only uses a subset of the full range of sounds the human mouth is capable of making. For example, Japanese doesn’t have an L sound, so people who learned Japanese as their mother tongue and then try to learn English as an adult will have trouble making the L sound. That’s not to say they are incapable of making it, but they are not used to making that sound with the speed and ease needed to use it as a normal part of speech. This can be learned with practice, but it takes time.
Oh no I didn’t mean incapacity. I meant fluency. One could be mildly or extremely fluent. Was wondering if origin makes a difference.
No. If there is any truth in your “a child with X ancestry raised in Y land, can learn X easily” it’s only because their parents probably still use their native language.
Exposure teaches language, not genetics.
All else being equal, I’m pretty sure it has no effect.
I’ve read that languages making heavy use of clicks can be harder for people with certain facial structures.
Ah interesting
Managed to find where I read about it https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-click-speech-is-rare/
Great thanks
I honestly do not think that such a language exists, regardless of the moral implications of existing or not, and even taking into account spoken and signed languages.
