Is there a critical period for learning a language?

If you don't learn a language as a child, have you missed the boat?

I'm going to talk about that with reference to the

critical period hypothesis.

There is this hypothesis that says there is a critical period where it's easier for

us, or we will easily learn a language.

In doing some research, it's not entirely clear whether this

applies to your first language.

In other words, if you grow up, uh, as a feral child and have no access to

a language, have you missed the boat?

Will you then never ever be able to learn the language?

And there's some evidence that this is the case.

Or does this critical period hypothesis apply to learning a second language?

And there, there's a lot of, uh, debate amongst linguists, uh,

people who study linguistics.

So I want to kind of try to simplify what I understand of

this discussion, partly because I don't understand all the details.

I'm going to leave, uh, you know, links to some of the studies that

I've looked at on this subject.

But the questions that arise in my mind are, first of all, how

long is this critical period?

If in fact there is a period where we are better able to learn languages,

whether it be our first language.

Or are, uh, you know, a second or other languages.

How long is this period?

I had learned that it was like before the age of five or six.

Some people say, no, it's up to puberty.

And now there's a study out of MIT where they analyzed over half a

million people over a long period of time and found that this period

where it is easier to learn languages could be up to the age of 17 or 18.

So there's some dispute as to how long this period is.

There are some arguments about.

Lateralization in the brain or some other explanations based on the evolution of

our brains, which would account for the fact that it's easier at an early stage.

Obviously, the less information or the less language specific information

is in the brain, the greater the number of options, it seems to

me, logically, and therefore it's easier to acquire new languages.

Uh, you know, because later on we kind of become stuck in a certain pattern

and therefore we're less open to or less flexible when it comes to acquiring

new sounds and so forth and so on.

But that's just, uh, my sort of assumptions.

So if we say, okay, there is a period up to the age of 18.

So right off the bat, we can say, if you are an anxious parent that wants to

make sure that your child learns another language, you don't have to put them

into a Chinese preschool in order to make sure that they can eventually learn.

They will have an opportunity to learn it later on.

My impression is that children learn more quickly, but that's just an observation.

If this, uh, study of, uh, hundreds of thousands of people indicated

that that period lasts up until the age of 18, then we needn't be so

concerned about giving early exposure.

to kids.

One thing I did come across in my research was that the brain likes to be

economical with the use of resources.

And some, uh, you know, brain resources will atrophy.

If you are able to learn a second language at an early age and continue

learning those other languages.

languages, you will sort of develop theoretically, at least, the resources

you need to learn other languages.

On the other hand, I was once at a conference, a language conference in

Montreal, Longfest, and I asked 600 polyglots, how many of them grew up

in a bilingual or multilingual family and very few put up their hands.

So you had a bunch of very accomplished polyglots who grew

up in a monolingual environment.

So there seems to be a lot of sort of ambiguity or this is true, but that

is also true on this whole subject of the critical Period hypothesis.

A second issue is we're saying that in order to acquire native like proficiency

in a language, you had better start early, whether it be before puberty

or before the age of 18, but then what do we mean by native like proficiency?

I've spoken before about how this is to some extent, a futile goal

that very few people achieve it.

But how do we define it?

How do we define how proficient we need to be in, in a language?

And, and what are the skills?

Like, obviously there's a differential.

I think.

By and large, younger children tend to be better at acquiring the sounds of a second

language, pronouncing the language well.

How much of that is because the brain is better at learning it?

How much of that is because the child is less inhibited

in imitating the new language?

I don't know.

I know that, and I've mentioned this several times before, my father had a

Who is originally from Czechoslovakia, had a vast vocabulary in English,

was completely competent in English, lived in Canada for 30 years,

but he never improved his accent.

His pronunciation improved in the sense of getting closer

to native like pronunciation.

He wasn't concerned.

He was happy with the way he spoke.

So there is an issue there of motivation.

How motivated are we to get closer to the native like pronunciation?

How important is it to be closer to a native like pronunciation?

So there's again, a lot of fuzziness, ambiguity.

If you want to become native like, but is it even possible to

become native like, then you need to start before a certain age.

Another point I'd like to look at is the factors that affect

our success as, say, a native.

Later language learners, if in fact, we can only become proficient in a

second language before the age of 17.

Well, yeah, I had French in school, but it wasn't very intense.

I really only got very motivated to learn languages after the age of 19.

And most of the languages that I have acquired, Japanese, Chinese, even

French, and not to mention Spanish and other languages, I have learned them

as an adult, and I know many people who have learned languages, As adults and

I've met people in places like that We don't associate with sort of centers of

polyglotism like china and japan where I've met students who were tremendously

fluent in english or japanese or french And hadn't lived in those countries.

So there are always exceptions to the rule Well, if there are exceptions

if there are people Who are able to achieve a high degree of proficiency

well past that, you know, pre puberty or pre, you know, the teens, then that

suggests that theory of, you know, critical period, you know, acquisition

may not be a hard and fast rule.

There's a lot of ambiguity there.

So obviously the things that affect success as a language learner, whether as

a child or as a, as an adult or after your teens are such things as your attitude,

your opportunity to use the language and also, and I think I rarely see this

measured in the various studies of, of proficiency, how much have you read, how

much have you listened in the language?

These are things that we measure at LingQ and, and we think I

consider to be extremely important.

How many hours of listening?

How many words have you read?

Are you motivated?

So the amount of words, the amount of hours of listening, these relate to time.

And I always say that there are two issues in language learning.

Your attitude, which encompasses your interest, your motivation, your lack

of inhibition, liking the language, and confidence, and also the time you put in.

And time is measured in time, perhaps, but also in the number of words you've read,

the number of hours you have listened.

And I've seen very few studies, That actually look at individuals, try

to, it's difficult to measure their attitude, but you can measure how

much actual input they have been exposed to in their target language.

Of course, when doing research on this question of the critical

period hypothesis, inevitably Noam Chomsky's universal grammar shows

up as, as part of an explanation.

And again, the question comes up, well, if, if we assume there is a, such a

thing as a language acquisition question.

You know, device in our brains, then does this only work for the

L1, our native language, or does it also, is it available to people who

want to learn a second language?

And there seems to be some dispute there, but the suggestion seems to be

that, uh, for those people who believe in the universal grammar, which I

don't, that, uh, the later learners, would not be able to access this, uh,

universal grammar learning, you know, language learning device, but would,

and the explanation was, would have to require, rely on explicit instruction.

But why is that a given?

I think in my own case, I take very little explicit instruction in a language and

I rely on my ability through exposure.

to get used to the patterns of the language.

And the skill then is the skill in identifying patterns.

Now this skill can vary from, and it does vary.

There are tests where they measure the ability of people to identify

patterns, patterns in shapes or patterns in whatever it might be.

And if we are better at identifying patterns, that might mean that we

are better at learning languages.

All of which we can do without reference to the universal grammar,

like, like a language specific pattern recognizing ability.

Just the general ability to recognize patterns is enough.

And if we have the right attitude, put in enough time, maybe we can

avoid a lot of explicit instruction.

There is a tremendous bias in a lot of the sort of linguistic research to explicit

instruction, as opposed to measuring the amount of exposure language learners have.

Now, explicit instruction may not be necessary, but, you know,

your attitude implies explicit desire to learn the language.

Obviously, a child may not have that explicit desire to learn the

language because the child will be naturally exposed to the language and

absorb it, whereas the later learner would have to have a stronger, you

know, desire To learn the language.

So the final point is, does it really matter?

And I end up feeling like it doesn't matter if we are better at learning

languages at age eight or 18 or 15 or 25, we can still learn, we may end up

pronouncing better than some people or less well than some people, or with a

larger vocabulary or better comprehension.

Does any of this really matter?

Obviously.

It can matter if you would like to give your child a better chance

of learning other languages.

I would say expose them to other languages, whether they learn that

language or not, I'm quite convinced.

The effort, the process of trying to learn another language as a child enables

your brain, and there was some suggestion of this in the research that I did,

gives you the resources to do better.

You might be more open, more flexible in terms of acquiring

new sounds and new structures.

So it can't be a bad thing to do, to encourage your child to learn languages.

But if that opportunity is not there, it doesn't mean that That your child will

never learn if your child becomes a very, or if you as an individual become very

interested for any number of reasons in a given language, you shouldn't have

the attitude that, oh, I'm too old, I missed my, you know, optimum period of

learning the language or, you know, Uh, or maybe you'll end up with an accent.

And so what the goal is to communicate, to understand, to express yourself.

And all of these things can be done without native like pronunciation,

even with non native like structures.

And I've mentioned before that even very fluent speakers of say English Who

might be Swedish or German, they will betray somewhere, structures, patterns

that come from their native language or from another language that they

know, and nobody is bothered by this.

It doesn't inhibit communication.

So I say critical period hypothesis, maybe, but in the long

run, it doesn't really matter.

I think the key in all of this is to enjoy the process, which is something that I

have referred to in previous videos of mine, and you may want to check them out.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.