Hell, isn't there something about how not learning language, after a certain point, means you never will? As in, at all?
Indeed there is. Hooray for my required "Intro to Linguistics" class! (And for help from linguistics type friends because for the life of me I couldn't remember the exact term.) It's called the "critical age threshold for language acquisition" or just "critical age" for short. Basically, around age 12 your brain starts changing how it learns things. Because of how it changes, language acquisition past this point, aside from some very basic concepts, becomes impossible.
If you want information on the best (and most famous) case study, look up Genie the wild child on your search engine of choice.
no subject
Date: 13 Oct 2006 02:43 am (UTC)Indeed there is. Hooray for my required "Intro to Linguistics" class! (And for help from linguistics type friends because for the life of me I couldn't remember the exact term.) It's called the "critical age threshold for language acquisition" or just "critical age" for short. Basically, around age 12 your brain starts changing how it learns things. Because of how it changes, language acquisition past this point, aside from some very basic concepts, becomes impossible.
If you want information on the best (and most famous) case study, look up Genie the wild child on your search engine of choice.