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DanArmak comments on Don't Think Too Hard. - Less Wrong
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Comments (36)
Did you refer to a child learning their first language? That's an unfair comparison. With no language to think in, a child is much less intelligent and capable than any adult. It's not surprising that adults can use verbal reasoning/thinking skills, and the similarities with the languages they already know, to learn a new language much faster than a child would.
The comparison should be made between adults and children fluent in one language (so at least 6-8 years old) learning a second one. In this situation I expect high variation among adults, some being much better than the typical child, and some much worse.
Well, it might be unfair in some contexts, but the point was that since children don't learn their first language faster than adults learn their second, we can't really draw any conclusions from language learning about the overall speed of learning of children.
If we knew whether older children learn their second language faster than adults, then we might draw conclusions.
We know that. (They don't. But earlier exposure to a second language does predict that they will continue to higher levels of proficiency.)
That's very enlightening, thanks. Then the case of Russian immigrants in Israel may indeed be due to insufficient pressure to learn and other factors.