1032. First, we explore why children pick up languages faster than adults. You’ll learn about the critical period when young brains are best at learning, why kids often learn two languages at once, and what makes it harder for adults. Then, we tackle the grammar rules for using singular and plural verbs with band names and team names, comparing American and British usage.
1032. First, we explore why children pick up languages faster than adults. You’ll learn about the critical period when young brains are best at learning, why kids often learn two languages at once, and what makes it harder for adults. Then, we tackle the grammar rules for using singular and plural verbs with band names and team names, comparing American and British usage.
The "language learning" segment is by Syelle Graves, who has a PhD in linguistics and is the assistant director of ILETC (the Institute for Language Education in Transcultural Context) at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research was recently published in the Journal of Pragmatics and American Speech. You can find her at www.syellegraves.com.
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, we're going to talk about why it's easier for children to learn a new language and whether band names and team names are singular or plural.
This first segment is by Syelle Graves, who has a PhD in linguistics and is the assistant director of ILETC (the Institute for Language Education in Transcultural Context) at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research was recently published in the "Journal of Pragmatics and American Speech." You can find her at www.syellegraves.com.
First we're going to talk about language fluency, and how people learn language. Linguists [actually] use the verb "acquire" instead of "learn" because it better describes the way babies speak their first language: largely without any active or conscious effort, which is very different from the way an adult studies a language. Many of these facts about language may seem familiar to those of you with children or who speak — or used to speak — more than one language. As we describe language acquisition, remember that this process applies to any human language: there is a universal process in language acquisition, no matter how different languages sound on the surface.
by Syelle Graves.
Although most of us know how challenging it can be to learn a second language in high school, most people don’t realize how remarkable that makes the speed and effortlessness with which children acquire their first language. It is also a common misconception that children are taught how to speak. Most scholars agree that even imitation plays only a limited role, while the baby’s brain, which comes equipped with specialized areas like Wernicke’s and Broca’s, plays a large role.
It is also surprising to learn that parents actually correct children very little, and even when they do, it has little effect. Studies show that while parents may correct children when they say inaccurate things, like calling someone by the wrong name, they seldom correct children when they make grammatical errors (like “I eated that” or “I have two foots”). Many of us find these temporary mistakes too cute to correct, and further, many parents who try to correct grammar in young children notice that their children seem impervious to the corrections, and continue to make the minor error until they are ready to produce the correct term themselves.
When psycholinguists say “corrections,” by the way, they aren’t referring to correcting stylistic rules like “never end a sentence with a preposition”; they are referring to the remarkable unconscious rules that all native speakers of every language produce with no effort. Either way, one thing is for sure: children who are never corrected reach language fluency at the same time as the children of parents who try to correct them.
The reason adults don't “absorb” language by exposure alone is because of something that psycholinguists call the “critical period” of language development. Although it varies from person to person, adolescence is a good approximate cutoff, in that from as young as ten, and as late as the mid-teens, we lose our ability to acquire language without instruction the way children do. This is related to plasticity of the brain as it develops. Remarkably, although the spectrum of the critical period ends around adolescence, monolingual children generally complete the majority of the acquisition process by the age of three! There is always more vocabulary to acquire throughout childhood and life, but syntax (the order in which our words appear automatically when we speak, and in which they must do so in order to make sense to others) and other basic elements of linguistic grammar like phonology (sound patterns) and morphology (word components) are produced with ease before the end of preschool and toilet training! This is especially fast when you consider how complex and intricate human languages are. When children are exposed to a second language at four or five, they may still acquire it fluently if they get enough exposure to it, because that critical period of language development is still open.
Adults have a very different experience. Most adults can learn a second language, but it requires great effort, work, time, energy, and memorization. Plus, some elements, like vocabulary or native-like pronunciation, may never be fully achieved by adult language-learners (adult acquisition is more like learning, so linguists may use that verb more to describe second language acquisition). For example, many English speakers learning Spanish have trouble rolling the double R, and Hindi has a D sound with a puff of air that many English speakers can't even hear, let alone pronounce (click on this UCLA link to see if you can!). You may speak another language at a rudimentary level, but never encounter thousands of low-frequency words like "appendix" or "anesthesia," and hopefully, you’ll never have an urgent need to know those words while traveling.
A fascinating side note about the fact that all children universally acquire the language spoken to them at the same rate is that there is no such thing as a “simple” or “complicated” or an “easy-” or “difficult-to-learn” language. Some languages have more complex syntax, but very simple phonology. Others may have complex phonology, with many different sounds, but a smaller vocabulary, so there are slightly fewer words to learn.
People who speak two or more languages fall on a spectrum of linguistic knowledge. One of the most common misconceptions is that bilingual adults are “balanced”—equally fluent in both—but this is rarely the case. A lot of adults who learned a second language later in life, and speak it very, very well, still recognize that they have an accent in the second language, or that they may not know every idiom or word like a native speaker does. They also may describe always speaking their first language fluently, no matter how many years go by. Conversely, some adults report that speaking that second language for many years can subtly but adversely affect their first language; perhaps when they travel to their home countries, they discover that they have lost some words or newer cultural references, and that they even pronounce that first language a bit stiffly, although this accent may disappear after a few days of being with family and native-speaker friends. We often hear language learners make mistakes that sound like their own first language, but believe it or not, second languages can influence our first language, too.
Sometimes people may exaggerate their language abilities, and claim to have acquired a second language in adulthood with fluency, when in fact they are only able to communicate in limited circumstances, such as when asking for directions or ordering food. This is still a form of bilingualism, but not as balanced as many imagine. Some scholars call them “situational bilinguals.”
Again, there is no such thing as an inherently inferior or complicated or simple language. Because we speak language every day, and don’t remember learning our first language, it is difficult to reflect scientifically on how language actually works. So, people who say “x language was totally ‘easy’ for me to learn as an adult” may be less fluent than they realize, or, their first language may be closely related to x language on the language family tree, which can sometimes facilitate language acquisition in adulthood. Linguists call this the “typological distance” between languages. (Linguistic typology is the study of language similarities and relationships.) For example, German and English are much more closely related than German and Korean, and they share an alphabet, plus some word roots.
However, again, there are many exceptions to this; some Hebrew speakers can become outstanding speakers of French, even in adulthood, with the right circumstances. Some Spanish speakers may struggle to learn even rudimentary Portuguese. In addition, although some studies claim that being bilingual from childhood facilitates learning a third one as an adult, even after that critical period, and many believe that this must be true, it is actually very common for people who acquired two languages as children to still struggle enormously to learn a third in school. Conversely, some monolingual adults wind up being able to learn a second language through study and travel very well, due to talent, interest, and variability from one adult to the next.
Many people all over the world spoke one language at home and then a different one at school, as young children. Because both languages were technically acquired in that critical period, we (and these speakers themselves!) expect them to be balanced bilinguals. However, this is rarely the case, because language dominance will occur quickly, especially if the speaker does not attend a bilingual school, or learns to read and write only in the community language. Also, if speakers don’t have other types of exposure, like regular travel to a country where they can become immersed in the other language, the school language can take over.
Linguists often refer to these bilinguals as “heritage speakers.” Heritage speakers may understand that home language better than they produce it, or, have “no accent” yet not know very basic vocabulary. The more fluent in the school language that these speakers’ parents are, the more likely the children are to lose their home language because children quickly figure out that their parents understand the school or community language. Then, their brains resort to the community language, in order to save resources and communicate more expediently. Heritage speakers come in many different levels of fluency, but all possess a rich and special familial and cultural connection to the home language. It can be helpful for these folks to understand that it is totally normal to default to a dominant language and to realize how challenging it can be to maintain two languages throughout one’s life, when both languages aren’t necessary.
What about raising bilingual children when you are monolingual? Well, this is unlikely to be effective, although some foreign language exposure is great and fun for kids. As linguist Francois Grosjean explains, two of the most important factors in achieving success are amount of exposure, which is difficult to get enough of if neither the parents nor the society speaks the language, and then need, meaning that children must be in a position where they truly need to use the language to communicate most effectively with certain people. A 50/50 bilingual school can sometimes work, but they are hard to find.
So, a critical element of human language that is frequently overlooked by non-linguists can be expressed by that old saying “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” Some people may plan to move abroad for a few months, or study a language for a few years, and expect that this knowledge will be set for life. However, trying to speak a language that you studied years ago and never spoke again usually doesn’t work very well.
In addition, some research shows that speaking more than one language can have some cognitive benefits, such as a delayed onset of dementia, or slightly faster reaction time, but as linguist Ellen Bialystok confirms, you have to regularly speak both languages. Studying Spanish for a few years in high school and rarely using it again won’t help you stave off Alzheimer’s.
Interestingly, some studies suggest that because bilingual people are so good at switching between languages, they’re better at switching between other tasks too. Other studies contradict this, but the important thing for sure is that being able to communicate with so many more people around the world is truly an advantage! It is a challenge to learn a second language as an adult, but it’s worth the effort, and if you want your children to have the advantages of being bilingual, try to speak only that home language to them, as early as possible and as much as you can.
by Mignon Fogarty
Last week, we talked about quirky collective nouns like "pair" and "couple" that can be singular or plural, and today, we're going to talk about some other nouns that aren't as straightforwardly singular or plural as "dog" or "cookies" — band names and team names.
First, the bands.
We usually treat band names as singular in the United States, but some people go by the rule that if the name sounds plural (like the Beatles and the Lumineers), they treat it as plural, and if it sounds singular (like Train or Coldplay), they treat it as singular. That's how the Associated Press does it, for example.
So in the U.S., you'd write that the Beatles are your favorite band (plural), but Coldplay is what you find yourself listening to a lot lately (singular).
British English does it differently, treating all band names as plural. For example, here's the first line of a recent Guardian UK story about The Cure releasing its first album in 16 years:
"The Cure have long dwelled in a kind of rarefied artistic blue zone in which the years pile up but the end of the band is serenely defied."
"The Cure have long dwelled" (plural) instead of "The Cure has long dwelled" (singular).
Here's another example from an article about the band The Cult on tour:
"With an anniversary tour, there is the temptation to be completist and send every diehard home happy. But the Cult aren’t interested in that."
Again, "the Cult aren't" (plural). That sounds really weird to my American ears since we'd say, "The Cult isn't interested in that."
And what about team names?
Well, in this case, American English and British English are actually the same: everyone treats team names as plural when they're writing about sports, even if the names happen to sound singular — like the Utah Jazz or the Stanford Cardinal.
Both American and British sports reporters would write that the Jazz are playing Monday and the Cardinal are expected to do well this year.
If that sounds weird to you, if you're American, you can always use the city or state name instead of the team name because cities and states take a singular verb. So instead of saying, "The Jazz are playing Monday,” you could say, “Utah is playing Monday,” just as you’d say, “Los Angeles is playing Monday” and “Minnesota is playing Monday.”
British English is slightly different. They use the plural verb even when they're referring to the team by the city name, so a Guardian writer in the UK would write “Utah are playing Monday.”
So since I've had a bit of this and that going on, let me sum that up for you:
In American English, team names are always plural, and city names used to refer to teams are always singular. And band names are plural if they sound plural and singular if they sound singular.
In British English, team names, band names, and city names used to refer to teams are always plural.
And everyone treats the odd occasional team name that sounds singular — like Jazz, Cardinal, and Thunderbird — just like they treat any other team name.
Finally, I have a familect from Susan and Chris.
Hi, Mignon.
This is Susan and Chris, and we have an interesting familect story for you.
For as long as I remember when we were kids, my dad used to say whenever they were going out to dinner, my parents, they were going to kittle dance.
It was just a way of my parents to say, "None of your business. You're not invited."
And my dad just made it up so that he would have something to say to us growing up. And we would then get really upset because he wouldn't tell us where they were going. He would just say they would be going to kittle dance.
So here's a reenactment:
Dad, dad, dad, where are you going?
We're going to kittle dance.
What's kittle dance?
Kittle dance is kittle dance.
Oh, dad!
Okay.
So we're not sure if he just completely made it up, which is likely, or if it comes from the word "kittle," which comes from Scottish and has a couple of different meanings, or if he actually meant "kettle dance," which is a Native American food blessing tradition.
Anyway, that's our story about kittle dance.
Thank you.
I love the reenactment. That's taking familects to a whole new level. Thank you so much, both of you, Susan and Chris.
If you want to share your familect, the story of a word your family and only your family uses, call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL or send it to me through a WhatsApp voice chat. You'll find both in the show notes, and be sure to tell me the story behind the familect because that's always the best part.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Nat Hoopes in marketing; Holly Hutchings in digital operations; Dan Feierabend in audio; Morgan Christianson in advertising; Brannan Goetschius, director of podcasts; and Davina Tomlin in marketing, who just started taking a belly dancing class.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip-a-day book "The Grammar Daily." That's all. Thanks for listening.