Questions tagged [second-lang-acquisition]
Questions with this tag are about the acquisition of one or more second languages. In other words any language other than the mother tongue or native language of a given speaker.
98 questions
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How many "words" do I need to learn?
I am interested in learning a second language. To do this I have created a list of the 1000 most common words and phrases for a given language. I've also established sentences which contains each of ...
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Are there studies of difficulty to learn particular language depending on learner's native language?
Do you know if any studies were made to classify the difficulty to learn a particular language depending on learner's native language?
There are a lot of discussions about what is the easiest or the ...
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Common problems in second language pronunciation
Transfer of some phonetic/phonological features from the first language to a second language is common in second language acquisition. For example, aspiration is not phonemic in English. Voiceless ...
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What research has been done on the effects of learning Esperanto on acquiring other languages?
I have recently started learning Esperanto because I thought it would be an interesting exercise to compare and contrast it with the natural languages I speak. Anyone who has done even light research ...
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What has the study of second language acquisition brought to foreign language teachers?
Learning a second language, either by immersing yourself into the culture that speaks it or by being formally taught by a fluent speaker, is an old practice in history. But the scientific study of ...
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Is learning German easier for people who know Sanskrit, and vice versa?
I've heard many times that learning German is easier for those who speak Sanskrit, and vice versa. Is there any linguistic basis for this? What similarities exist between the two languages that may be ...
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L2 acquisition as a factor in loss of "complex" grammatical features
Recently I came across a short text on Language Log briefly discussing a phenomenon which seems to affect certain languages. The author noticed that loss or heavy weakening of inflection during ...
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What are some of the disadvantages of learning a language through book-study as opposed to immersion?
I have been told that the best way to learn a new language is through immersion, i.e. placing oneself in an environment in which only the target language is spoken and making constant use of the ...
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Do native speakers of language with lexical tone have difficulty learning another language with more or different lexical tones?
Have there been any studies done on say Mandarin native speakers who learn as adults other languages which have more lexical tones or which have lexical tones different to Mandarin?
I believe for ...
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How come I cannot get my "oral" English to a native speaker level after 25 years of trying?
I was born in Russia and moved to the US at the adolescent and prepubescent age of 12. Before my relocation to the US I had never really been exposed to the English language at large, and after my ...
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How many words do we hear in a day?
With regard to the English language, how many words is the average person likely to hear (not read) on an average day. By "how many words" I don't mean how many unique words. In other words if I hear ...
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Which makes more more effective vocabulary practice: L1 -> L2 or L2 -> L1?
Note: Please don't assume that because I'm asking about vocabulary, that my only method of language study is vocabulary memorization.
I'm in the process of learning a couple of new languages, and am ...
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How do children learn to speak compared to adults?
Why is it hard to learn a second language as an adult while the children may learn to speak more than one language more easily than adults do? If true, how can the language learning process be made ...
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Language acquisition by 100% immersion -- any cases you know of?
I am looking for documented cases where some person or group of people learned a language (= gained ability to communicate) with no prior knowledge of the target language through being immersed in ~...
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I don't know what my L1 is and want to find out
I've been doing personal research in Second Language Acquisition by reading a book on the subject (Understanding Second Language Acquisition -- by Lourdes Ortega) and I've become convinced that the L1 ...
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Why do nouns typically have their main stress on the penultimate while verbs on the ultimate (according to theories other than that of Hayes)?
I'm working on English stress acquisition by non-native speakers for my Master's Thesis. According to the theories of Hayes (1981) and, subsequently, Halle & Vergnaud (1987), extrametricality (i.e....
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What are the differences between the French and English [i] and how does it affect the perception?
I'm rephrasing my question after (very helpful) comments to my initial version:
What are the differences between the [i] produced by French speakers (in French) and English speakers (in English)?
...
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Ease of L2 acquisition of SOV and SVO/VSO word order
Is it easier for speakers of SOV languages to learn SOV/VSO syntax or vice versa?
I've been reading about constructed languages recently, specifically the ones intended to be easy to learn such as ...
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Are there marked/"hard" phonemes that are acquired very late or never by a substantial number of speakers?
Marked phonemes are those that require more effort during articulation or are "harder" to articulate. For example, the interdental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ are considered to be marked. Marked phonemes ...
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Do people "babble" while learning an L2?
I'm currently learning Japanese (みんなさん、こんにちは！), and I've began noticing myself doing the oddest thing while listening to Japanese.
I sometimes find myself uttering back sounds I hear; even when I don'...
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How can you learn to read older dialects of your first language(s)?
Abbreviate ED as earlier dialects of your modern first language(s). I desire to read writing written in only ED (eg: philosophy written in English or French dated from 1400) and NOT in languages ...
user5306
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Ranking sentences
I have a list of 15000 sentences for a new language I wish to learn. I also have the English translation of each of these sentences. Additionally, I have a 30 million word corpus for the new language. ...
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L1 memories being recalled in my L2
The situation is as follows: I have been studying my L2 for approximately 4 years. I have spent a total of 10 months immersed in the L2 environment. My current stint has been for 5 months and counting....
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What method of teaching foreign languages is more effective?
In wikipedia i found a list of methods of teaching foreign languages - language pedagogy. But it's seems that we not have a well recognized method or methods, or more effective then others, or at ...
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Am I a native English speaker? (born I Hungary, lived in US from age 3)
I'm not sure if I'm going to get any answers, but I am trying to find out whether I can qualify as a native english speaker.
Here's my story:
born in Hungary
moved to US at age 3
spoke Hungarian ...
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What language do children think in?
If a child born in Canada is spoken to strictly in another foreign tongue other than english (ie. Italian), it is inevitable that this child will also think in Italian. When this child starts going ...
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Is English grammar teaching tradition rooted in Latin?
I heard once that the way English grammar was taught as school was rooted in Latin and it wasn't a correct approach for a number of reason ?
This was a long time ago, so I cannot remember the details.
...
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Linguistic overview/critique of the Tomatis method
Some advertisements for language training material (like this and this) have a dubious claim that each language has its own frequency range of sounds, or a "pass band", so that listening to ...
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Can native ASL signers ID someone’s native sign language from their accent in otherwise fluent ASL?
Google keeps trying to give me native accent variations in ASL when I try to look this up, hence asking it here.
In spoken English, it tends to be relatively obvious if someone’s first language is ...
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Second and third language "search"
In my third or fourth language, when I don't know a word or phrase, I substitute a word from my other non-native language rather than the one I obviously know in my native language. Or if I'm looking ...
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Mastering a foreign language without staying in a country to which the language is native [closed]
I am not a native English speaker. What I would like to understand is - if a non native speaker who’s got a fairly decent command on the language (in this case say English) speaks to his or her kid in ...
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What sub-field in linguistics should I study to help me learn foreign languages? [closed]
I'm interested in languages and linguistics, can speak a few languages (English, French, Mandarin, some German, Japanese, and Esperanto) and would like to eventually learn more (Japanese, Spanish, ...
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Is it possible to talk about two different phonemes if they always have the same manifestations?
Both considering L1 speakers and L2 speakers.
It becomes a bit tricky involving L2 speakers. While a phoneme is defined as one of the units of sound that distinguishes one word from another in a ...
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Native language rejection
I am looking for statistics/research/terminology about the native language rejection by immigrants. I mean by this partial or complete refusal to use one's mother-tongue in favor of the local language ...
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Opposite of "intensifier"?
I really like apples.
I don't really like apples.
In sentences #1, 'really' acts as an intensifier. Using "teacher talk", I would say that 'really' softens the sentence, but I can't think of a ...
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What are the benefits of learning Latin using Spanish?
I am a native speaker of Spanish. I also learned English.
I am now trying to learn Latin. Obviously, the Spanish --> Latin route is a lot more preferable than the English --> Latin route given that ...
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Teaching children Spanish and Esperanto at home from non-native speakers
A question has already been asked on teaching a child a foreign language if you aren't a native speaker, but the answers are mixed - the 'right' answer says languages can be taught by a non-native ...
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Can formal linguistics help language learning?
I am interested in the intersection between abstract, formal grammars/semantics of human language and the very concrete task of learning a new language. Are there any books whose presentation assumes ...
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Sign languages of non-mute people
Does anyone study the sign language of people that can actually speak/pronounce/utter words? What would you call such study and what would you call such subject?
I mean, if a person can use both ...
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To what extent do children adapt to a language which is not their mother-tongue?
In following when talking about 'native speaker' I refer to what is considered as 'mother tongue' rather than reaching a level of fluency.
For the purpose of this question think of an average person ...
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Educating people in their mother tongue
Not all nations provide education in the national tongue.
In India, being educated in English is generally preferred.
I am looking for any study with details about the situations in different ...
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Analysing the notion of the native speaker
I am interested in the notions of the native, native-like, near native... speakers in linguistics. I have encountered several non-equivalent definitions/characterizations of these concepts. Right now, ...
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comparative study of spoken language complexity or irregularity
Could you recommend a publicly accessible study/article that quantitatively compares languages by their complexity or irregularity?
I am interested in spoken languages only. Not writing/spelling.
...
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Two tasks in one experiment design (self-paced-reading & grammaticality judgment)
For experiment design experts, I want to know if it's possible to design an experiment on PsychoPy or Open Sesame in which the subject does a self paced reading (with measuring the reading times for ...
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Why might English be considered easy to learn and why might it be considered difficult?
I have heard claims of English being both very easy and very difficult to learn for L2 learners (in adulthood).
Is it that the English writing system is difficult to learn while the language itself ...
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Speakers of a foreign language in a nation sounding similar in 'mispronunciations'
For pronunciation of a foreign language, do foreign speakers from a certain country speak with the same accent because they learn in their country from someone with that accent, or their native ...
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Does an internationally adopted child have an advantage when acquiring their original native language?
This question is mainly a reference request. I will use the term first native language for the language of the adoptee's birth region and second native language for the language of their adoption ...
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Are markedness and the Sonority Sequencing Principle both language universals?
I'm looking into transfer in second language acquisition, specifically on the syllable structure of other L1s transferring onto English. I'm discussing the impact of transfer as well as the impact of ...
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How to read and understand linguistics articles?
I was wondering if there is a good way to read and understand Quantitative linguistics articles that has graphs in it?
For example,
For a class, I am currently reading: "Recognition of spoken ...
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Is it possible to speak like a native speaker of English by mastering the phonology?
I know some professors of phonetics teach phonetics(in a country like India) in a laboratory almost similar to that of the native speakers.But when they come out of the class their pronunciation does ...
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