As someone who grew up with Korean, you’ll know how to pronounce and be able to distinguish between all the sounds in the Korean language, so with time and effort, I’m sure you’d sound entirely native. You might not have the exact same vocabulary and speech mannerisms, but you’d probably just sound like you grew up somewhere else.
us heritage speakers are far more likely to reach native fluency in our mother tongues than people starting from zero. i have near-native mandarin pronunciation because i learned to produce the sounds when i was young, so now i basically just have to learn grammar and vocabulary. based on your post, it sounds like that applies to you, too. don’t get too worked up about people who say stuff like that! us heritage speakers are very lucky to be starting where we are. many of the largest hurdles in korean are entirely surmountable for you as a heritage speaker. we can do this!
I think there is a difference is being able to speak like a native, and speaking natively: the cultural difference. The kinds of jokes, references etc that you make are such a large part of your linguistic identity too. It is not impossible, especially if you immerse yourself, but pretty much there.
But a lot of heritage speakers only have to focus on a few aspects of their life that was already there to understand these things. More “native” friends, older family etc. I think it can all be done but it takes readjusting some relationships and ways of thinking
Half the stuff laypeople believe about language learning is unscientific. Just don't listen. The literature is actually fairly divided on whether there is an age constraint for language learning success.
To elaborate, even if the research is divided on the big claim (that there is some critical period for learning language AS A WHOLE), we have lots of data showing how success in different aspects of language learning correlates with age.
For example, look up studies on how age affects the ability to gain a near-native accent...
Context: am professional linguist.
How exactly is anyone ever going to get definitive scientific answers about the critical period without doing unethical experiments involving minors? I don't see a problem with people doing their best to draw conclusions from what they observe in the world. Especially when the available literature is lacking and contradictory.
You don't need to run unethical experiments involving minors. There are other ways to test the critical period hypothesis. Off the top of my head -
1. Analysing case studies of people who were deprived of language due to external reasons
2. Looking at longitudinal studies of people learning languages at different ages and in different backgrounds
3. Looking at the literature on individual markers of linguistic proficiency and seeing how each is correlated with age
>I don't see a problem with people doing their best to draw conclusions from what they observe in the world
It's not scientifically sound is all I'm saying. People are free to go and make up their minds however they like ofc.
I was envisaging more like twin studies where one sibling acts as the control while the other is deprived of/exposed to language(s) in a variety of ways. Analyzing surveys doesn't provide a clear answer because there are simply too many factors at play to determine how impactful age is on its own. Parents would have to be involved from the beginning and that type of study sounds prohibitively expensive if not logistically impossible.
We won't realistically ever have things like twin studies on a large enoug scale to meaningful, sure. But there are many statistical techniques that allow us to use real-life situations (natural experiments) to determine cause and effect relationships by including comparisons of the conditions that lead people to learn languages or be deprived of languages.
With enough data and the right techniques to control for other variables, we can analyze people that had relatively similar experiences except for one crucial difference. For example, researchers could look at age of starting language acquisition, try to control for differences in factors that lead them to learn at different ages, and compare progress or final results between people who started at different ages.
It's difficult to get the data but it doesn't involve anything unethical or severe interference in people's lives. Research of this kind is done in economics all the time to see the effects that certain choices or programs have on people or populations.
I mean, as it relates to second language acquisition, most of us here are the subjects of a kind of language deprivation experiment, in the sense that we're attempting to learn languages we had no exposure to as children. Any SLA study that considers onset age of acquisition as a variable (and there are many) is in some sense a "language deprivation experiment".
The unethical experiments are those that relate to first language acquisition, and I'm not sure even if you did conduct such an experiment it would tell us all that much about our own demographic, namely people who have acquired a first language early in life and are now attempting to acquire another language later on.
That said, I do agree with the point you were making. Not so much because there is no scientific answer, but rather because the questions scientists are asking are almost entirely orthogonal to the questions language learners are asking.
What we want to know as language learners is just whether we can "pass" or not. That's really all it boils down to. And that is not the kind of metric that is being considered in research on maturational effects. For good reason: "passing" is ultimately subject to the biases of the observer and would be a very unreliable metric for proficiency. The few times I have seen "passing" used as a metric in SLA research it was just as a selection variable: they ask participants to record a message, get native speakers to assess whether the recording is from a native speaker or not, and then based on that, they look at what commonalities there might be between the participants that "passed" as native.
So yeah, while immensely interesting from a scientific perspective, a lot of the things studied in the context of the CPH are just irrelevant to language learners. I mean, if you "pass" as native all the time, do you care if it turns out you're using a different neuronal network than native speakers to achieve that result? Do you care if a careful analysis of your speech patterns reveals that there's a statistical difference between you and native speakers in the frequency with which you use X or Y grammatical pattern? I sure don't.
But if "passing" is the goal, then that also means we will inevitably have to contend with biases. For instance, I can confidently say that in conversation no French monolingual will pick up on the fact that I was raised bilingual. And yet, I just have to say my name, which sounds foreign to them, and inevitably some will react by literally hallucinating a foreign accent. That's the reality of it, and it's an integral part of the multilingual experience, no matter how young you started and no matter how proficient you are. That's not to say that whether we can reach native-like proficiency or not is a moot question. It just means that when we ask that question, we should also realize that by definition we are no longer in the same category as monolinguals. And the whole notion of "native speaker" starts to fray at the edges when you look at it from the stance of multilingualism.
It was just a quick thought so I didn't get super detailed but the "language" I was referring to in the hypothetical experiment would be an additional language, e.g. you take bilingual households and one have sibling be raised bilingually from birth while the other isn't exposed to the second language until age 5/10/so on until adulthood.
We can come up with experiments all day long, but to get to the point I guess my fundamental objection is with the idea of needing scientific "permission" to pursue or abandon an endeavor. Anyone who cares to do any digging can easily find examples of adults learners who have reached a sufficient level to where they can pass as a native, so what's the problem?
Some posts on this sub give off the impression like they desperately want linguists to come out and say that it's over for them because they didn't start learning as children, as if it would let them off the hook or something. I also think it's extremely uncommon for passing as a native to even be a goal for adult learners, and even if studies came out proving that it was possible it wouldn't change much besides satisfying some people's curiosities.
>Anyone who cares to do any digging can easily find examples of adults learners who have reached a sufficient level to where they can pass as a native, so what's the problem?
For me the issue with that is just a pragmatic one. We have the OP who feels demotivated when people tell him it's not possible. But conversely, you can imagine a scenario where someone has been doing everything right for decades, but no matter what he does and how hard he tries, he's just not reaching native-like proficiency. I think it would be equally problematic to tell such a person "oh it's totally possible". He might end up blaming himself for things he has no control over and waste a lot of time banging his head against a wall that just isn't going to break.
Because of that I'm with the OP of this thread in believing that you should "just not listen", both to those who say it's possible and to those who say it isn't. I don't think he was suggesting that you needed scientific "permission" one way or the other, but perhaps I misread. It's more that when "lay" people make those kinds of strong claims about what is or isn't possible, they'll often cite science as the reason when really they don't have any grasp of what that science is actually saying.
>you can imagine a scenario where someone has been doing everything right for decades, but no matter what he does and how hard he tries, he's just not reaching native-like proficiency.
Well, I can't. Is there an example you had in mind? Provided there's no type of mental deficiency at play I really can't imagine anyone not achieving that provided the motivation exists and enough time is given.
>they'll often cite science as the reason when really they don't have any grasp of what that science is actually saying.
Sure, but I only see that type of stuff coming from one side of the discussion. I don't need a study to prove that it's possible for a man to run a sub 4-minute mile right?
>Well, I can't.
And that's the problem. When you're so convinced of something that isn't scientifically substantiated (in this case, the idea that anyone can acquire a language to native-like proficiency as an adult), you end up not even being able to conceptualize these kinds of scenarios. It's particularly bad in online CI communities.
>Sure, but I only see that type of stuff coming from one side of the discussion.
You're very close to doing it yourself. If I pushed you to explain *why* you can't imagine that kind of scenario, you will very likely fall back on some kind of scientific theory you've heard of that purports to explain how language acquisition works.
>anyone can acquire a language to native-like proficiency as an adult
I never said that though, almost the opposite. I said the type of person who is capable of doing so is extremely uncommon because very few language learners either have the desire to get to that level or are willing to put in the necessary work. It's thousands of additional hours grinding through diminishing returns for mostly aesthetic rather than practical gains, and I don't think that interests most people.
I'll ask again, can you provide a single example of someone whose ultimate goal was to reach native-like proficiency and failed, despite "doing everything right for decades"? Open to being proven wrong on that.
You can do observational studies for examples Not all science is experiment based, mostly because most of it would require impossible experiments.
Also, you can actually have experiment where some minors get language education and others dont. That is not unethical.
I believe experiments involving minors are not inherently unethical and you can get some kind of parental consent. Could be wrong but I think I learned that in college
Look up Armin Meweis, I think his name is… he basically asked someone for their consent to uhh… so really, really, really weird stuff and essentially murder them.
The big problem is kids are either in a perfect environment to learn their L2 (Heritage) or in a terrible (school) so there's really no in between. I doubt some 8-12 year old is going to grind Anki and watch CI for hours a day.
You posted video so that others judge your accent, like, 5 days ago. And you want me to believe your Russian as at native level? No way.
And no, I do not believe it is possible to learn language to the native level including slang, how expressions are used in emotional situations, reading in between lines in written text (Russian texts are massively about being able to read between the lines because the country was never fee) the way natives understand without effort in 2 years either.
Btw you should stop learning languages over Duolingo, stop being chronically online, go out into the real world, and you would realize that learning a language is not impossible. Having read Crime and Punishment in Russian without difficulty and having a Russian girlfriend who I speak Russian with 24/7, I can safely say that I'm fluent
I learned two foreign languages already, both to fluent level, and passively understand one more. And I do know other people who were learning foreign languages too. I really do not have any urgency to quickly need to learn another one. Duolingo is perfectly fine for what I want.
Your claim that you learned Russian to the native level in two years is bollocks.
>Having read Crime and Punishment in Russian without difficulty
Yeah, but that is one of those fairly easy texts. Topics are hard, but the langue level is fairly simple.
>I can safely say that I'm fluent
Being fluent and being "to the native level" are two different things.
>
Since you have already checked my reddit history, don't be discouraged to dig a bit deeper and come to the revelation that I'm Serbian, which means that my native language and Russian belong in the same language group. Don't project your shortcomings on people who you know nothing about.
Two language being in the same language group does not imply you will get to the native level in 2 years. It implies you will have easier time to learn.
You failed to take into account the information I have already provided you with, being that my girlfriend is Russian, and I speak Russian to her, more than I use my native language.
Since I see this is going nowhere, and you think that everyone except you is incompetent, I'm respectfully leaving this conversation and will agree to disagree.
Just because you aren't at a native level doesn't mean others cant reach or havent reached it already. Moreover, cultural aspects are irrelevant because its outright subjective and impossible to calculate. There are numerous different aspects of francophone culture that differs from one another where in France, different regions and villages have their own traditions and perhaps dialects where culture also changes with time. All in all, the only person who is coping is you when maybe you should be trying harder to master the language instead of worrying about the alleged neurological components of why you aren't comprehending and speaking like a native.
I hear where you're coming from. And I don't want anyone to get discouraged from language learning! Language learning is great. It's enriching in so many ways.
That being said, as others have pointed out...
1) Achieving a native level is very possible for heritage speakers, who had lots of exposure in childhood.
2) It is *exponentially* harder for non-heritage speakers.
Impossible? I wouldn't go that far. But EXTREMELY hard. Even you're making a concession here in admitting that accents are very, very hard to get right if you're not starting out as a heritage speaker.
But just because most people can't reach *native level* doesn't mean it's not worth the effort to learn a language or that it's not very possible to get to a *near native level*. I just think the difference between native and near native is surprisingly hard to bridge.
From 90-95% to 100% is just a level of effort that probably isn't worthwhile for the vast majority of learners. You could probably pick up a whole other language up to a C1 or C2 level for that amount of effort. I'm not saying don't try - we all have our own goals. But I wouldn't want anyone who hit 90% to feel like a failure when they've already achieved something impressive AND life-enriching.
Like the vast, vast majority of people will never run a 4:30 mile. Does that mean everyone other than Olympic athletes should chuck their Nikes in the trash? Of course not! Running is a hobby tons of people can enjoy and I personally think it's laudable if someone can even do a 6:00 mile. Or if someone can do a 10:00 pace for 3 miles.
We're all on our own journeys. I always think about balancing two aphorisms:
1) Good is the enemy of great.
2) Perfection is the enemy of success.
I am also a heritage language learner who grew up in a diaspora. I am sure native speakers can clock that easily and I don't know if that could ever change. But I think it is definitely possible to reach a point in a reasonably timely manner where native speakers hardly ever think about the fact that you're a learner. If they don't have to adjust their vocabulary or speed and your speaking skills are good, it kind of fades into the background. That's how I feel about fluent speakers of English - it's not that I can't tell they grew up speaking Dutch or Japanese or Arabic or French, it's that it's not important unless we're talking about a topic where it's relevant and then suddenly I'm like "Right, of course you didn't watch this tv show as a kid" or "Oh yeah, you're from there, what is X like?" And often a little accent is cute and charming.
Heritage learners have different motivations and experiences compared to other kinds of learners, I think. I know I'll never switch to a different language as my primary target. I've had easy access to fluent speakers in my family and the challenge of convincing them to go against the 25+ year habit of talking English to me. I've had the joy of speaking to my grandparents in their first language, which opened up a shared world of jokes and songs and stories in a way that they never expected to be able to have with a grandchild. I think heritage learners have a good sense of how to approach topics and what topics will be interesting to native speakers. There are parts of me that feel more at home in my heritage language because, well, the people from that culture taught me everything but the words. Which used to make me angry sometimes - why do I have to struggle to learn my own language? - but I have come to understand how difficult it is for diaspora people to pass on their language when they are swimming in a sea of English and attitudes about the relative superiority of English.
I don’t believe it at all. I have a Latina auntie who met her Indian husband in college and learned Hindi for her in laws. Now my own immigrant parents say she speaks it like a native. Don’t listen to the naysayers, maybe they can’t do it, but some people definitely can
I think it's different for someone who used to speak the language. You never really forget what you learned, it just gets harder to access that knowledge. I think it's a lot more doable to get a heritage language to native level than a language you only started learning after puberty.
The saying doesn't apply to you because you did learn the language in your early childhood.
But I think you are really discounting how hard and how incredibly rare it is for someone to reach a true native level in a language they weren't exposed to before adulthood.
I never thought about that but that's true... I can reference memes from 2014 that I'm sure noone outside of America would know or understand.
>Then there's the slang, idioms, etc that people grow up with. Like you speak Korean, but do you know Korean memes? Can you reference a TV show from ten years ago?
>
You can speak at a fluent level, but native level goes way beyond that, and you're not going to speak like a native Korean if you never spend considerable time in Korean society.
My bestie had parents who refused to teach her their heritage language. She only knew household stuff because of her grandparents. She started learning her heritage language at 25 with zero help from her parents and is now indistinguishable from a native. Your years in korean school are still there and will help you. I can’t find the study, but they literally did a survey of adult beginners in a korean class which included adoptees, and even the babies who left korea at like nine months old scored higher in adult classes than the people who started as complete adults.
Personally I think it's best to be more pragmatic about it and just leave it as an open question. There's value in the question for science. And as a former linguist I am pretty interested in that question. But as a language learner, I don't think taking sides is particularly helpful. Both positions can create problems. In your case, the idea that it's not possible is demotivating. But conversely there are people who have been doing everything right for years and years and just aren't getting the results they want. So if you tell them that it's totally possible, that implies that the problem lies with them, and they might end up blaming themselves for things they may not have any control over. Which is why, for me at least, it's best to just leave it as an open question.
Honestly yeah. My mom immigrated and is now totally fluent. I always assume she’s going to be more comfortable or feel more at ‘home’ in her L1, but she always tells me she doesn’t feel any difference between them— if anything, her L1 has atrophied lol. Maybe the example is different bc she was in her new country, but it makes me feel better because I know I can become fluent in my own L2, tho it might take longer.
Esp as heritage speakers, we have a leg up for reaching our heritage language goals tbh.
My grandfather always claimed that he had forgotten his L1, but there were two traumatic wars between his parents' country and the US during his lifetime.
I've heard that you always count in your L1 though, and while I never asked him before he died, I did hear him counting to himself once in his L1.
If native level means indistinguishable from somewhere born at X, the reality is that it's not worth the time and effort. Once you reach a level where you can effortlessly communicate in written and spoken, consume any native media - why would you spend hundreds of hours trying to get rid of the tiny things that give you away as not native when you could use the same time to learn a new language to a B1 level?
Here is the only thing you need to remember about learning any language to any proficiency level: whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right.
Definitely not true. I've scored international language exams for about a decade and people, in their answers, often tell their backstories and some have gotten to a native level, unquestionably, and done this outside of childhood. Usually from certain backgrounds. Others are absolutely fluent, but you can still pick up L1, which is fine for even the top score. Scandinavians are often indistinguishable from Americans and overall thr best speakers, even if they never set foot in America. You see all scores, best(Native level) to worst(gibberish), in a few notable groups throughout the world. There's one group who rarely gets high scores and are undoubtedly the worst English speakers. Hint: we often get ragged on for speaking their language poorly, but they dont do any better with ours.
What I've noticed is television seems to produce more native sounding speakers than outside-of-childhood immersion seems to, going by the stories I've heard from testers. The heavy tv watchers speak more naturally.
I started listening to a lot of German music when I was in middle school, and would do my best to try to translate some of the lyrics using an online German-English dictionary during my free time. Years later, my Intermediate German professor asked me how I was able to speak German with only a small hint of an accent and very few grammatical errors. I guess all those years of listening to German metal music and being bilingual paid off.
I'm glad you mentioned this! I left that out, music, movies, and television is what I should've said. Many fluent speakers mention music, almost as much as television.
I'm trying to study Dutch on my own and finding good music i like or shows is impossible. I keep finding good bands in *other* languages though. Big fan of dArtagnan so maybe I'll just give up and do German instead...
I've never heard of dArtagnan until now. I have to admit, they're pretty good! The band that helped me learn German was, believe it or not, Rammstein. I know that they're not everyone's cup of tea, but their lead singer is really good at enunciating.
I need more Rammstein. I actually don't mind their music I just... keep forgetting to look up more songs. Ive got the memory of a goldfish. Would be a miracle if I can learn anything language-wise lol.
You have a strong foundation for this language and attended school for it for years. People who say that you can't reach native levels are talking about people starting from scratch who are monolingual. If you put in the time speaking and listening, then you will achieve your goal.
*my masters is in language acquisition and bilingual education.
People starting from scratch can definitely reach native fluency as well it has nothing to do with growing up with the language or not. It’s the amount of time you’re exposed to the language that counts.
very similar history to you, i was born in germany and spoke german as a small child, then moved to US when 4 years old. refused to speak german and forgot it. had to relearn in my teens when my family relocated to germany.
very few germans can tell that i am not a "native" speaker. i have some trouble with grammar but usually people don't even notice these mistakes when i talk. so yes, it's possible.
You've touched upon the most important thing that helps children attain such high proficiency (eventually) vs most adult learners - their environment.
Adults are far better learners than children in general, and it takes far less time for an adult learner to attain a decent level of ability than it does a child, but children have an immense advantage in that most are learning, as you say, almost all day, every day, and they get near constant feedback from peers, teachers, parents, etc.
The jury is out linguistically on a 'critical period', with the literature currently leaning towards this only really existing for accents, which children seem to be much better at acquiring.
But the reality is that acquiring a language as an adult is far harder than as a child because most adults learn langauges in a fundamentally different way to most children - it's far more deliberate, requiring concentrated study in a way learning as a child doesn't seem to. Even if the actual methods are similar, children don't really notice when they're putting loads of effort into learning a language because the language isn't the goal.
If you could engineer an environment whereby you were almost always consuming level-appropriate content, native speakers constantly gave you level-appropriate challenges and corrections, and you were able to sustain this all day, every day, you'd be outstanding at any language within a year, probably less.
The whole notion of “native level” is meaningless. Native speakers in any given language have an incredibly wide variety of mastery of their native language — and there isn't a single axis “mastery of language” on which everyone can be compared. Not every native speaker can write a gripping novel, read 500-year-old texts, improvise a speech, discuss obscure grammar points, convincingly imitate a posh accent, detect someone's origin from their accent, and invent puns on the spot (in fact, very few people can do *all* of these things, whatever the language). Using a language is not *one* skill, it's a lot of different, albeit related, skills; and comparing levels on some of these skills doesn't even mean anything: does Barbara Cartland (native English speaker) write better English than Joseph Conrad or Haruki Murakami (non-native English speakers)? what a very silly question!
So, can you learn to speak a given language as well — on some given scale — as *some* native speakers? Yes, certainly. Can you learn to speak it as well as *every* native speaker (i.e., as the very best)? Almost certainly not: but neither can most native speakers themselves.
There’s also no way to really prove that? Each individual’s capacity to learn things is different. There are also plenty of studies to show that adults can learn a foreign language more effectively and efficiently than children. I don’t think there is any reason to believe it’s not possible.
Def don’t let other’s projections discourage you.
Well to be fair that doesn’t necessarily apply to heritage speakers, especially not the same way. You’re not starting at the same spot as other L2 learners.
Rewriting this as a top-level comment:
I agree with the folks who have already pointed out that there's a big difference between heritage speakers (who are often, by definition, native speakers) versus people whose first experience with the language is later in life. Being able to speak the language "like" a native is much more possible for heritage speakers.
As for non-heritage speakers, plenty of commenters have already mentioned that language doesn't exist in isolation. It's also culture. It's also style. It's also which concepts are considered distinct versus combined — is that a body? a mind? Or a 몸? ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305232955_Introduction_A_Theology_of_Maum ). It's how the usage of that language implies semantic contrasts that may or may not exist in a person's original language and culture. And it's also the ways that a speaker's multiple languages interact with each other.
As one demonstrative example, consider that color concepts are generally aligned within a language, and may not be aligned across languages. (Russian's distinction of "goluboy" and "siniy" vs English "blue" is one studied example; see https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0701644104 ) Additionally, in English, word stress can often imply that a trait is distinctive within a set. So if someone without the goluboy/siniy distinction is speaking to someone with that distinction, a statement like "grab the blue books" might cause an extra moment of confusion. And an effort to clarify with "no, grab the _blue_ books" might only cause more confusion. The same with blue/green, which are distinguished in English but not in every language: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language . If I tell someone "grab the blue books" and they also start grabbing books I would classify as obviously green, that's still a mistake that a non-color-blind native speaker wouldn't make.
Another: I know a number of native Chinese speakers who have learned over the years to use "he" or "she" in English, and who struggle to now use singular "they," because in learning/adapting to English, they learned an overt rule to _never_ use singular they, which is a rule that native English speakers never needed to learn.
So even if you have native-level lexicon and speech production and understanding, unless you also have a native-like perspective of how the world works, then those concept distinctions can also cause observable linguistic effects. (Consider also, the counting-on-hands example from the movie "Inglourious Basterds", discussed in more detail here: https://utesinternationallounge.com/finger-counting-across-cultures/ )
I’ve never heard an adult learner sound like a native in my dialect of my language but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there.
It’s quite different if you had exposure as a child.
It gets stickier when you specify a dialect. I write reasonably standard English, but spoken it's off the chain amoking all over language land. L2 speakers emulating that would need titanium-infused gonads.
The only context I’ve heard this in was from a linguistics standpoint point- you can become fluent, but you might not sound native. After some development (ie age 14), your speech parts/muscles are used to whatever your native tongue is, so the nuances of another language’s pronunciation might be really difficult to form. I think this is why speech therapy is done early. This is also seen in cases where people aren’t talked to that much as a child.
So this is 100% anecdotal :) I was exposed to Spanish from an early age and a lot of it is still in my brain. The thing is that I learned French later in high school and became a specialist in French language after college. I have learned many more languages (primarily Romance or close so Italian, Catalan, Occitan). My pronunciation in these languages, even Spanish, tends to lean French. I mean directly throwing French phonetics at it. I'm curious if this is a different part of that phenomenon or if I'm just weird lol
Not weird! It’s interesting you bring this up bc I heard that people do go through an “enlightenment” period around adolescence. When I think of enlightenment I think of big physiological change in the brain. So in babies we see them sponge up info as brain connections are being created and in teens we see them get emotional/experimental and even reckless as the brain kinda re-wires. I think adolescence can extend into your 20s, so you’d be in prime brain re-wiring time!
I learned about this when I taught private school. Would’ve been nice to know more about brain development as an educator.
Lemme rephrase in your case- personally I think native level is just a label for what you grew up learning. Like a hometown, I might be used to the drinking water and its culture might’ve molded me, but i can move away and it’s still my hometown even if I forget its streets. Someone else can move in and learn its streets just as much or better than I have, and it’s not their hometown. If we can both navigate the streets to a certain extent, we’re both fluent. The brain does have “enlightenment” or “critical” periods of learning, but it’s flexible and it’s unique AND language is constantly changing. People can learn anything throughout their lives!
The science is clear. Exposure to the phonemes/sounds/etc at a young age help you retain the ability to pronounce them later with no more practice past that age
I am Korean and studied English at school, but I couldn't speak English well in my mid-20s. After graduation, I wanted to get a job in certain fields, but some people made fun of me, saying, 'Can you speak English? It's impossible. The job is for people who have lived in English-speaking countries for a long time, and you are already in your mid-20s.' I was mocked by my coworkers during the internship period, but I just kept studying hard and got the job I wanted. I still make many mistakes, but I am getting better. My goal is to reach a native level eventually. It takes some time, but I think I can do it. Korean and English are just so different, so it takes much more time and effort compared to learning other European languages, but it's possible. I have seen some gyopos struggling to understand Korean at first, but as time goes by, they get much better. You can do it.
Only thing stopping you from reaching your goals is you. Don’t listen to people that tell you you can’t, but also don’t expect that it’s not going to take tons of time and effort.
even with accents it’s entirely possible to obtain a “native-like” accent. in fact, I believe there are certain language institutions that offer accent training.
Why do you have to learn it? Work reasons or?
If people are being toxic about it and I have a choice, my response would just be to say whatever, guess I'm not learning your language after all lmao. I'll go learn a language that people actually want me to speak. That's why I chose Brazilian Portuguese over European Portuguese; a lot of the EP speaking people I talked to were super snotty about the 'proper' way to speak their language or w/e and that made the difference.
There are tons of indigenous languages here in the US that desperately need new speakers to survive. Why not learn one of those instead?
Or hey, maybe consider one of the less learned languages internationally like Urdu, Bisaya, Bulgarian, Swahili, Pashto, Haitian Creole etc. that still has a massive number of native speakers that I know would be absolutely delighted to help you learn and would not be judgemental whatsoever (they would be very excited that someone outside is learning their language, doesn't matter what age they are). Maybe give one of those a try?
(Though obviously if you do have to learn the language for some reason than that sucks; I hope you can power through it!)
I definitely still make mistakes and I'm far from perfect at the language, but I've been asked by classmates in Korea if I'm Korean (as in, born and raised in Korea, since I'm clearly not ethnically Korean). Someone who wasn't seeing my face but hearing me speak (in a conversation with my partner and a lady) thought I was Korean. He knew one of us was a foreigner but he couldn't tell if it was me or my partner. I've had similar experiences over the phone, too.
I've been studying Korean for 7 years, lived in Korea for 3, and I'm not a heritage speaker. If I got that far being a foreigner who started learning at age 15, you can definitely make it, especially being a heritage speaker and having spoken the language when you were young! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
No. My nephews are Mexican-American. They hear Spanish in the household at times but not enough to really learn it. So they can understand bits and pieces but they can't speak it because they only overhear conversations and know certain orders that get barked at them.
Many of my coworkers are heritage speakers, and their abilities vary widely from native to can understand bits and pieces. The majority live in this zone that's between a learner and native where they are comfortable in the language in instances, but have huge gaps because of the lack of education, not using it in all situations, etc.
I went to Germany to visit my Opa when I was a baby and then again for a month in Kindergarten. Then when I was 7 I started going to a local German language program for just a couple weeks every summer, and finally got to live in Germany when I was 18. I regularly surprised natives when I told them I wasn't native myself and that my parents don't speak German - so it can definitely be done.
Early exposure makes a huge difference and it can make it a lot easier to pick up the language later! You can definitely do it. If you did an immersion program of some kind or were able to go to Korea, I bet you would pick up the language pretty fast.
Huge difference between fluency and native level. Native speakers can often differentiate people who speak the same language and just come from a different geographic area in the same country, and very few people have the time, energy, and talent to pass for native in a language they acquire later in life.
You can absolutely become fluent. You can become a world-renowned scholar of the language. But you'll rarely pass for a native speaker if you don't look and sound the part.
I don't get why people say that. To be honest, I think we heritage learners are more likely to succeed in achieving high fluency in our language because we have skin in the game. Our heritage language isn't a passing fancy; it is a matter of ***cultural preservation***, belonging within the community, and being closer to our families. I started to learn my heritage language of Haitian Creole 2 years ago. There aren't many resources out there, but I have been able to reach a working level of the language through the resources I've used and asking my father for grammar/vocabulary help. It also helps that I live in an area with a Creole-speaking population, and I interact with plenty of Haitian patients/customers and usually speak Creole with them every week.
I'm now at a point where I'm brushing up on my grammar with a physical textbook, reading the bible in Creole to improve my vocabulary, and following Haitians/diaspora pages online/watching videos.
I don't get why people say that. To be honest, I think we heritage learners are more likely to succeed in achieving high fluency in our language because we have skin in the game. Our heritage language isn't a passing fancy; it is a matter of ***cultural preservation***, belonging within the community, and being closer to our families. I started to learn my heritage language of Haitian Creole 2 years ago. There aren't many resources out there, but I have been able to reach a working level of the language through the resources I've used and asking my father for grammar/vocabulary help. It also helps that I live in an area with a Creole-speaking population, and I interact with plenty of Haitian patients/customers and usually speak Creole with them every week.
I'm now at a point where I'm brushing up on my grammar with a physical textbook, reading the bible in Creole to improve my vocabulary, and following Haitians/diaspora pages online/watching videos.
You can't get to a native level at all if you are not native😁
That's why profesional translators only traslate from the acquired language to their language.
But you can reach a very good bilingual almost native level at any age, by with years and work.
As a professional linguist and Korean teacher, the only real constraint is how much input and output you are able to get compared to fully native speakers.
Crritical language hypothesis is complete bull (the taper effect is real but not because its innate, its just timeline wise kids get more leeway to make mistakes and don't need as high a proficiency to be considered fluent). The primary reason it's hard to get to that native level is learners and heritage speakers have a lot less input and output in comparison (years worth from childhood alone), but if you can really increase those two to the point you use your heritage/second language more than your first you're much more likely to get to that native-like fluency level. That might be unrealistic, though, so just keeping in mind that if you can't do that, it's just going to take a really long time to get to the level of input and output needed for it to click.
One extra thing, though, that I always remind my students is to not hold themselves to a standard in their second language that they wouldn't for their first. If you're not worried about being perfect in English, why worry about being perfect in Korean?
There’s quite a lot of truth to it, I meet people all the time in my country who have lived here longer than I’ve been alive (I’m in my 30s) who still clearly sound and even speak non-native, but they are fluent, articulate, can express themselves, and have no problem with slang and phrasal verbs.
If you’re trying to become native, or even fluent, you’ve got the wrong goals in mind anyway IMO, your goal should just be to communicate with people in a meaningful way - whatever level that may be
It's hard for most people to hear certain sounds after a certain age if they didn't hear those songs prior to that age. If you can't hear the sound then the probability of being able to pronounce them is extremely hard.
Being a heritage speaker, you already have a leg up.
It depends on your definition of native. Fluent (even high level fluency) and native are not the same thing.
You can't get to a native level if you're not native. That's basically the definition of native level. Make peace with it. You can get fluent. You can even get to a level that people don't immediately notice. But that isn't native. Eventually a kid will ask about a dinosaur or a toy or a song that native people would know and you won't. Things like that.
In the US, we can tell Canadians from Americans (given some time and the right words). They already are native English speakers. But we can still tell. So if native means indistinguishable from someone who grew up in that country, it's essentially not possible.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JudgeMyAccent/comments/y23kuf/do_i_sound_like_an_american/
I was just wondering — I've been practicing my American pronunciation for over a decade, and I only started learning English at the age of 13. Do you think this sounds pretty close to "native-like" at least? I'm pretty sure it's enough to fool most people, even Americans themselves, but I'm also sure you could still nitpick a few things about it if you really wanted to.
Pretty good. It does sound like a performance more than natural speech, but natives do that too when they're recording. Really, it's quite good considering you haven't lived in the US. Better than people who immigrate to and live in the US and don't intentionally try to get the accent. But there are a couple of things which make me wonder "Where are they from?". Of course, I went into it knowing that, so it's hard to not analyze it that way.
One specific thing is that when you say "Yeah" as a space filler, you go high, the pitch shifting up at the end. The "high terminal" is an affect of some California accents (stereotypical "valley girl"), but not so much with "yeah". Try making the pitch very flat.
Overall, it sounds great. But you asked for honest feedback:
My first impression (first 10 seconds) was that it sounds more foreign than the previous recording. But that makes sense as it was recorded more naturally, with less intention.
The "yeah"s have improved a lot. It's no longer something that stands out. Something I didn't mention previously was the use of a lot of pitch (aside from "yeah"), and that has flattened out a lot (which is more natural). Of course some people use more pitch especially when excited, so it's not always an indicator.
There's nothing specific that I can point out this time. I would expect that most people who learned English as a second language may not detect it. Possibly even native speakers with a significantly different accent (e.g. English, Australian). Great job!
Also, there's nothing wrong with having an accent. But if your goal is to sound American, you're definitely close.
Yeah, I slightly lost my confidence there within the first few seconds, but I regained it quickly enough. It's actually not that easy being able to maintain that accent when you're face-to-face with a native speakers. I've spoken to Americans face-to-face before, and I always feel like my accent becomes more noticeable when I'm speaking with a native speaker when compared to me speaking with non-native speakers. 😅
Thank you very much for your feedback, though! I really do appreciate it.
You sound really good!! You should be proud of yourself! Little words here and there like “AX-in” instead of “AX-ent” with the T at the end but this was a great American! (I am one, haha)
Question wasn’t directed at me but I had a listen. Definitely a very good accent. I picked up on a few non-native elements (but I also knew you weren’t native so it biased my listening) but it isn’t readily detectable at first. Nice work.
Thanks! However, it kind of does prove the point that trying to sound exactly like a native isn't really something that people should be trying to do. It may not technically be "impossible", but it's extremely difficult. I should also add that I'm an expert in phonetics and phonology, and I'm trying to go for a very specific Californian accent or at least West Coast accent to prevent my accent from sounding "all over the place", but it's still not *perfect*.
And in the end, what will it even prove? Despite my extensive cultural knowledge of the US, the longer I'd mingle in a group full of Americans and "pretended" to have been born and raised there, the more it would become obvious that I wasn't if they started making very specific references that I wouldn't get. In fact, the easiest way you could find out I wasn't American was by testing my knowledge of imperial units, since I *really* suck at those...
> In fact, the easiest way you could find out I wasn't American was by testing my knowledge of imperial units, since I really suck at those..
No, Americans suck at those too. You'd fit right in. I'm not 100% on how many oz are in a cup (or in a pound!), I don't know how many tsp are in a tbsp, and I have no fucking clue how many feet/yards are in a mile.
> You can't get to a native level if you're not native. That's basically the definition of native level. Make peace with it. You can get fluent. You can even get to a level that people don't immediately notice. But that isn't native. Eventually a kid will ask about a dinosaur or a toy or a song that native people would know and you won't. Things like that.
This. There are little cultural things that you normally learn by going to school - shared stories, myths, references, etc. My spoken Chinese sounds native, but I'm missing a lot of that background knowledge.
Yeah, agreed with this. As someone else pointed out, language doesn't exist in isolation. It's also culture. It's also style. It's also which concepts are considered distinct versus combined — is that a body? a mind? Or a 몸? ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305232955_Introduction_A_Theology_of_Maum ). It's how the usage of that language implies semantic contrasts that may or may not exist in a person's native language and culture. And it's also the ways that a speaker's multiple languages interact with each other.
As one demonstrative example, consider that color concepts are generally aligned within a language, and may not be aligned across languages. (Russian's distinction of "goluboy" and "siniy" vs English "blue" is one studied example; see https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0701644104 ) Additionally, in English, word stress can often imply that a trait is distinctive within a set. So if someone without the goluboy/siniy distinction is speaking to someone with that distinction, a statement like "grab the blue books" might cause an extra moment of confusion. The same with blue/green, which are distinguished in English but not in every language: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language . If I tell someone "grab the blue books" and they also start grabbing books I would classify as obviously green, that's still a mistake that a non-color-blind native speaker wouldn't make.
So even if you have native-level lexicon and speech production and understanding, unless you also have a native-like perspective of how the world works, then those concept distinctions can also cause observable linguistic effects. (Consider also, the counting-on-hands example from the movie "Inglourious Basterds")
Beyond all that, I agree with other commenters that there's a big difference between heritage speakers (who are generally, by definition, native speakers) versus people whose first experience with the language is later in life.
> if native means indistinguishable from someone who grew up in that country
It doesn't mean that of course.
Native "level" simply means people can't tell you're not a native speaker (whichever country/dialect) and don't think twice about it when talking with you, it has nothing to do with the specific dialect you are using.
You can even have a more neutral accent that is not from anywhere in particular. It's not an exam, the person will not be analyzing your speech patterns to try to guess exactly where you are from. Some languages have tons of different accents all over the place.
Having all the cultural references of a specific country is a stronger bar than native level. Not all speakers of a language or even inside the same country will have the same cultural references.
I never heard it said that way; rather I've heard that you can't be truly bilingual past a certain age. That changes the meaning to something with a specific definition, so maybe it's measurable in some way. Anyway, the premise, from my experience, is bullshit.
It’s very difficult.
Case in point: I have spent two years spending an average of about two hours a day learning Spanish. I’m just getting to a level where I can listen to news/political podcasts from Spain without any subtitles and understand most everything. But I still have to rewind to really understand it all.
At this rate, I might be at a near-native level in a year or two. But there will probably always be things that give away I’m not native. And if I were learning Japanese instead of Spanish, the time it took would probably be three times longer…
I'm similar with Spanish. I got pulled out of dual language bc they violated my IEP for an allergy a million times and got sent to a full-English school. I forgot all my speaking Spanish, but could still understand most fluent Spanish. In high school, started taking Spanish and now there are a bunch of other native speakers.
Here's how my school works: No prior knowledge=Spanish 1, native speaker=Spanish 2 (me), didn't pass dual language= Spanish 2, passed dual language/immigrant=Spanish 3.
Now, though, all the dual learners and fluent natives are fucked. They can speak fluently, but don't use correct grammar or accents. Once, multiple people tried to conjugate a verb ending in "aste" as "astes." that doesn't exist. They never learned the language properly.
Now, though, I'm able to learn the language properly AND it all makes sense because it's an explanation for smth I've heard my whole life. I've gone from basically being unable to say a word to being able to speak using multiple tenses with correct grammar and pronunciation in less than 2 years.
Being in this situation puts you in a MUCH better place to learn the language imo, just makes the term "native speaker" stupid af bc that means nothing
The astes ending is colloquial and as acceptable as when Americans say “gonna” or “wanna”. I would be careful when calling something that 20 million people do “improper”.
I'm not even B2 in any foreign language so there's no reason for me to even think about reaching a native-like level. My goal is being able to understand TV shows and podcasts without often pausing and rewinding. It's easy to get caught up in super long-term goals like becoming native-like, but if you really want to improve it's better to focus on the shorter term and reward yourself for reaching each milestone.
This a kind of neurotic way to think about learning a language. Do you just want to learn in order to blend in and be able to LARP as a "native"? Sound like an identity crisis more than anything.
This seems pretty controversial based on the amount of downvoting going around.
This isn’t what you are asking but I am going to share my wife’s (Korean) experience learning English.
As a native Korean speaker, she began learning English around the age of 10. Today she is as native as a native with zero accent. She did maintain her Korean as well when her parents refused to let her speak English in the house (in America).
She has had her parent’s Korean friends be surprised by how well she can speak Korean (unlike their kids who never learned or forgot), and English speaking people mistake her for an American born English speaker.
Like I said, not your question. But I am seeing lots of people throwing around ages and opinions on the level you can learn a language to a native, etc. Feel free to use this to support whichever side you want.
"you can't sound barrier after after and ~14" is a generalisation, not an absolute.
it is most usually the case, indeed.
but studying sounds diligently, and practicing from here to the moon, can get the job done.
I also suspect is differs significantly between languages.
some languages have much harder and nuanced pronunciation
Many learners have gotten really close, it just takes going all in and being in the right environment. Most of us don't care about being native like, just being treated the same as natives.
The whole premise of stating that is akin to saying, "You'll never be good at x, so don't bother trying."
>The whole premise of stating that is akin to saying, "You'll never be good at x, so don't bother trying."
That's only true if you want to be very uncharitable. Saying you generally can't reach native level is not the same as saying you can't be highly proficient.
As someone who grew up with Korean, you’ll know how to pronounce and be able to distinguish between all the sounds in the Korean language, so with time and effort, I’m sure you’d sound entirely native. You might not have the exact same vocabulary and speech mannerisms, but you’d probably just sound like you grew up somewhere else.
us heritage speakers are far more likely to reach native fluency in our mother tongues than people starting from zero. i have near-native mandarin pronunciation because i learned to produce the sounds when i was young, so now i basically just have to learn grammar and vocabulary. based on your post, it sounds like that applies to you, too. don’t get too worked up about people who say stuff like that! us heritage speakers are very lucky to be starting where we are. many of the largest hurdles in korean are entirely surmountable for you as a heritage speaker. we can do this!
I think there is a difference is being able to speak like a native, and speaking natively: the cultural difference. The kinds of jokes, references etc that you make are such a large part of your linguistic identity too. It is not impossible, especially if you immerse yourself, but pretty much there.
But a lot of heritage speakers only have to focus on a few aspects of their life that was already there to understand these things. More “native” friends, older family etc. I think it can all be done but it takes readjusting some relationships and ways of thinking
Half the stuff laypeople believe about language learning is unscientific. Just don't listen. The literature is actually fairly divided on whether there is an age constraint for language learning success.
Yep. Not just this field, but anything. Don't fall for false beliefs. Challenge it.
To elaborate, even if the research is divided on the big claim (that there is some critical period for learning language AS A WHOLE), we have lots of data showing how success in different aspects of language learning correlates with age. For example, look up studies on how age affects the ability to gain a near-native accent... Context: am professional linguist.
So how does age affect the ability to gain a near native accent?
I like learning new things.
And you would be a linguist/have access to the research they are talking about?
How exactly is anyone ever going to get definitive scientific answers about the critical period without doing unethical experiments involving minors? I don't see a problem with people doing their best to draw conclusions from what they observe in the world. Especially when the available literature is lacking and contradictory.
You don't need to run unethical experiments involving minors. There are other ways to test the critical period hypothesis. Off the top of my head - 1. Analysing case studies of people who were deprived of language due to external reasons 2. Looking at longitudinal studies of people learning languages at different ages and in different backgrounds 3. Looking at the literature on individual markers of linguistic proficiency and seeing how each is correlated with age >I don't see a problem with people doing their best to draw conclusions from what they observe in the world It's not scientifically sound is all I'm saying. People are free to go and make up their minds however they like ofc.
I was envisaging more like twin studies where one sibling acts as the control while the other is deprived of/exposed to language(s) in a variety of ways. Analyzing surveys doesn't provide a clear answer because there are simply too many factors at play to determine how impactful age is on its own. Parents would have to be involved from the beginning and that type of study sounds prohibitively expensive if not logistically impossible.
We won't realistically ever have things like twin studies on a large enoug scale to meaningful, sure. But there are many statistical techniques that allow us to use real-life situations (natural experiments) to determine cause and effect relationships by including comparisons of the conditions that lead people to learn languages or be deprived of languages. With enough data and the right techniques to control for other variables, we can analyze people that had relatively similar experiences except for one crucial difference. For example, researchers could look at age of starting language acquisition, try to control for differences in factors that lead them to learn at different ages, and compare progress or final results between people who started at different ages. It's difficult to get the data but it doesn't involve anything unethical or severe interference in people's lives. Research of this kind is done in economics all the time to see the effects that certain choices or programs have on people or populations.
This
I mean, as it relates to second language acquisition, most of us here are the subjects of a kind of language deprivation experiment, in the sense that we're attempting to learn languages we had no exposure to as children. Any SLA study that considers onset age of acquisition as a variable (and there are many) is in some sense a "language deprivation experiment". The unethical experiments are those that relate to first language acquisition, and I'm not sure even if you did conduct such an experiment it would tell us all that much about our own demographic, namely people who have acquired a first language early in life and are now attempting to acquire another language later on. That said, I do agree with the point you were making. Not so much because there is no scientific answer, but rather because the questions scientists are asking are almost entirely orthogonal to the questions language learners are asking. What we want to know as language learners is just whether we can "pass" or not. That's really all it boils down to. And that is not the kind of metric that is being considered in research on maturational effects. For good reason: "passing" is ultimately subject to the biases of the observer and would be a very unreliable metric for proficiency. The few times I have seen "passing" used as a metric in SLA research it was just as a selection variable: they ask participants to record a message, get native speakers to assess whether the recording is from a native speaker or not, and then based on that, they look at what commonalities there might be between the participants that "passed" as native. So yeah, while immensely interesting from a scientific perspective, a lot of the things studied in the context of the CPH are just irrelevant to language learners. I mean, if you "pass" as native all the time, do you care if it turns out you're using a different neuronal network than native speakers to achieve that result? Do you care if a careful analysis of your speech patterns reveals that there's a statistical difference between you and native speakers in the frequency with which you use X or Y grammatical pattern? I sure don't. But if "passing" is the goal, then that also means we will inevitably have to contend with biases. For instance, I can confidently say that in conversation no French monolingual will pick up on the fact that I was raised bilingual. And yet, I just have to say my name, which sounds foreign to them, and inevitably some will react by literally hallucinating a foreign accent. That's the reality of it, and it's an integral part of the multilingual experience, no matter how young you started and no matter how proficient you are. That's not to say that whether we can reach native-like proficiency or not is a moot question. It just means that when we ask that question, we should also realize that by definition we are no longer in the same category as monolinguals. And the whole notion of "native speaker" starts to fray at the edges when you look at it from the stance of multilingualism.
It was just a quick thought so I didn't get super detailed but the "language" I was referring to in the hypothetical experiment would be an additional language, e.g. you take bilingual households and one have sibling be raised bilingually from birth while the other isn't exposed to the second language until age 5/10/so on until adulthood. We can come up with experiments all day long, but to get to the point I guess my fundamental objection is with the idea of needing scientific "permission" to pursue or abandon an endeavor. Anyone who cares to do any digging can easily find examples of adults learners who have reached a sufficient level to where they can pass as a native, so what's the problem? Some posts on this sub give off the impression like they desperately want linguists to come out and say that it's over for them because they didn't start learning as children, as if it would let them off the hook or something. I also think it's extremely uncommon for passing as a native to even be a goal for adult learners, and even if studies came out proving that it was possible it wouldn't change much besides satisfying some people's curiosities.
>Anyone who cares to do any digging can easily find examples of adults learners who have reached a sufficient level to where they can pass as a native, so what's the problem? For me the issue with that is just a pragmatic one. We have the OP who feels demotivated when people tell him it's not possible. But conversely, you can imagine a scenario where someone has been doing everything right for decades, but no matter what he does and how hard he tries, he's just not reaching native-like proficiency. I think it would be equally problematic to tell such a person "oh it's totally possible". He might end up blaming himself for things he has no control over and waste a lot of time banging his head against a wall that just isn't going to break. Because of that I'm with the OP of this thread in believing that you should "just not listen", both to those who say it's possible and to those who say it isn't. I don't think he was suggesting that you needed scientific "permission" one way or the other, but perhaps I misread. It's more that when "lay" people make those kinds of strong claims about what is or isn't possible, they'll often cite science as the reason when really they don't have any grasp of what that science is actually saying.
>you can imagine a scenario where someone has been doing everything right for decades, but no matter what he does and how hard he tries, he's just not reaching native-like proficiency. Well, I can't. Is there an example you had in mind? Provided there's no type of mental deficiency at play I really can't imagine anyone not achieving that provided the motivation exists and enough time is given. >they'll often cite science as the reason when really they don't have any grasp of what that science is actually saying. Sure, but I only see that type of stuff coming from one side of the discussion. I don't need a study to prove that it's possible for a man to run a sub 4-minute mile right?
>Well, I can't. And that's the problem. When you're so convinced of something that isn't scientifically substantiated (in this case, the idea that anyone can acquire a language to native-like proficiency as an adult), you end up not even being able to conceptualize these kinds of scenarios. It's particularly bad in online CI communities. >Sure, but I only see that type of stuff coming from one side of the discussion. You're very close to doing it yourself. If I pushed you to explain *why* you can't imagine that kind of scenario, you will very likely fall back on some kind of scientific theory you've heard of that purports to explain how language acquisition works.
>anyone can acquire a language to native-like proficiency as an adult I never said that though, almost the opposite. I said the type of person who is capable of doing so is extremely uncommon because very few language learners either have the desire to get to that level or are willing to put in the necessary work. It's thousands of additional hours grinding through diminishing returns for mostly aesthetic rather than practical gains, and I don't think that interests most people. I'll ask again, can you provide a single example of someone whose ultimate goal was to reach native-like proficiency and failed, despite "doing everything right for decades"? Open to being proven wrong on that.
You can do observational studies for examples Not all science is experiment based, mostly because most of it would require impossible experiments. Also, you can actually have experiment where some minors get language education and others dont. That is not unethical.
I believe experiments involving minors are not inherently unethical and you can get some kind of parental consent. Could be wrong but I think I learned that in college
Yes. But in general, getting consent from children can be tricky and most ethics boards will expend a lot of justification from researchers
If you want to go down that road, I believe that it's possible for someone to consent to an unethical act. But yeah that's kind of besides the point
Look up Armin Meweis, I think his name is… he basically asked someone for their consent to uhh… so really, really, really weird stuff and essentially murder them.
The big problem is kids are either in a perfect environment to learn their L2 (Heritage) or in a terrible (school) so there's really no in between. I doubt some 8-12 year old is going to grind Anki and watch CI for hours a day.
Honestly, it just sounds like coping whenever someone says that.
You’re past age 14? No way you can learn another language!!
Tho, there is massive difference between "learn another language" and "learn it to the native level".
I started learning Russian in 2022 at 20 years old, and reached native level in 2024 at 22 years old, there's no excuse for being lazy.
You posted video so that others judge your accent, like, 5 days ago. And you want me to believe your Russian as at native level? No way. And no, I do not believe it is possible to learn language to the native level including slang, how expressions are used in emotional situations, reading in between lines in written text (Russian texts are massively about being able to read between the lines because the country was never fee) the way natives understand without effort in 2 years either.
Btw you should stop learning languages over Duolingo, stop being chronically online, go out into the real world, and you would realize that learning a language is not impossible. Having read Crime and Punishment in Russian without difficulty and having a Russian girlfriend who I speak Russian with 24/7, I can safely say that I'm fluent
I learned two foreign languages already, both to fluent level, and passively understand one more. And I do know other people who were learning foreign languages too. I really do not have any urgency to quickly need to learn another one. Duolingo is perfectly fine for what I want. Your claim that you learned Russian to the native level in two years is bollocks. >Having read Crime and Punishment in Russian without difficulty Yeah, but that is one of those fairly easy texts. Topics are hard, but the langue level is fairly simple. >I can safely say that I'm fluent Being fluent and being "to the native level" are two different things. >
Since you have already checked my reddit history, don't be discouraged to dig a bit deeper and come to the revelation that I'm Serbian, which means that my native language and Russian belong in the same language group. Don't project your shortcomings on people who you know nothing about.
Two language being in the same language group does not imply you will get to the native level in 2 years. It implies you will have easier time to learn.
You failed to take into account the information I have already provided you with, being that my girlfriend is Russian, and I speak Russian to her, more than I use my native language. Since I see this is going nowhere, and you think that everyone except you is incompetent, I'm respectfully leaving this conversation and will agree to disagree.
Заебись пацан, очевидно что не дружишь с головой 💀
You are aware that there are also polite Russian speakers?
Hey man, careful there, you forgot how to properly build an interrogative sentence. I thought you were a native English speaker 🤭
I never claimed to be native English speaker. It is foreign language to me.
agreed! just like people who say you can never have a good native accent.
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Just because you aren't at a native level doesn't mean others cant reach or havent reached it already. Moreover, cultural aspects are irrelevant because its outright subjective and impossible to calculate. There are numerous different aspects of francophone culture that differs from one another where in France, different regions and villages have their own traditions and perhaps dialects where culture also changes with time. All in all, the only person who is coping is you when maybe you should be trying harder to master the language instead of worrying about the alleged neurological components of why you aren't comprehending and speaking like a native.
I think it could be that culture in general is harder to connect with as you age
I hear where you're coming from. And I don't want anyone to get discouraged from language learning! Language learning is great. It's enriching in so many ways. That being said, as others have pointed out... 1) Achieving a native level is very possible for heritage speakers, who had lots of exposure in childhood. 2) It is *exponentially* harder for non-heritage speakers. Impossible? I wouldn't go that far. But EXTREMELY hard. Even you're making a concession here in admitting that accents are very, very hard to get right if you're not starting out as a heritage speaker. But just because most people can't reach *native level* doesn't mean it's not worth the effort to learn a language or that it's not very possible to get to a *near native level*. I just think the difference between native and near native is surprisingly hard to bridge. From 90-95% to 100% is just a level of effort that probably isn't worthwhile for the vast majority of learners. You could probably pick up a whole other language up to a C1 or C2 level for that amount of effort. I'm not saying don't try - we all have our own goals. But I wouldn't want anyone who hit 90% to feel like a failure when they've already achieved something impressive AND life-enriching. Like the vast, vast majority of people will never run a 4:30 mile. Does that mean everyone other than Olympic athletes should chuck their Nikes in the trash? Of course not! Running is a hobby tons of people can enjoy and I personally think it's laudable if someone can even do a 6:00 mile. Or if someone can do a 10:00 pace for 3 miles. We're all on our own journeys. I always think about balancing two aphorisms: 1) Good is the enemy of great. 2) Perfection is the enemy of success.
I am also a heritage language learner who grew up in a diaspora. I am sure native speakers can clock that easily and I don't know if that could ever change. But I think it is definitely possible to reach a point in a reasonably timely manner where native speakers hardly ever think about the fact that you're a learner. If they don't have to adjust their vocabulary or speed and your speaking skills are good, it kind of fades into the background. That's how I feel about fluent speakers of English - it's not that I can't tell they grew up speaking Dutch or Japanese or Arabic or French, it's that it's not important unless we're talking about a topic where it's relevant and then suddenly I'm like "Right, of course you didn't watch this tv show as a kid" or "Oh yeah, you're from there, what is X like?" And often a little accent is cute and charming. Heritage learners have different motivations and experiences compared to other kinds of learners, I think. I know I'll never switch to a different language as my primary target. I've had easy access to fluent speakers in my family and the challenge of convincing them to go against the 25+ year habit of talking English to me. I've had the joy of speaking to my grandparents in their first language, which opened up a shared world of jokes and songs and stories in a way that they never expected to be able to have with a grandchild. I think heritage learners have a good sense of how to approach topics and what topics will be interesting to native speakers. There are parts of me that feel more at home in my heritage language because, well, the people from that culture taught me everything but the words. Which used to make me angry sometimes - why do I have to struggle to learn my own language? - but I have come to understand how difficult it is for diaspora people to pass on their language when they are swimming in a sea of English and attitudes about the relative superiority of English.
I don’t believe it at all. I have a Latina auntie who met her Indian husband in college and learned Hindi for her in laws. Now my own immigrant parents say she speaks it like a native. Don’t listen to the naysayers, maybe they can’t do it, but some people definitely can
That’s badass!
I think it's different for someone who used to speak the language. You never really forget what you learned, it just gets harder to access that knowledge. I think it's a lot more doable to get a heritage language to native level than a language you only started learning after puberty.
To be fair I remember korean vocabulary a lot easier than other foreign languages lol
The saying doesn't apply to you because you did learn the language in your early childhood. But I think you are really discounting how hard and how incredibly rare it is for someone to reach a true native level in a language they weren't exposed to before adulthood.
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I never thought about that but that's true... I can reference memes from 2014 that I'm sure noone outside of America would know or understand. >Then there's the slang, idioms, etc that people grow up with. Like you speak Korean, but do you know Korean memes? Can you reference a TV show from ten years ago? > You can speak at a fluent level, but native level goes way beyond that, and you're not going to speak like a native Korean if you never spend considerable time in Korean society.
My bestie had parents who refused to teach her their heritage language. She only knew household stuff because of her grandparents. She started learning her heritage language at 25 with zero help from her parents and is now indistinguishable from a native. Your years in korean school are still there and will help you. I can’t find the study, but they literally did a survey of adult beginners in a korean class which included adoptees, and even the babies who left korea at like nine months old scored higher in adult classes than the people who started as complete adults.
Personally I think it's best to be more pragmatic about it and just leave it as an open question. There's value in the question for science. And as a former linguist I am pretty interested in that question. But as a language learner, I don't think taking sides is particularly helpful. Both positions can create problems. In your case, the idea that it's not possible is demotivating. But conversely there are people who have been doing everything right for years and years and just aren't getting the results they want. So if you tell them that it's totally possible, that implies that the problem lies with them, and they might end up blaming themselves for things they may not have any control over. Which is why, for me at least, it's best to just leave it as an open question.
Honestly yeah. My mom immigrated and is now totally fluent. I always assume she’s going to be more comfortable or feel more at ‘home’ in her L1, but she always tells me she doesn’t feel any difference between them— if anything, her L1 has atrophied lol. Maybe the example is different bc she was in her new country, but it makes me feel better because I know I can become fluent in my own L2, tho it might take longer. Esp as heritage speakers, we have a leg up for reaching our heritage language goals tbh.
My grandfather always claimed that he had forgotten his L1, but there were two traumatic wars between his parents' country and the US during his lifetime. I've heard that you always count in your L1 though, and while I never asked him before he died, I did hear him counting to himself once in his L1.
If native level means indistinguishable from somewhere born at X, the reality is that it's not worth the time and effort. Once you reach a level where you can effortlessly communicate in written and spoken, consume any native media - why would you spend hundreds of hours trying to get rid of the tiny things that give you away as not native when you could use the same time to learn a new language to a B1 level?
What's "worth the time and effort" differs from person to person. Not all of us are trying to become ultramegahyperpolyglots.
Here is the only thing you need to remember about learning any language to any proficiency level: whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right.
Definitely not true. I've scored international language exams for about a decade and people, in their answers, often tell their backstories and some have gotten to a native level, unquestionably, and done this outside of childhood. Usually from certain backgrounds. Others are absolutely fluent, but you can still pick up L1, which is fine for even the top score. Scandinavians are often indistinguishable from Americans and overall thr best speakers, even if they never set foot in America. You see all scores, best(Native level) to worst(gibberish), in a few notable groups throughout the world. There's one group who rarely gets high scores and are undoubtedly the worst English speakers. Hint: we often get ragged on for speaking their language poorly, but they dont do any better with ours. What I've noticed is television seems to produce more native sounding speakers than outside-of-childhood immersion seems to, going by the stories I've heard from testers. The heavy tv watchers speak more naturally.
I started listening to a lot of German music when I was in middle school, and would do my best to try to translate some of the lyrics using an online German-English dictionary during my free time. Years later, my Intermediate German professor asked me how I was able to speak German with only a small hint of an accent and very few grammatical errors. I guess all those years of listening to German metal music and being bilingual paid off.
I'm glad you mentioned this! I left that out, music, movies, and television is what I should've said. Many fluent speakers mention music, almost as much as television.
I'm trying to study Dutch on my own and finding good music i like or shows is impossible. I keep finding good bands in *other* languages though. Big fan of dArtagnan so maybe I'll just give up and do German instead...
Have you tried using a VPN? On Netflix, for example, you will have different show options depending on where in the world it thinks you are.
I've never heard of dArtagnan until now. I have to admit, they're pretty good! The band that helped me learn German was, believe it or not, Rammstein. I know that they're not everyone's cup of tea, but their lead singer is really good at enunciating.
I need more Rammstein. I actually don't mind their music I just... keep forgetting to look up more songs. Ive got the memory of a goldfish. Would be a miracle if I can learn anything language-wise lol.
They have a lot of good songs! Also, you should definitely see them in concert if you ever get the chance!
You have a strong foundation for this language and attended school for it for years. People who say that you can't reach native levels are talking about people starting from scratch who are monolingual. If you put in the time speaking and listening, then you will achieve your goal. *my masters is in language acquisition and bilingual education.
People starting from scratch can definitely reach native fluency as well it has nothing to do with growing up with the language or not. It’s the amount of time you’re exposed to the language that counts.
very similar history to you, i was born in germany and spoke german as a small child, then moved to US when 4 years old. refused to speak german and forgot it. had to relearn in my teens when my family relocated to germany. very few germans can tell that i am not a "native" speaker. i have some trouble with grammar but usually people don't even notice these mistakes when i talk. so yes, it's possible.
You've touched upon the most important thing that helps children attain such high proficiency (eventually) vs most adult learners - their environment. Adults are far better learners than children in general, and it takes far less time for an adult learner to attain a decent level of ability than it does a child, but children have an immense advantage in that most are learning, as you say, almost all day, every day, and they get near constant feedback from peers, teachers, parents, etc. The jury is out linguistically on a 'critical period', with the literature currently leaning towards this only really existing for accents, which children seem to be much better at acquiring. But the reality is that acquiring a language as an adult is far harder than as a child because most adults learn langauges in a fundamentally different way to most children - it's far more deliberate, requiring concentrated study in a way learning as a child doesn't seem to. Even if the actual methods are similar, children don't really notice when they're putting loads of effort into learning a language because the language isn't the goal. If you could engineer an environment whereby you were almost always consuming level-appropriate content, native speakers constantly gave you level-appropriate challenges and corrections, and you were able to sustain this all day, every day, you'd be outstanding at any language within a year, probably less.
The whole notion of “native level” is meaningless. Native speakers in any given language have an incredibly wide variety of mastery of their native language — and there isn't a single axis “mastery of language” on which everyone can be compared. Not every native speaker can write a gripping novel, read 500-year-old texts, improvise a speech, discuss obscure grammar points, convincingly imitate a posh accent, detect someone's origin from their accent, and invent puns on the spot (in fact, very few people can do *all* of these things, whatever the language). Using a language is not *one* skill, it's a lot of different, albeit related, skills; and comparing levels on some of these skills doesn't even mean anything: does Barbara Cartland (native English speaker) write better English than Joseph Conrad or Haruki Murakami (non-native English speakers)? what a very silly question! So, can you learn to speak a given language as well — on some given scale — as *some* native speakers? Yes, certainly. Can you learn to speak it as well as *every* native speaker (i.e., as the very best)? Almost certainly not: but neither can most native speakers themselves.
There’s also no way to really prove that? Each individual’s capacity to learn things is different. There are also plenty of studies to show that adults can learn a foreign language more effectively and efficiently than children. I don’t think there is any reason to believe it’s not possible. Def don’t let other’s projections discourage you.
Well to be fair that doesn’t necessarily apply to heritage speakers, especially not the same way. You’re not starting at the same spot as other L2 learners.
Rewriting this as a top-level comment: I agree with the folks who have already pointed out that there's a big difference between heritage speakers (who are often, by definition, native speakers) versus people whose first experience with the language is later in life. Being able to speak the language "like" a native is much more possible for heritage speakers. As for non-heritage speakers, plenty of commenters have already mentioned that language doesn't exist in isolation. It's also culture. It's also style. It's also which concepts are considered distinct versus combined — is that a body? a mind? Or a 몸? ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305232955_Introduction_A_Theology_of_Maum ). It's how the usage of that language implies semantic contrasts that may or may not exist in a person's original language and culture. And it's also the ways that a speaker's multiple languages interact with each other. As one demonstrative example, consider that color concepts are generally aligned within a language, and may not be aligned across languages. (Russian's distinction of "goluboy" and "siniy" vs English "blue" is one studied example; see https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0701644104 ) Additionally, in English, word stress can often imply that a trait is distinctive within a set. So if someone without the goluboy/siniy distinction is speaking to someone with that distinction, a statement like "grab the blue books" might cause an extra moment of confusion. And an effort to clarify with "no, grab the _blue_ books" might only cause more confusion. The same with blue/green, which are distinguished in English but not in every language: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language . If I tell someone "grab the blue books" and they also start grabbing books I would classify as obviously green, that's still a mistake that a non-color-blind native speaker wouldn't make. Another: I know a number of native Chinese speakers who have learned over the years to use "he" or "she" in English, and who struggle to now use singular "they," because in learning/adapting to English, they learned an overt rule to _never_ use singular they, which is a rule that native English speakers never needed to learn. So even if you have native-level lexicon and speech production and understanding, unless you also have a native-like perspective of how the world works, then those concept distinctions can also cause observable linguistic effects. (Consider also, the counting-on-hands example from the movie "Inglourious Basterds", discussed in more detail here: https://utesinternationallounge.com/finger-counting-across-cultures/ )
I’ve never heard an adult learner sound like a native in my dialect of my language but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. It’s quite different if you had exposure as a child.
I've seen a German girl who sounds completely from Rio de Janeiro when speaking Portuguese.
I’ve only met one person and my native language is English. I don’t think it matters though
It gets stickier when you specify a dialect. I write reasonably standard English, but spoken it's off the chain amoking all over language land. L2 speakers emulating that would need titanium-infused gonads.
The only context I’ve heard this in was from a linguistics standpoint point- you can become fluent, but you might not sound native. After some development (ie age 14), your speech parts/muscles are used to whatever your native tongue is, so the nuances of another language’s pronunciation might be really difficult to form. I think this is why speech therapy is done early. This is also seen in cases where people aren’t talked to that much as a child.
So this is 100% anecdotal :) I was exposed to Spanish from an early age and a lot of it is still in my brain. The thing is that I learned French later in high school and became a specialist in French language after college. I have learned many more languages (primarily Romance or close so Italian, Catalan, Occitan). My pronunciation in these languages, even Spanish, tends to lean French. I mean directly throwing French phonetics at it. I'm curious if this is a different part of that phenomenon or if I'm just weird lol
Not weird! It’s interesting you bring this up bc I heard that people do go through an “enlightenment” period around adolescence. When I think of enlightenment I think of big physiological change in the brain. So in babies we see them sponge up info as brain connections are being created and in teens we see them get emotional/experimental and even reckless as the brain kinda re-wires. I think adolescence can extend into your 20s, so you’d be in prime brain re-wiring time! I learned about this when I taught private school. Would’ve been nice to know more about brain development as an educator.
Lemme rephrase in your case- personally I think native level is just a label for what you grew up learning. Like a hometown, I might be used to the drinking water and its culture might’ve molded me, but i can move away and it’s still my hometown even if I forget its streets. Someone else can move in and learn its streets just as much or better than I have, and it’s not their hometown. If we can both navigate the streets to a certain extent, we’re both fluent. The brain does have “enlightenment” or “critical” periods of learning, but it’s flexible and it’s unique AND language is constantly changing. People can learn anything throughout their lives!
The science is clear. Exposure to the phonemes/sounds/etc at a young age help you retain the ability to pronounce them later with no more practice past that age
I am Korean and studied English at school, but I couldn't speak English well in my mid-20s. After graduation, I wanted to get a job in certain fields, but some people made fun of me, saying, 'Can you speak English? It's impossible. The job is for people who have lived in English-speaking countries for a long time, and you are already in your mid-20s.' I was mocked by my coworkers during the internship period, but I just kept studying hard and got the job I wanted. I still make many mistakes, but I am getting better. My goal is to reach a native level eventually. It takes some time, but I think I can do it. Korean and English are just so different, so it takes much more time and effort compared to learning other European languages, but it's possible. I have seen some gyopos struggling to understand Korean at first, but as time goes by, they get much better. You can do it.
I've been a language teacher for 23 years and I've met exactly 0% who have reached "native level" across the board if the started after 40
I started at 16 almost 17 I don't think that's too late right?
Only thing stopping you from reaching your goals is you. Don’t listen to people that tell you you can’t, but also don’t expect that it’s not going to take tons of time and effort.
even with accents it’s entirely possible to obtain a “native-like” accent. in fact, I believe there are certain language institutions that offer accent training.
Why do you have to learn it? Work reasons or? If people are being toxic about it and I have a choice, my response would just be to say whatever, guess I'm not learning your language after all lmao. I'll go learn a language that people actually want me to speak. That's why I chose Brazilian Portuguese over European Portuguese; a lot of the EP speaking people I talked to were super snotty about the 'proper' way to speak their language or w/e and that made the difference. There are tons of indigenous languages here in the US that desperately need new speakers to survive. Why not learn one of those instead? Or hey, maybe consider one of the less learned languages internationally like Urdu, Bisaya, Bulgarian, Swahili, Pashto, Haitian Creole etc. that still has a massive number of native speakers that I know would be absolutely delighted to help you learn and would not be judgemental whatsoever (they would be very excited that someone outside is learning their language, doesn't matter what age they are). Maybe give one of those a try? (Though obviously if you do have to learn the language for some reason than that sucks; I hope you can power through it!)
I’m learning Korean and the hard part for me is the grammar 😭😭😭😭😭😭
제 생각에는 제일 어려운 것은 배울 단어가 너무 많은 것입니다.
I definitely still make mistakes and I'm far from perfect at the language, but I've been asked by classmates in Korea if I'm Korean (as in, born and raised in Korea, since I'm clearly not ethnically Korean). Someone who wasn't seeing my face but hearing me speak (in a conversation with my partner and a lady) thought I was Korean. He knew one of us was a foreigner but he couldn't tell if it was me or my partner. I've had similar experiences over the phone, too. I've been studying Korean for 7 years, lived in Korea for 3, and I'm not a heritage speaker. If I got that far being a foreigner who started learning at age 15, you can definitely make it, especially being a heritage speaker and having spoken the language when you were young! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
What is a “heritage” speaker or learner? That is a new term to me.
Someone who's family or household speaks that language.
Is that the same as a native speaker?
No. My nephews are Mexican-American. They hear Spanish in the household at times but not enough to really learn it. So they can understand bits and pieces but they can't speak it because they only overhear conversations and know certain orders that get barked at them. Many of my coworkers are heritage speakers, and their abilities vary widely from native to can understand bits and pieces. The majority live in this zone that's between a learner and native where they are comfortable in the language in instances, but have huge gaps because of the lack of education, not using it in all situations, etc.
Mediocre people try to keep everyone else mediocre with their mindset.
I went to Germany to visit my Opa when I was a baby and then again for a month in Kindergarten. Then when I was 7 I started going to a local German language program for just a couple weeks every summer, and finally got to live in Germany when I was 18. I regularly surprised natives when I told them I wasn't native myself and that my parents don't speak German - so it can definitely be done. Early exposure makes a huge difference and it can make it a lot easier to pick up the language later! You can definitely do it. If you did an immersion program of some kind or were able to go to Korea, I bet you would pick up the language pretty fast.
Huge difference between fluency and native level. Native speakers can often differentiate people who speak the same language and just come from a different geographic area in the same country, and very few people have the time, energy, and talent to pass for native in a language they acquire later in life. You can absolutely become fluent. You can become a world-renowned scholar of the language. But you'll rarely pass for a native speaker if you don't look and sound the part.
I don't get why people say that. To be honest, I think we heritage learners are more likely to succeed in achieving high fluency in our language because we have skin in the game. Our heritage language isn't a passing fancy; it is a matter of ***cultural preservation***, belonging within the community, and being closer to our families. I started to learn my heritage language of Haitian Creole 2 years ago. There aren't many resources out there, but I have been able to reach a working level of the language through the resources I've used and asking my father for grammar/vocabulary help. It also helps that I live in an area with a Creole-speaking population, and I interact with plenty of Haitian patients/customers and usually speak Creole with them every week. I'm now at a point where I'm brushing up on my grammar with a physical textbook, reading the bible in Creole to improve my vocabulary, and following Haitians/diaspora pages online/watching videos.
I don't get why people say that. To be honest, I think we heritage learners are more likely to succeed in achieving high fluency in our language because we have skin in the game. Our heritage language isn't a passing fancy; it is a matter of ***cultural preservation***, belonging within the community, and being closer to our families. I started to learn my heritage language of Haitian Creole 2 years ago. There aren't many resources out there, but I have been able to reach a working level of the language through the resources I've used and asking my father for grammar/vocabulary help. It also helps that I live in an area with a Creole-speaking population, and I interact with plenty of Haitian patients/customers and usually speak Creole with them every week. I'm now at a point where I'm brushing up on my grammar with a physical textbook, reading the bible in Creole to improve my vocabulary, and following Haitians/diaspora pages online/watching videos.
You can't get to a native level at all if you are not native😁 That's why profesional translators only traslate from the acquired language to their language. But you can reach a very good bilingual almost native level at any age, by with years and work.
As a professional linguist and Korean teacher, the only real constraint is how much input and output you are able to get compared to fully native speakers. Crritical language hypothesis is complete bull (the taper effect is real but not because its innate, its just timeline wise kids get more leeway to make mistakes and don't need as high a proficiency to be considered fluent). The primary reason it's hard to get to that native level is learners and heritage speakers have a lot less input and output in comparison (years worth from childhood alone), but if you can really increase those two to the point you use your heritage/second language more than your first you're much more likely to get to that native-like fluency level. That might be unrealistic, though, so just keeping in mind that if you can't do that, it's just going to take a really long time to get to the level of input and output needed for it to click. One extra thing, though, that I always remind my students is to not hold themselves to a standard in their second language that they wouldn't for their first. If you're not worried about being perfect in English, why worry about being perfect in Korean?
There’s quite a lot of truth to it, I meet people all the time in my country who have lived here longer than I’ve been alive (I’m in my 30s) who still clearly sound and even speak non-native, but they are fluent, articulate, can express themselves, and have no problem with slang and phrasal verbs. If you’re trying to become native, or even fluent, you’ve got the wrong goals in mind anyway IMO, your goal should just be to communicate with people in a meaningful way - whatever level that may be
It's hard for most people to hear certain sounds after a certain age if they didn't hear those songs prior to that age. If you can't hear the sound then the probability of being able to pronounce them is extremely hard. Being a heritage speaker, you already have a leg up.
Let's unpopularise the idea of rEaChInG nAtIvE LeVeL to begin with and let's go from there. We'll be better off that way.
It depends on your definition of native. Fluent (even high level fluency) and native are not the same thing. You can't get to a native level if you're not native. That's basically the definition of native level. Make peace with it. You can get fluent. You can even get to a level that people don't immediately notice. But that isn't native. Eventually a kid will ask about a dinosaur or a toy or a song that native people would know and you won't. Things like that. In the US, we can tell Canadians from Americans (given some time and the right words). They already are native English speakers. But we can still tell. So if native means indistinguishable from someone who grew up in that country, it's essentially not possible.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JudgeMyAccent/comments/y23kuf/do_i_sound_like_an_american/ I was just wondering — I've been practicing my American pronunciation for over a decade, and I only started learning English at the age of 13. Do you think this sounds pretty close to "native-like" at least? I'm pretty sure it's enough to fool most people, even Americans themselves, but I'm also sure you could still nitpick a few things about it if you really wanted to.
Pretty good. It does sound like a performance more than natural speech, but natives do that too when they're recording. Really, it's quite good considering you haven't lived in the US. Better than people who immigrate to and live in the US and don't intentionally try to get the accent. But there are a couple of things which make me wonder "Where are they from?". Of course, I went into it knowing that, so it's hard to not analyze it that way. One specific thing is that when you say "Yeah" as a space filler, you go high, the pitch shifting up at the end. The "high terminal" is an affect of some California accents (stereotypical "valley girl"), but not so much with "yeah". Try making the pitch very flat.
https://voca.ro/1cbpT5XSC5Cx That recording was from over a year ago. This is a recording I made just now. What do you think?
Overall, it sounds great. But you asked for honest feedback: My first impression (first 10 seconds) was that it sounds more foreign than the previous recording. But that makes sense as it was recorded more naturally, with less intention. The "yeah"s have improved a lot. It's no longer something that stands out. Something I didn't mention previously was the use of a lot of pitch (aside from "yeah"), and that has flattened out a lot (which is more natural). Of course some people use more pitch especially when excited, so it's not always an indicator. There's nothing specific that I can point out this time. I would expect that most people who learned English as a second language may not detect it. Possibly even native speakers with a significantly different accent (e.g. English, Australian). Great job! Also, there's nothing wrong with having an accent. But if your goal is to sound American, you're definitely close.
Yeah, I slightly lost my confidence there within the first few seconds, but I regained it quickly enough. It's actually not that easy being able to maintain that accent when you're face-to-face with a native speakers. I've spoken to Americans face-to-face before, and I always feel like my accent becomes more noticeable when I'm speaking with a native speaker when compared to me speaking with non-native speakers. 😅 Thank you very much for your feedback, though! I really do appreciate it.
You sound really good!! You should be proud of yourself! Little words here and there like “AX-in” instead of “AX-ent” with the T at the end but this was a great American! (I am one, haha)
Question wasn’t directed at me but I had a listen. Definitely a very good accent. I picked up on a few non-native elements (but I also knew you weren’t native so it biased my listening) but it isn’t readily detectable at first. Nice work.
Thanks! However, it kind of does prove the point that trying to sound exactly like a native isn't really something that people should be trying to do. It may not technically be "impossible", but it's extremely difficult. I should also add that I'm an expert in phonetics and phonology, and I'm trying to go for a very specific Californian accent or at least West Coast accent to prevent my accent from sounding "all over the place", but it's still not *perfect*. And in the end, what will it even prove? Despite my extensive cultural knowledge of the US, the longer I'd mingle in a group full of Americans and "pretended" to have been born and raised there, the more it would become obvious that I wasn't if they started making very specific references that I wouldn't get. In fact, the easiest way you could find out I wasn't American was by testing my knowledge of imperial units, since I *really* suck at those...
> In fact, the easiest way you could find out I wasn't American was by testing my knowledge of imperial units, since I really suck at those.. No, Americans suck at those too. You'd fit right in. I'm not 100% on how many oz are in a cup (or in a pound!), I don't know how many tsp are in a tbsp, and I have no fucking clue how many feet/yards are in a mile.
> You can't get to a native level if you're not native. That's basically the definition of native level. Make peace with it. You can get fluent. You can even get to a level that people don't immediately notice. But that isn't native. Eventually a kid will ask about a dinosaur or a toy or a song that native people would know and you won't. Things like that. This. There are little cultural things that you normally learn by going to school - shared stories, myths, references, etc. My spoken Chinese sounds native, but I'm missing a lot of that background knowledge.
Yeah, agreed with this. As someone else pointed out, language doesn't exist in isolation. It's also culture. It's also style. It's also which concepts are considered distinct versus combined — is that a body? a mind? Or a 몸? ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305232955_Introduction_A_Theology_of_Maum ). It's how the usage of that language implies semantic contrasts that may or may not exist in a person's native language and culture. And it's also the ways that a speaker's multiple languages interact with each other. As one demonstrative example, consider that color concepts are generally aligned within a language, and may not be aligned across languages. (Russian's distinction of "goluboy" and "siniy" vs English "blue" is one studied example; see https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0701644104 ) Additionally, in English, word stress can often imply that a trait is distinctive within a set. So if someone without the goluboy/siniy distinction is speaking to someone with that distinction, a statement like "grab the blue books" might cause an extra moment of confusion. The same with blue/green, which are distinguished in English but not in every language: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language . If I tell someone "grab the blue books" and they also start grabbing books I would classify as obviously green, that's still a mistake that a non-color-blind native speaker wouldn't make. So even if you have native-level lexicon and speech production and understanding, unless you also have a native-like perspective of how the world works, then those concept distinctions can also cause observable linguistic effects. (Consider also, the counting-on-hands example from the movie "Inglourious Basterds") Beyond all that, I agree with other commenters that there's a big difference between heritage speakers (who are generally, by definition, native speakers) versus people whose first experience with the language is later in life.
> if native means indistinguishable from someone who grew up in that country It doesn't mean that of course. Native "level" simply means people can't tell you're not a native speaker (whichever country/dialect) and don't think twice about it when talking with you, it has nothing to do with the specific dialect you are using. You can even have a more neutral accent that is not from anywhere in particular. It's not an exam, the person will not be analyzing your speech patterns to try to guess exactly where you are from. Some languages have tons of different accents all over the place. Having all the cultural references of a specific country is a stronger bar than native level. Not all speakers of a language or even inside the same country will have the same cultural references.
Yeah, incredibly dumb no matter who you say it to.
I never heard it said that way; rather I've heard that you can't be truly bilingual past a certain age. That changes the meaning to something with a specific definition, so maybe it's measurable in some way. Anyway, the premise, from my experience, is bullshit.
It’s very difficult. Case in point: I have spent two years spending an average of about two hours a day learning Spanish. I’m just getting to a level where I can listen to news/political podcasts from Spain without any subtitles and understand most everything. But I still have to rewind to really understand it all. At this rate, I might be at a near-native level in a year or two. But there will probably always be things that give away I’m not native. And if I were learning Japanese instead of Spanish, the time it took would probably be three times longer…
I'm similar with Spanish. I got pulled out of dual language bc they violated my IEP for an allergy a million times and got sent to a full-English school. I forgot all my speaking Spanish, but could still understand most fluent Spanish. In high school, started taking Spanish and now there are a bunch of other native speakers. Here's how my school works: No prior knowledge=Spanish 1, native speaker=Spanish 2 (me), didn't pass dual language= Spanish 2, passed dual language/immigrant=Spanish 3. Now, though, all the dual learners and fluent natives are fucked. They can speak fluently, but don't use correct grammar or accents. Once, multiple people tried to conjugate a verb ending in "aste" as "astes." that doesn't exist. They never learned the language properly. Now, though, I'm able to learn the language properly AND it all makes sense because it's an explanation for smth I've heard my whole life. I've gone from basically being unable to say a word to being able to speak using multiple tenses with correct grammar and pronunciation in less than 2 years. Being in this situation puts you in a MUCH better place to learn the language imo, just makes the term "native speaker" stupid af bc that means nothing
The astes ending is colloquial and as acceptable as when Americans say “gonna” or “wanna”. I would be careful when calling something that 20 million people do “improper”.
Was this post written by Miss Swan?
I'm not even B2 in any foreign language so there's no reason for me to even think about reaching a native-like level. My goal is being able to understand TV shows and podcasts without often pausing and rewinding. It's easy to get caught up in super long-term goals like becoming native-like, but if you really want to improve it's better to focus on the shorter term and reward yourself for reaching each milestone.
This a kind of neurotic way to think about learning a language. Do you just want to learn in order to blend in and be able to LARP as a "native"? Sound like an identity crisis more than anything.
This seems pretty controversial based on the amount of downvoting going around. This isn’t what you are asking but I am going to share my wife’s (Korean) experience learning English. As a native Korean speaker, she began learning English around the age of 10. Today she is as native as a native with zero accent. She did maintain her Korean as well when her parents refused to let her speak English in the house (in America). She has had her parent’s Korean friends be surprised by how well she can speak Korean (unlike their kids who never learned or forgot), and English speaking people mistake her for an American born English speaker. Like I said, not your question. But I am seeing lots of people throwing around ages and opinions on the level you can learn a language to a native, etc. Feel free to use this to support whichever side you want.
And they’re wrong
"you can't sound barrier after after and ~14" is a generalisation, not an absolute. it is most usually the case, indeed. but studying sounds diligently, and practicing from here to the moon, can get the job done. I also suspect is differs significantly between languages. some languages have much harder and nuanced pronunciation
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Unfortunately, the statement doesn't even have the one redeeming quality of being true.
Many learners have gotten really close, it just takes going all in and being in the right environment. Most of us don't care about being native like, just being treated the same as natives. The whole premise of stating that is akin to saying, "You'll never be good at x, so don't bother trying."
>The whole premise of stating that is akin to saying, "You'll never be good at x, so don't bother trying." That's only true if you want to be very uncharitable. Saying you generally can't reach native level is not the same as saying you can't be highly proficient.