native level

[rezaf]

First of all I think Dashan's choice of vocabulary and phrasing is even a little bit above average Chinese speakers in general but of course there are always very few moments that his pronunciation is a little bit off and his phrasing gets a little bit non-native probably because his mind-set is not Chinese. Secondly as Renzhe mentioned it has only been 20 or 30 years since a good number of westerners started to learn Chinese in a serious way and even now there are very few westerners who actually aim for getting close to native level and spend 10 years putting a lot of effort for that. Also there is a big need for better study materials and teachers for Chinese as the current situation is not very good. Finally I think there is a lot of stuff missing in the process that most foreigners learn Chinese as they don’t have to memorize and learn other things like biology, math, history, etc. in Chinese and I think I am very lucky that I study 中医 and 西医 here because at a higher level they cover almost all the important courses that students learn at school.

Anyway I promise that five and a half years later (if I'm still alive) I will dig up this thread and somehow prove that it's possible.

[Silent]

Funny how this thread rekindles again and how pretty much the same statements are made again without any serious consideration of what is said and asked.

I completely agree with tooironic that there is a lack of definition in this thread. Earlier someone basicly equaled language skills with pronunciation. If accent is the criterium I think it's fairly easy to become better than the average Chinese. With the regional differences of China the adult foreign learner has a good chance to be closer to standard pronunciation. Also, if children learn by osmosis so easily, why do I see so few multilingual kids in the poor neighborhoods where it's a melting pot of languages? As I stated before, in the long run children will win as they have a clear advantage in pronunciation provided they make a real effort to learn. Many natives don't really care and/or don't put in more effort than requiered for their school diploma. This makes it possible for a motivated student who puts in the effort to catch up despite the headstart of the native.

Personally I'm not interested in the language skills after 10, 20, 30 years. For me it's relevant how long it takes to get a good practical command of the language for all common situations. A native could also decide to learn eternally, to learn the entire dictionary. With a headstart of 20, 30 years or more there's no way you'll ever pass the level that natives that study hard can reach. I'm not interested in competing with natives or non-natives over language skills. To me language skills are only a tool for communicating.

[jkhsu]

However, I think most 10-year old Chinese children could speak better Chinese than most western learners after 10 years, if we consider other aspects as well, such as correct and appropriate grammar, fluency and naturalness (and also pronunciation, which I think should be included).

And furthermore, I think over the following, say, 5 year period, it would be much easier for the 10-year old child to make up for his deficit compared with the foreign adult than the other way round.

I have to say that I tend to agree with this. While I believe the primary advantage that a child has over an adult is in pronunciation, there is still a naturalness in grammar and expression that can't be ignored when comparing to native level fluency.

As I've mentioned in my previous posts, the best way to debate the children vs adult learning issue is to compare adult language learners of your native language that you've met with native level high school kids. Instead of trying to figure out if Da Shan is speaking native level Chinese, most of us are much better judges of whether someone else is speaking our native language like a native. The best way is to compare someone who has had no exposure in your language until they were adults; and preferably from a language background that is not related to your language.

Can someone show me some video / audio clips of natural conversations between someone who learned English as an adult (and who has had no previous exposure to English) with other native English speakers? I'd like to see if I can tell the difference.

[Silent]

I'd like to see if I can tell the difference.

Speaking like a native is imho different from native level. Telling the difference is usually easy. But again we lack definition. I mean no-one is going to debate that people from the UK, US and Australia are native English speakers. Still, they speak English in different ways. The fact that it's often fairly easy to distinguish whether someone is from the UK, US or Australia is no indication of their language skills. The same for the non natives. It may be easy to distinguish them, that does not mean the skill level is lower. It just means they makes other mistakes and have a different choice of vocabulary and sentence patterns due to the difference in background and culture.

But if this is the criterium, I've seen messages overhere that natives were not believing them if they told they were foreigners while chatting online and I think even on the phone. So those people apparently have native level as natives can't distinguish them.

[jkhsu]

I mean no-one is going to debate that people from the UK, US and Australia are native English speakers.

I'm not talking about pronunciation differences in native English speakers. I can tell if a native English speaker is speaking "native" level English even if that speaker is from the UK (and not the USA, where I am at) but I might not be able to tell the difference between a person who is speaking with a standard UK accent vs someone with a slight Irish accent or even an Australian accent. That part, I am not worried about.

But if this is the criterium, I've seen messages overhere that natives were not believing them if they told they were foreigners while chatting online and I think even on the phone.

Chatting online I believe but over the phone probably less likely. Is there anyone here who believes their Chinese is at the native pronunciation level? Want to post some audio clips? The problem is, that can still be rehearsed. The only way is a natural conversation with another native speaker where you have to think and speak on the fly.

[Silent]

I can tell if a native English speaker is speaking "native" level

On what basis do you tell whether it's native level or not? How do you define native level?

If I remember well you clearly stated before that the accent of older learners is a barrier to reach native level or at least to learn a language better then younger learners. What's the difference between the non native accent and the accent of British and Australian people? How about people from Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria etc where English is an official language and commonly used in daily live? Though English is learned at a very young age or even from birth, their pronunciation and choice of sentence structure are far from 'standard' English. Do they speak native English? Can you distinguish between them and an african who learned English as a second or third language?

[jkhsu]

On what basis do you tell whether it's native level or not? How do you define native level?

When I made that statement, I defined "native English level" as the level at which typical US native English speakers converse at. It's not something that I can quantify or explain in detail. It's a feeling that you get when you talk to someone. And it could be different based on one's own English level as well.

Let me give you a few examples from my experience. I've met several people from our UK and Australian offices. While their accents are different from US speakers, I didn't have any issues communicating with them. "Issues" is probably too harsh of a term to use here. I should say that at no point did I feel the comfort level of talking to them was any different than talking to native US English speakers. There was also one ethnic Chinese who grew up in Australia and spoke perfect English (with an Australian accent of course). I can clearly tell the difference when talking to recent ethnic Chinese immigrants (who came to the USA as adults) vs. talking to the ethnic Chinese person from Australia, even though both have accents. It was a lot easier to talk to the one from Australia. And of course, we also have many Asian Americans who grew up in the USA and speak native level English with little or no accents at all.

When you ask, "What's the difference between the non native accent and the accent of British and Australian people", you make it seem as if it's common that someone has a learner's accent but speaks perfect English in every other way. However, from experience and what I've observed, that's not common. Those who speak native level English will probably have one of those accents from the US, UK, Australia, India, Singapore, etc. They usually grew up in one of those places where they spoke English as a kid and throughout life. There are exceptions of course, but it's not the norm.

I did some searches and found 3 Asian news reporters with American accents: one from CCTV, one (formerly) from CNN and one from ABC News in the USA. If I talked to each of them for 15 minutes or so, I can definitely tell that the reporter from CCTV probably did not grow up in the USA and is not at native English level to me. The other two are at native US English levels to me.

1. Emily Chang - She's a former journalist for CNN. She was born in the USA and I am not sure if her mother is Chinese. She's about as native US English level as you can get.

http://en.wikipedia....ang_(journalist)

(Incidentally, this video talks about Lou Jing, a half Chinese / half African American who grew up in China and seems to speak native level Chinese.)

2. Juju Chang - She was born in Korea and came to the USA when she was 4 years old. Again, native US English level. http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Juju_Chang

3. Wang YiZhi - She's a CCTV reporter with a pretty good US English accent (among CCTV reporters). But, I can still tell that she didn't grow up in the USA. I could not find her bio but if it turns out that she in fact has not even studied in the USA, then her English is pretty impressive. However, I can still tell her apart from the other two; not just her accent but her level of English.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=P26lz_mOzhw

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=esOSM7EH-_g

Here's a video of a Chinese girl who came to the USA when she was 6 years old and is now working in Beijing. I would say her accent is native US English level as well and I couldn't tell her apart from Emily Chang or Juju Chang. If you fast forward to 2:00 minutes in, you can see her saying some Chinese. Her Chinese accent seems pretty good too.

I have no experience with people from Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, etc. However, if it feels just as confortable talking to them as talking to native US English speakers, then I'd classify them at native English level as well. Whether or not a country's official language is English is out of my control.

[daofeishi]

When I made that statement, I defined "native English level" as the level at which typical US native English speakers converse at. It's not something that I can quantify or explain in detail. It's a feeling that you get when you talk to someone

This is actually a big problem to language learners. There are a lot of non-native speakers who are highly competent in their second language, but because of the listener's preconceptions they are seen as being less competent than they actually are. They can have a great command of the finer nuances of grammar and wording, but because they speak with an accent, they are perceived as not being fully competent conversation partners.

I have heard discussions about culture and language, where the non-native-speaker's dissent was chalked up to "not having grown up there/not fully understanding the culture/being confused about the language used in the discussion," when the same arguments used by a native speaker were considered fully valid. I have also overheard people being stopped mid-sentence by others who were not paying attention to what they were saying, and instead of continuing the conversation the way they would with a native speaker, starting to inquire about something completely unrelated, like where the non-native speaker grew up or where he/she learned the language.

I am therefore really cautious about judging people based on their accent. Sometimes, the only reason we see someone as not being a fully competent conversation partner is our own inherent bias.

I wonder if people who grow up with speech impediments have to struggle with the same problem..

[daofeishi]

Nobody has ever provided hard evidence that there is a change in the brain which causes adults to stop being able to acquire grammar and vocabulary. Electrodes, CAT scans, brain imaging... This is understandable, considering that language is perhaps THE highest cognitive ability of all, and these are very difficult to measure with electrodes. These are also something you can't measure in monkeys or cats. Still, until I see such evidence, I'll continue being sceptical.

Well, adults obviously do not stop acquiring language and grammar, but I think Pinker makes a good case that a child's brain codifies and solidifies grammar in a better way than an adult brain does. CAT scans and the like are not needed here, since measuring an effect and figuring out the cause of that effect are two different things. It is not that difficult to measure how adults and chidren do compared to each other in different areas of language learning, while also taking other relevant variables into account. In the studies that have been done, adults perform worse even when accounting for other discrepancies. The effect seems to be real. If that is because of changes in the brain, and if so exactly where in the brain, might be hard to say, but I think it is hard to deny that the difference is there.

When you go on to say that all children do is to learn a language, and that the reason adults don't learn languages as well as children do is because they learn it in a different setting, you are very close to making he same point as I was trying to. Children are magnets to language structure. They learn language while being potty trained, while walking on the street, unconsciously overhearing other people and while playing hide and seek. They do not have to actively engage in the learning process. An adult learning a language will not be able to extract language information the same way. I think that even an adult who spends as much time engaging with the language as a child does would do worse than the child, simply because he is unable to extract language information the way the child does. He might not do worse than the child in terms of understanding things that require previous knowledge; an adult learner of Chinese might understand the social implications of Lu Xun's writings better than an 8 year old; but that is because of a knowledge gap and has little to do with language ability per se. Judged by the knowledge of grammatical stucture and linguistic fingerspitzengefühl, I am pretty sure the child would do better, even if the adult and the child were judged by the same standards. I think Spelke and Pinker present a lot of good evidence to support that hypothesis. That means that the adult has lost something in terms of language ability that must be compensated for.

[xiaocai]

But if this is the criterium, I've seen messages overhere that natives were not believing them if they told they were foreigners while chatting online and I think even on the phone. So those people apparently have native level as natives can't distinguish them.

How about people from Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria etc where English is an official language and commonly used in daily live?

This is one thing I think interesting. You may have realised that many Chinese people do NOT speak Mandarin as their first language. Even linguistically majority of northern Chinese dialects are classified as members of the Mandarin family, but any of you who has been to China will notice the difference of them between the standard Mandarin you hear on TV or Chinese learning material. And when it comes to southern China, where standard Mandarin is almost like a foreign language to their mother tongue, dialectical influence will become much more obvious and almost everyone will speak standard Mandarin with some degree of local accents. These accents are different from the native accents in English, i.e. American English, British English, etc, but more similar to accents formed from the influence of other languages. As a matter of fact, standard Mandarin is almost artificial that most so called "native Chinese speakers" have to undergo training to be able to speak it, properly . As a result, I think, the definition of native Chinese accent, is kind of ambiguous and to a point that even the existence of it is hard to determine.

[carlo]

The keyword here is “level of comfort”. Children are better at picking up subliminal cues that make them seem as part of the ingroup. Adults may be more efficient in other ways. Anyway, when my son was two I could speak any language better than him, so that’s one up for the old man.

[jkhsu]

There are a lot of non-native speakers who are highly competent in their second language, but because of the listener's preconceptions they are seen as being less competent than they actually are. They can have a great command of the finer nuances of grammar and wording, but because they speak with an accent, they are perceived as not being fully competent conversation partners.

You bring up a good point. There are two types of people you are describing: (1) those who are competent in reading and writing but not as competent in conversation and (2) those who are actually fully competent in reading, writing and conversation but have an accent.

For (2), I don't think I would overlook their English abilities while talking to them. I remember a French person I used to work with who spoke English with a heavy accent. His conversational English was great and he'd crack jokes and make funny remarks all the time. Just from talking to him, I'd say his English ability is the same as native speakers in the US.

However, for (1), I can't rate that person at native English level if they lack the conversational skills of a native speaker. I've actually met a few Chinese students in grad school who fell into this category. They actually got higher scores in the English section of entrance exams than native English speakers but once you talk to them, they couldn't really hold a conversation. They could all read and write fine though. This is probably true for many of the Chinese learners here as well.

[renzhe]

While their accents are different from US speakers, I didn't have any issues communicating with them. "Issues" is probably too harsh of a term to use here. I should say that at no point did I feel the comfort level of talking to them was any different than talking to native US English speakers.

There are literally millions of people out there who can speak English at this level. They are often not given the credit due to their accent.

When you ask, "What's the difference between the non native accent and the accent of British and Australian people", you make it seem as if it's common that someone has a learner's accent but speaks perfect English in every other way. However, from experience and what I've observed, that's not common.

In my experience, this is quite common. It will, however depend on who you tend to speak to. If you attend a research conference in any field, you will meet plenty. Many foreign-born lecturers at UK universities fit the description.

"Common" does not mean that a majority of learners achieve that level, just that it is not all that rare.

[renzhe]

CAT scans and the like are not needed here, since measuring an effect and figuring out the cause of that effect are two different things. It is not that difficult to measure how adults and chidren do compared to each other in different areas of language learning, while also taking other relevant variables into account. In the studies that have been done, adults perform worse even when accounting for other discrepancies.

I don't think that any study really accounted for all the discrepancies.

I don't say that it's impossible that changes in the brain caused by aging and/or development detrimentally influence language learning ability ("stop" is too harsh a word, I am referring to a significant degradation of language learning ability). But there is still no hard evidence.

Hard evidence would be great -- we could understand why some people learn faster, how multilingual children differ from monolingual ones, and whether it affects the ability to learn languages later in life. We would know if adults learn languages differently, and how this matters. It would do wonders for language teaching. That would be great even if it proved me wrong, because we'd learn important things. Vague theories about how adults can't learn well do not help anybody in any way.

Now, I know that it is possible to learn a foreign language as an adult to a level high enough to enable you to comfortably do pretty much anything you would be able to do in your mother tongue. That, to me, is a good measure of native-level fluency, even if the accent can be figured out by some people in some contexts. Since I know that this is very much possible, I'm not too worried about theories saying that it isn't.

[realmayo]

Vague theories about how adults can't learn well do not help anybody in any way.

I think this is an unfair characterisation. Adults can learn fine, especially if they're intelligent and motivated and have lots of time. Children learn at least as well, whether they try or not!

As for this suggestion (sourced from where?) that children spend 10x the amount of time learning a language as adults do, that's clearly not true.

If you're saying adults and children learn language in basically the same way, in that they're both getting exposure, both applying their intelligence to solve a problem, well you must also think that two-year olds are as intelligent as adults. But that would suggest that a child doesn't need to "learn" intelligence, it doesn't need to "develop", it just needs to be supplied with facts.

But if you are saying this, aren't you saying that the great leaps of progress observed by children's brains ought to be possible for adults too? That the improvements in intelligence of a child between the ages of 2 and 8 should also be seen in adults of the ages of 42 and 48 too? That brain scans should show the brain growing at the same rate?

If you're saying that actually children aren't as intelligent as adults and that they need time and other processes to develop their intelligence, to develop their very brain itself, surely it's no leap at all to say that language, as a key part of early childhood developement, is subject to the same process? In fact, wouldn't it be odder if this wasn't true?

This doesn't mean that adults can't learn to be completely fluent in one or more foreign languages. But it's a different process.

renzhe, no one is telling you that, as an adult, you're always going to be pretty rubbish when you speak in another language. Relax!

But anyway, perhaps there's no point discussing whether or not a hypothesis (Pinker's etc) is useful to explain observations (that children pick up languages far quicker and with far better pronunciation than adults) when

(a) you are only interested in proof delivered by brain scans and

(b) you don't agree with the observations in question anyway!

Well, adults obviously do not stop acquiring language and grammar, but I think Pinker makes a good case that a child's brain codifies and solidifies grammar in a better way than an adult brain does.

Agree completely. And he gives good reasons too, detailed earlier by several people.

[xiaocai]

Not trying to be discouraging, but I just want to raise one more point.

Take my parents as example. They have relative strong accent when they speak Mandarin. I am pretty sure Da Shan, and I suppose may of our forum members, can speak standard Mandarin better than they do.

However, they

1) almost never make mistakes when it comes to tones. If they do, it is usually because they don't know the correct tone. So even they mispronounce some character, you will notice the consistency.

2) can eat dinner while talking to me and watching TV shows ranging from children's programs such as 喜洋洋和灰太狼 to fast paced variety shows to dramas with lots of references such as 武林外传 with ease.

3) can argue with each other, over various topics, at a very fast speed without too much thinking and make too many mistakes for at least 10 minutes, in standard Mandarin.

So, how many adult Mandarin learners do you think can achieve these in 2, or even 10 years?

[skylee]

Some people just can't eat and talk at the same time. Besides, 食不言.

[xiaocai]

Well, I don't know, but I dread to think having dinner in a dead silence.

After a brief search, I found this old thread. What can I say? Now I am ashamed that I grew up in an impoverished, diversified and lower class population...

[renzhe]

But if you are saying this, aren't you saying that the great leaps of progress observed by children's brains ought to be possible for adults too?

This is a very convoluted way of arguing. Which parts of children's brains? They are very different, and they develop very differently.

There are areas of the brain that are pre-programmed and will always turn out a certain way, and there are those which develop and form as you age. For example, the striate cortex in the primate vision system is preprogrammed. It works exactly the same way in infant monkeys and adults. Higher areas in the extrastriate cortex (V4 and V5/MT) develop as the primate ages -- which is why blind people who gain vision late in life have no problem detecting edges and corners (V1), but fail to learn new complex shapes (V2-V4). Some parts of vision are exactly the same for young and old, some are different, and subject to development. Still, an adult who passed the development stages of V2-V4-IT-PFC can learn new categories and shapes and continues to do so until old age. Here is a link describing this: http://cnil.bham.ac.uk/pdfs/zk_MagResImg_06.pdf

This is the sort of knowledge that is useful and clear. If you deprive children of visual stimuli while growing up, they never gain the skill, and we know why, and can measure the difference. If you don't deprive them of visual stimuli, their brains develop well, and they retain the ability to learn new visual vocabulary well into old age. Complex visual vocabulary is essentially a grammar of visual words and is often modelled as such by vision researchers (see, for example http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~sczhu/papers/Grammar_quest.pdf).

Why do you think that it is different for learning languages? If you support a child during early life and foster their language development (for example, by raising them to be bilingual or trilingual), why do you think that their language-learning ability will drastically drop after a while? You can argue that this is what the studies indicate, but it is certainly possible that the causes are not in the brain, but elsewhere. All the relevant areas of the brain dealing with language are already developed, and other areas of the brain continue learning just fine. There are games that are based on memory, and learning new shapes, and children do not do better than adults in those. They don't do better on word memorisation tasks either.

So yeah, I can certainly imagine that there might be a brain-based. I can also imagine that it is purely environmental. But I'd rather not have to imagine.

[rezaf]

So, how many adult Mandarin learners do you think can achieve these in 10 years?

How many adult Mandarin learners do you know who have actually spent 10 years on learning Mandarin? In my experience even those very motivated learners stop trying as hard as they used to after a few years and then they slow down. However those who are motivated and do a university degree in China have an advantage(although most of them also get lazy after a few years). I know a Korean guy who is finishing his master's degree in TCM and except for his accent (which is pretty good) I don't think there is any big difference between him and a Chinese student. He started learning Mandarin as an adult and his secret is that he never got lazy. Also his knowledge of classical Chinese is pretty amazing. I know that Koreans may have a very small advantage over westerners but still it's motivating.