Page 25 - ELG1806 June Issue 458

FEATURES & COMMENT

learnt a language in a classroom, but I speak The whole argument about ‘native-
three Romance languages. speaker-like’ competence seems to me to be
I acquired all of them by natural a waste of time.
immersion while living in the country. Unless you are an immigrant in an
I acquired the first one aged six, when I English-speaking country, why would
found myself the only English speaker in a you even bother to attempt that level of
French primary school, and just had to get proficiency?
on with it. Because whatever else we don’t know
I didn’t spend any time worrying about about language acquisition, we know that it
learning French, I was too busy worrying takes a hell of a long time.
about learning about Merovingian kings in The whole argument
French and thus avoiding the wrath of the
dreaded history teacher. about ‘native-speaker-like’
I am, I have been told, a lapsed bilingual.
I still have a good French accent – though I competence seems to
notice my Parisian guttural [ʁ] isn’t what it me to be a waste of time.
used to be.
My knowledge of grammaticality is pretty Unless you are an immigrant
native-like and absolutely automatised
though, like most French eight-year-olds, I in an English-speaking
can’t do the past historic or the imperfect country why would you
subjunctive.
My vocabulary is pathetic. I can talk even bother to attempt that
about toys, food and King Clovis’s wife, level of proficiency?
but the minute the conversation turns to
grown-up stuff like politics, narcotics or sex
I am lost. A native-speaker child has 5,000 hours of
When I first meet French people input before they make their first sentence.
they think I am French but appallingly An immigrant child enrolled in school in
uneducated. the UK or the US aged five or six will take
Nobody thinks I am Spanish or Italian. between five and seven years of English
I acquired both languages in my early medium schooling, to catch up with native
twenties and although I did not learn them speaker peers.
in a classroom I certainly acquired them Why would the government of Spain, or
explicitly. Germany or China, want to give that kind
I set out to do it. of time in the school curriculum to learning
I can remember wandering around a second language?
Madrid talking to people in a mixture After all, a good B2 with a wonky but
of French and Spanish and asking them comprehensible accent and the ability to
explicitly to fill in my missing grammar: read academic books in English is normally
‘What is the third person singular of the the most you really need.
present tense of the verb decir?’ Take the Dutch. They don’t start
My vocabulary is pretty strong; I can teaching the L2 until kids are ten, explain
discourse on politics for hours. My grammar grammar explicitly, use lots of L1 in the
is full of holes but I get by. classroom but don’t dub their television.
My accent is perfectly comprehensible – They get most kids to B2 in two foreign
I can trill my rs like a Madrileño or a Roman language by the age of 15.
but some phonemes are still noticeably What is wrong with that?
foreign. Who are these goddam American
start learning their target language until Nobody ever thinks I am English, though, professors to tell you it’s impossible to learn
late in life and achieve native-speaker because everyone knows the English- a language explicitly?
competence. speakers can’t speak other languages. Who are all these monolingual native
I’m sure there are, but to judge by the As the French say: What do we call a speakers telling you that you are doing it all
Pinker study the odds against doing so are person who speaks many languages? A wrong? Just do whatever works to get the
400,000 to one. multilingual. largest possible number of kids to the level
The odds for immigrant kids entering And what do we call a person who speaks you need them to be with the skills you
school in their host community under the two languages? A bilingual. need them to have.
age of 12 by contrast, are brilliant. Most And a person who speaks one language? And do it in the fastest and most
of them will end up at the same level as An English-speaker. effective way. English belongs to the world,
simultaneous bilinguals – though it will take I am not a typical English-speaker. I am a not just to the native speakers.
them a few years longer. serial acquirer. But I do not have native-like
My own personal experience, for what it’s mastery of either Spanish or Italian. Was
worth, is that you can acquire a language that because I was too old when I started to
naturally as an adult. But I have no idea learn them?
if you can easily reach native-speaker Possibly. But then I am not sure it was MELANIE BUTLER
competence. But then, I have no idea why ever my intention to reach that level. Editor at large
you would want to. I didn’t need to. In France I was an @MelanieButler_E
I am a serial acquirer of languages. Apart immigrant child. In Italy and Spain I was an
from some basic school Latin, I have never itinerant English teacher passing through.
editorial@elgazette.com 25

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