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IAmTriscuit t1_j4gv3wz wrote

Reply to comment by 5slipsandagully in What it means to “know” a language by thenousman

Man is it painful to be a sociolinguist and read this thread. People really like to throw the critical period hypothesis around without really thinking about how absurd it would be if it was definitively true that someone just can't learn a language after a certain age.

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5slipsandagully t1_j4iwpn2 wrote

My understanding is that you can obviously learn a language after a certain age, but that learning happens differently later in life than in early childhood

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IAmTriscuit t1_j4ixe85 wrote

Yeah, absolutely it does. A huge part of additional language teaching is learning exactly how those differences manifest and what teachers can do to best navigate those challenges and differences. But it is undoubtedly, 100 percent possible for someone to learn a language well past the "critical period".

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marenicolor t1_j4kf9lp wrote

But not for first language acquisition. This has been shown in studies of children who experienced extreme neglect. Perhaps the original commenter was mixing up information they've heard and applied it to learning additional languages. I agree this thread has been painful to read because nearly everyone is making the incorrect assumption that first language acquisition = learning a second, foreign language.

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