Re:Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
by duckmysick on Saturday December 10, 2022 @06:11AM
(#33931643)
> 99.99% of the population picked up their mother tongue just like everybody else.
They have - over the course of many years, completely submerged in the environment of their mother tongue, when they had an abundance of leisure time.
Re:Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
by aaron_m04 on Saturday December 10, 2022 @12:27PM
(#33934498)
Not to mention their brains had more plasticity than an adult's.
Re:Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
by remarkEon on Saturday December 10, 2022 @04:37PM
(#33937090)
The ability to learn languages is measurable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Aptitude_Batt...
I’d push back on this idea, and instead say that some people learn really well from the current tools, and some people can’t.
99.99% of the population picked up their mother tongue just like everybody else. Naturally there are differences in the population, but I would posit that if you learned a language once (or twice or three times - I know trilingual people who insist they can’t learn a foreign language because they failed Duolingo Spanish) you can learn a language again.
My bias is that I’m working on an alternative language learning tool now - one aimed at ‘language acquisition’ over ‘language learning’, or basically how can you learn a language by just talking/listening to native speakers. Aimed at those who have finished traditional courses and want to master a language, or those who have tried traditional courses and find it didn’t mentally agree with them.