Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

How to say hasta luego to language barriers

Preschool Spanish Class

Paul Takahashi

Classrooms are labeled in Spanish and English at the Henderson International School on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012. The private school in Green Valley started offering Spanish classes to preschoolers three years ago so students could video-conference with its sister school in Mexico.

UNLV linguist Deborah Arteaga, a 24-year professor at UNLV, speaks six languages fluently and is regarded by her peers as a leading linguist in the Western United States.

She considers English and Spanish her native tongues — languages she was taught as a toddler. The rest, her four “second languages,” she learned during high school, college and graduate school. She hopes her UNLV students, mostly native English speakers, can have lifelong language-learning experiences.

“People who learn languages come across as more creative, and they’re able to see the world with a new perspective,” she said. “In today’s world, we all need to see the world from different viewpoints.”

The best time for a person to learn and “own” a language, studies suggest, is before puberty, when brain development, also known as plasticity, is at its highest.

“A child doesn’t distinguish, it doesn’t matter what language you expose them to — Chinese, Arabic, Russian,” she said. “They can pick all of them up or they can pick none of them up, depending on how much input and interaction they have with each language.”

Language learning theory

Lenneberg’s Critical Period Hypothesis: In one of the most referred-to theories in linguistics, German neurologist Eric Lenneberg claimed the plasticity of an undeveloped brain allows younger people to learn a second language more easily than adults. He theorized that if a language was not learned by puberty, some aspects of it couldn’t fully be mastered with a native-level fluency and accent, even though many parts of the language still could be acquired.

Brain geography

Language acquisition occurs mostly in the left hemisphere of the brain: in Broca’s area, near the front of the left hemisphere, and Wernicke’s area, in the back of the left hemisphere. The centrally located hippocampus, which controls memory and emotion, also is expanded by language learning.

Diseases in the two areas of the brain have proven to affect language comprehension and speech:

• Broca’s aphasia, known also as “non-fluent” or “expressive aphasia.” People with Broca’s aphasia know what they want to say but can’t correctly speak words or sentences. Speech and writing expression is “severely reduced” compared to a person with a fully functioning Broca’s area, according to the American Heart Association.

• Wernicke’s aphasia. Those with Wernicke’s aphasia produce fluent and connected speech that makes sense to them but nobody else. Those with Wernicke’s aphasia don’t know the words they’re saying are nonsensical, and they may have severe trouble understanding what’s being said to them.

“Second” languages

Learning a second language enhances a person’s ability to speak his or her native language, Arteaga said, because it expands the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with memory and emotion. But as the post-puberty language learner’s brain has already passed its most significant stages of development, teens and adults need “targeted instruction” to learn.

Linguists Johanna Karlsson, a professor of Swedish and Danish in UCLA’s Scandinavian section, and Chan Lu, a professor of Mandarin Chinese in Loyola Marymount University’s modern language department, called communication-based study the most “modern” approach for language learners.

If students can’t travel abroad to become immersed in a language, the professors say, conversation with classmates, tutors, teachers and media tools offers the closest comparison at home in the United States.

“The best way to learn is by having a lot of conversation and using the language constantly,” Karlsson said.

Which languages are easiest to learn?

Native English speakers tend to learn Germanic languages, such as German, Dutch and Swedish, easiest because of their similarity to English.

Native Spanish speakers in Las Vegas do better with romance languages, such as French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian, because of the languages’ shared Latin roots.

But that doesn’t mean other languages are off limits. Languages from Mandarin to Swahili are attainable for language learners of all ages, with the proper amount of input and dedication to learning their more important phrases and aspects, Arteaga said.

“There’s no reason that adults can’t learn the language they want to learn,” she said. “They’re just different.”

How you can learn a foreign language

Programs in the 
Las Vegas Valley include:

• A posting board at UNLV’s Language Resource Center allows students and members of the public to search for language exchange conversation partners. The majority of lab users are international students whose native language is not English, director Gerry Hartig said.

• Meetup.com offers groups practicing Spanish, French, Chinese, Italian, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian and Korean.

• Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada offers daily English language programs open to the public, and to members of its Migration and Refugee program. Native English speakers are encouraged to volunteer, and in turn receive the chance to interact with native speakers of different languages around the world.

• Other local outreach programs, such as College of Southern Nevada’s adult literacy and language program, provide free ESL classes to Nevada residents. Native English speakers are welcome to practice foreign languages with native speakers.

Other strategies:

• Language learning software, such as Rosetta Stone, incorporates basic vocabulary and expressions with pictures and symbols.

• Books, such as “Spanish for Dummies,” also offer basic grammar pronunciation and everyday phrases. The “for Dummies” series comes with an audio CD.

• Websites, such as italki.com and DuoLingo.com, allow users to chat with native speakers from other countries, or purchase tutoring lessons.

• Mobile apps, such as LiveMocha, Busuu, FluentU, OpenLanguage and MindSnacks, offer live chatting with native speakers as well as programmed voice and vocabulary exercises.

• Movies, television and music mix culture into language learning and offer insight into familiar conversation and slang words.

Spanglish and
 code-switching

A colloquial mixing of Spanish and English, known as Spanglish, is used by 70 percent of U.S. Hispanics aged 16 to 25, according to a 2009 Pew study.

It’s called code switching, and Arteaga credits Latino pop singers such as Enrique Iglesias, who code switches in popular songs “Bailamos,” “El Perdedor,” and “Bailando,” among other hit songs, for popularizing it. Arteaga encourages parents of bilingual children to embrace code-switching.

“It’s not because they don’t know how to distinguish between languages,” she said. “They do it because they can.”

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