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Comment on Are the languages that can be fluently spoken only if you are descendent of a particular community/country ?

Sorry that is not what I’m asking. Of course anyone can learn skills. But there are certain mannerisms that are imprinted on us because we are from a certain community.

My question is if there exists a language that let’s say among two children (one from the same country, but one from a different one) going through the same upbringing, but only non-native child cannot be as fluent as the native child ?

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solrize@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The human vocal tract is about the same across ethnic groups, if that is what you are asking.

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- red_pigeon@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  May be. Would things like facial structure impact the fluency of the language ?
  
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  - solrize@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I guess there can be cultural differences that are reflected in language but I still don’t understand quite what you are asking. Do you mean same locality but different culture?
    
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    red_pigeon@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No. Non native. But brought up in the same culture. I guess it didn’t make a difference then. Chatgpt gave a weird response, so I thought I’d check with people with more knowledge about this.
    
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  - lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Usually, difficulty to learn a language is caused by:
    
    not speaking a similar language. Because then there’s less features to correctly transfer from your other languages to the target language.
    
    relative lack of resources available to learn said language. Including native speakers willing to chat with you in the language, instead of shifting to a common language.
    
    how much time and effort you spend productively interacting with that language, and how necessary it is for you to learn it.
    
    Another thing, relevant in the light of other comments: language is mostly what’s inside our heads, not our mouths. Small differences in the vocal tract can affect a bit our pronunciation - like the pitch, or ability to pronounce specific sounds, but in the big picture they’re mostly irrelevant and “abstracted out” - it’s like when you’re writing, it doesn’t stop being written [Mandarin|English|Spanish|etc.] because you used a red pen instead of a black pen, you know?
    
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JoBo@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No. Kids work out language from exposure. Baby babbling is them working out how to make the sounds they hear. Sounds which don’t exist in a first-and-only language are hard for adults to learn but any child brought up hearing those sounds will be able to make them and, if they were exposed for long enough in early childhood, they will know how they go together to produce meaningful speech.

Young children brought up with two languages will take a little longer to reach various speech milestones than their monolingual peers because they have a much more complicated puzzle to solve. But they’ll end up sounding like a native speaker in both languages.

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