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Can a person be to stupid to learn another language? I ask because I am a very Anglo person who only speaks English.?
1 Answer
- PontusLv 74 years agoFavorite Answer
There are people with cognitive disabilities, but I would not call them too stupid.
There are those who struggle with language learning skills.
You used TO instead of TOO. If that's not a typo, then your grammar skills may be weak, which could make learning another language more difficult, but not necessarily impossible. You might also learn it, but make frequent mistakes.
Some monolingual people have misconceptions about learning another language. These skills are involved for almost any language an English speaker chooses:
1. new sounds (at least a few).
2. different stress patterns (or an absence of stress)
3. different grammar/syntax. This may involve learning new, alien concepts. Parts of speech may act differently and there may be different parts of speech as well.
4. learning the writng system (even if the language uses the Roman alphabet like English does, it will do some things differently.
5. words often don't translate exactly. The target language may make distinctions that English doesn't.
6. the same idea may be worded very differently, and that way may not make sense to a foreigner.
You will have to learn to think in new ways.
Source(s): studied linguistics and phonology ; taught French; intermediate in three other languages; native English speaker