I find it amazing that if a child is brought up in a community/country different from the origin of the child, the child is still able to pick up and speak their language fluently. Our ability, as humans, to imitate and communicate is incredibly complex regardless of where we are from.
So my question is, is there a language that cannot be spoken like this? One which only people with a certain genetic advantage can speak fluently during upbringing.
Of course anyone can learn a language by putting effort into it. My question is only for one learnt during upbringing (native language).
(Not sure why my responses are downvoted. I’m a non-native English speaker. Sorry if I didn’t communicate something properly. It’s just a scientific curiosity.)
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 the non-native child cannot be as fluent as the native child ?
The human vocal tract is about the same across ethnic groups, if that is what you are asking.
May be. Would things like facial structure impact the fluency of the language ?
But I’m wondering more about communities than ethnicity. For example, my native language is difficult (not impossible) for someone brought up outside the community to speak.
My question is are there languages that one cannot be fluent in even if you are brought up in that community.
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?
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.
Protip: Don’t rely on ChatGPT for any knowledge. Much less esoteric questions like this.
I know. It is useful for laying some context though
I don’t even know about that. I’ve seen it give confident, totally incorrect or irrelevant answers to random questions. And different answers to a very slightly differently phrased question. Any context you might get from it would be just as questionable.
Usually, difficulty to learn a language is caused by:
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?
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 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 or more 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.