How in the world did I communicate?

When I was 10 years old I lived in Tokyo Japan. There was an American family who lived near my parents’ house back then. I used to play with an American kid in the family (let’s just call him as “John” here). His dad gave me a ride when we went to Y’s gym. I don’t clearly remember how I communicated with them and still wonder how I did that.


A Japanese gentleman who has moved to Canada with his children told me that his kids communicate with Canadian kids without knowing much English. He mentioned that his kids listen to Canadian kids’ English and respond in Japanese. Children’s ability to communicate is amazing. It seems that little kids can learn a foreign language 10 times as fast as adults can.


Recently I’ve been researching the ways for adults to learn a second language in the same way as they did to learn the first one. I researched on neuroscience and read papers on “working memory” and “phonological loop”. So far my research results point to the time tested knowledge “younger is better when you learn a foreign language”. Although there are exceptions the ability to learn a foreign language starts to decline at an early phase of life (around 12 or so) in most cases. I think that it has something to do with the decline in the pace of neurons creation.


I’ve been using English almost exclusively for about 20 years. Today, people seem to think that I came to America at the age of 15 or so (I actually came to America in my mid 20s). That is close to my age when I started to go to a language school to learn English from native English teachers. After all of the pronunciation lessons the level of my spoken English seems to be affected largely by the age I started to learn English from native speakers.


I’m working with talented engineers from around the world and have no difficulty to communicate through English. Still then it is a bit of challenge to speak like a native English speaker. In theory the maximum level of my spoken English could be as good as someone who came to the US at the age 10 (the same age when I played with John). In any case I am nowhere near the point to challenge the critical period hypothesis.


I lost in touch with John. He may be wondering why he can speak Japanese so easily in somewhere in the US now. ;-)