# Learning languages by immersion



## Ireth (Apr 10, 2014)

How long would this typically take?

In the specific context of my WIP, I plan to have a supporting character end up trapped among people who don't speak her language, and she doesn't speak theirs. (Not a kidnap situation; the ones she ends up among actually save her, and she's trapped because she's injured and can't walk, plus she doesn't know how to get home.) The trapped character speaks Welsh and some Irish; those she's trapped among speak only Norse. I'm not sure how long her broken leg will take to heal, nor if she'll return home before or after that time.

Further complicating matters is that the trapped character doesn't want to speak with her rescuers and share her language with them, as she's in wolf form when they find her (she's a shapeshifter), and she doesn't want them to think she's anything but a normal wolf for the sake of her own safety. (She fears that they'll kill her if they find out she can change shape, since her kind is something her rescuers aren't familiar with.) Her rescuers take her in hoping she'll be a good watch/guard dog.


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## thecoldembrace (Apr 10, 2014)

This depends on how much they want to learn the language. When I learned Turkish I spent time in Turkey to immerse myself. Having a guide to go along with it helps as well, but if not than a concerted effort has to be made. Overall depending on your commitment and the difficulty of the language itself it can be rather fast, several months for basic conversation.


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## ascanius (Apr 11, 2014)

I see one problem with this.  She has no way to get practice or corrections.  She will probably be able to understand what is being said to a limited extent but the inability to get feedback or ask questions in the end would severely limit the ability to learn.  In all likelihood she would get the basic jist of what is being said through body language, tone, and recognition of the words in other contexts.  Such as the same words being used with a different person and seeing what the person does in response, for instance.  She hears four words used repeatedly with other people, those people all respond in a similar way by shaking hands... thus she can infer that these four word are possibly a greeting.  However she will be unable to actually understand nor comprehend the nuances of the language.  Given a large amount of time she might, if she really puts a lot of effort, be able to distinguish verbal conjugations, nouns, etc in a limited simplified way.  Also being unable to ask questions makes her unable to take advantage of roots.

Another thing to point out is how different are the two languages, how are subject object verb related, and then are there suffixes, infixes etc and how they change the meaning.  I don't know Norse nor Welsh so don't really know if this applies.  As and extreme example think of it this way.  If you had to learn Chinese through immersion would you be able to understand the use of tonality and it's impact without having encountered it before, along with not being able to practice or ask questions.  Most likely it is possible but I think it would be an excruciating nightmare requiring and extreme level of analysis, it would be like trying to break cyphers continously.

In the end her understanding would be limited to very concrete nouns and verbs.  basically what she can see, hear, smell, or feel.  complex ideas would be almost impossible.

One thing that might help what you have is a child.  If a child is present and in the process of learning she could pick up a lot through watching, mimicking, and applying the what she sees the child learning and the corrections the child is given.  A learning by proxy if you will.  Also a child is going to be more likely to anthropomorphize the wolf than an adult will, making limited two way conversation and feedback more possible than with an adult.

Ok...That was more detailed than I originally intended...I need to get out more.


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## Ireth (Apr 11, 2014)

The character in question would no doubt have a great desire to learn, if for no other purpose than sheer survival. The problem arises with a lack of means to apply her learning, as ascanius pointed out, since she's not so inclined to speak to her rescuers. As she's in wolf form, acting as a guard dog, I would think the main things she would learn directly are commands like "sit", "stay", "come", etc. Others might be basic things involving food, if she is given meals in the same room as her rescuers and has the chance to listen and associate things like bread and meat with their nouns.


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## Edankyn (Apr 11, 2014)

I have two dogs, and they are privy to a lot more conversation than just the basics. The fact that she is acting as a guard dog might mean that she has to be away from the people more so than mine, but I wouldn't imagine she is so far away that she can't still hear their conversations. While it's true that she wouldn't have a chance to practice, I would imagine that just being around the language 24/7 would help immensely. Also with the whole 'her life depends upon learning the language' thing, that's pretty good incentives for her to put as much effort into it as possible. On the whole, you'd probably be safe figuring that she picked up at least a significant portion of the language within 3 months to a year (depending on what time frame is necessary for you story).


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## Ireth (Apr 11, 2014)

I'm not thinking it will be any longer than 2-4 months, tops. Certainly not a whole year. The Norse-speaking characters are going to incite a rebellion against the villain, with the shapeshifter/wolf as their mascot, and escape to Faerie, where the shapeshifter character comes from.


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## Ireth (Apr 12, 2014)

ascanius said:


> One thing that might help what you have is a child.  If a child is present and in the process of learning she could pick up a lot through watching, mimicking, and applying the what she sees the child learning and the corrections the child is given.  A learning by proxy if you will.  Also a child is going to be more likely to anthropomorphize the wolf than an adult will, making limited two way conversation and feedback more possible than with an adult.



I'm reminded especially of _Frankenstein_. The Creature spends many months watching and listening to a family that consists of Delacey, an elderly father; Felix and Agatha, a grown son and daughter; and Felix's lover Safie, a foreigner. As Felix teaches Safie to speak his language, the Creature learns as well. He too is unable to ask questions or get feedback, since he wishes to remain hidden due to his monstrous appearance. In the context of my own story, the specific family who rescues the shapeshifter doesn't have any children who are just learning to speak, though there's the possibility of other families with very young children interacting with them.


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## The Blue Lotus (Apr 12, 2014)

In college, we were required to a year of language other than English, unless you spoke English as a second lang.
Anyhow, I ended up taking ASL, my son was hard of hearing, so it made sense to me at the time, the normal class was full so that left the immersion class, where it was all sign all the time. Within a year, most of the class was good enough to take the state test to be certified as a translator. 

Now, I've heard that in instances of high stress that can either speed up or slow down the process. I assume it depends on the person under stress. Hope that helps a little. 
~BL~


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## The Blue Lotus (Apr 12, 2014)

Ireth, 
Now that I'm fully awake, I should mention that while I was in India for six weeks my Hindi Improved drastically. No one spoke English, so I had no other option but to figure it out pretty quickly. 
Now, My speaking skills have not improved much, but my comprehension did, I was sitting at a cafÃ© and could understand most of the conversations going on around me, but I could only reply in English, I know some Hindi, but my pronunciation is horrid so I don't speak it in front of natives much. Lest I be laughed at.


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## Noma Galway (Apr 12, 2014)

I've been working on my German for several years now. I took the basic German class my first year in high school, then went to an immersion camp for a week. It helped, but not as much as it could have. I could hold a basic conversation, but I had had prior exposure to the language. Then I took German 2 and went to the camp for two weeks. I came home fully conversant in the language. It's a bit different because it was immersion with the intent of teaching, but it doesn't take that long to learn the language by immersion, at least to converse about important things. Your character would be picking the language up pretty well after just a couple weeks for food and things like that. It would take just a little longer to learn the rest of it. But of course that is for a human who is interacting with the locals. In wolf form, it would take a whole lot longer.


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## The Blue Lotus (Apr 12, 2014)

Why Norma?
Wolves are usually smarter than most people I know... And Dogs can learn languages, just like people. My puppy Nai will do tricks when commanded in English and in Tamil and he is not a yr old yet.


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## Ireth (Apr 12, 2014)

@Noma, the character in question is not a real wolf at all, but a shapeshifter, as has been mentioned before. A wolf is not her only animal form, either. Regardless of her form, humanoid or otherwise, she retains her full intelligence, which is at least as good as any human's.

@BL, thanks for the examples. The shapeshifter in question would have a small amount of experience in listening to the Norse language being spoken and translated into Irish by human and elven characters, so it's possible she would remember some key words or concepts, but it wouldn't be the same as taking a semester of classes on the language. Plus, some words and phrases don't translate very neatly at all.

I've been toying with the idea of having the shapeshifter reveal her ability to the children of the family she stays with, so they could help her with translations and such, but there are issues with that as well. Keeping the adults from knowing about it is an important one. On the other hand, she might grow to trust the whole family enough so as to know they won't hurt her, or betray her to anyone who would do so, if she reveals herself.


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## The Blue Lotus (Apr 12, 2014)

Ireth, 
When she takes these forms, do her senses also change?
For instance a dog's sense of smell is far better than our own, as is their hearing.
But, perhaps more importantly Dog's rely on body language of humans to determine things about their "pack." 
If this were to hold true for your work, then your character could use the body language she senses and sees to help her figure out what words mean what.


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## Noma Galway (Apr 12, 2014)

What I meant was it would take a bit longer because the character would not be able to speak it as well as hear it. I wasn't saying anything about her intelligence, and I apologize if it seemed that way.


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## Ireth (Apr 12, 2014)

The Blue Lotus said:


> Ireth,
> Wen she takes these forms, do her senses also change?
> For instance a dog's sense of smell is far better than our own, as is their hearing.
> But, perhaps more importantly Dog's rely on body language of humans to determine things about their "pack."
> If this were to hold true for your work, then your character could use the body language she senses and sees to help her figure out what words mean what.



I hadn't thought of that. It's definitely something to consider. I've always seen this particular kind of innate shapeshifting as almost purely a matter of the physical appearance, less so the bodily functions, and not a matter of intelligence/sapience. So she can speak clearly in any form regardless of the shape of her mouth (or beak, if she's a bird), she can do things like laugh or weep that an animal would not or could not do, and she might behave in other animalistic ways that don't match her current form (i.e. purring in happiness while not in the form of a cat, or pawing the ground with her feet in anxiety while not a horse). Her senses of sight and hearing are already superior to a human's anyway, so I'm not sure it would matter too terribly much if she couldn't smell as well as a wolf can.


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## Ireth (Apr 12, 2014)

Noma Galway said:


> What I meant was it would take a bit longer because the character would not be able to speak it as well as hear it. I wasn't saying anything about her intelligence, and I apologize if it seemed that way.



No worries, Noma. See post #12 for my ideas on that.


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## e r i (Apr 14, 2014)

As Ascanius said, part of it would depend on how different the grammars of the languages. Welsh/Celtic and Norse are quite different. Having said that, if the speakers of the two languages share many cultural norms, translation and acquisition would come much more smoothly. You would be able to extrapolate what was being said in Language A to your Language B purely by context and cultural script. If you're trying to learn an entirely new way of living in a foreign culture, as well as trying to learn the language, it would take a lot longer to pick up the language.

But you might want to think about what exactly you mean by 'learn a language.' As Blue Lotus said, comprehension comes much faster than the ability to produce sentences. And language production really only comes through practice. I could imagine that your character would pick up basic comprehension of Norse within 2-4 months, but with little to know production ability. Also, these would be limited to simple and basic constructions. Complex constructions (such as 'I thought I would have done that in that situation', 'If I had known, I may have done so', 'I wouldn't do that if that were the case') aren't something that can be learned by a second language learner in 2-4 months, much less produced.

And a final aside, acquisition rate might be affected by the age of the learner. It's said that children younger than 12-14 years old acquire a second language much more quickly than adults. But I doubt that a 12 year old second language learner could learn complex constructions like those mentioned above any faster than an adult.


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## chrispenycate (Apr 14, 2014)

It depends on talent and early training – and how important the communication is to you.

When I first arrived in Switzerland, it was intended to be for a short stay, and I spoke no French or German. I am not talented in languages, and had had to seek out a university that didn't require a foreign language qualification. Since the place I was working everyone spoke English (to varying standards, admittedly) this wasn't seen as a limitation. But as time went on, and I didn't move back to the UK, I made contact with a young lady – all right, a female human being, who spoke French and Italian, and Swiitzerteusch, but no English, and we became an 'item'. Within three weeks we had worked out a pidgin containing elements of all our languages, mutually comprehensible but confusing to outsiders; within three months I spoke French, Ginette spoke English, we were making bilingual puns, and we realised we had nothing to say to each other and split up. All this with no more than a couple of hours a day (night) together, when neither of us was working, and we had nobody to translate for us.

Advantages on our side; she had a number of other languages as references. When you are in that particular state about someone, you don't get hurt and sulky when the other laughs about stupid mistakes you make; she's laughing with you, not at you. I have a pretty good memory and do sound for a living which, even if it doesn't replace talent, is a good resource to draw on. We bought each other dictionaries and phrase books, which would have been difficult to come by in mediaeval times.

Disadvantages? We were each of us living a life outside the relationship, so it wasn't true immersion. We had mutual friends who would translate for us in company, relieving the necessity to succeed (although they did say the words for us, always better for me than reading). There was no survival element, no intense need, to communicate; it was pure entertainment, so pressures are lowered.

With more languages learnt, the speed of mastering another increases. Oh certainly you start confusing terms between words with the same roots between languages that share an origin, but your brain has a learnt reflex that different symbols can indicate the same object, that the same territory can be mapped in several ways. And with travel restrictions in dark age and mediaeval Europe (indeed, until the inception of the railways) there were lots of localised language pockets, and dialects sufficiently divorced from their parent strains they could be considered patois, so anyone who travelled - tinkers, gypsies, traders or someone who had four legs a lot of the time - would be accustomed to absorbing different basic symbol sets. Perhaps not debating philosophy, but discussing life essentials.


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