Actually, weirdly and coincidentally enough, a friend of mine mentioned the other day his father used to be a very well known proofreader in Welsh. I would assume if there are exams for the thing, anyone could take them, as it were. I’ll ask him tomorrow if I remember. (And I won’t if I don’t. I’ll be seeing him in the evening, but there is a jazz festival on, so I may not be in any condition to do it.)
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The one good thing about taking an exam is that you never have to take it again! I’m sure you’ll have done really well Sara.
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Something that happened yesterday made me wonder about this - I have always wondered about the so-called critical phase in childrens learning, which seems to be debated endlessly and I swap sides on this one constantly.
I wondered if the way in which they acquire a picture of what words mean, is a really key thing?.
As an adult I always look for an equivalent word in English to match the new word in another language and that helps to learn quickly, but children have to try to understand the meanings of words from scratch and have to build up their own ideas and associations, simply from context, watching and listening etc.
I asked my daughter yesterday, what Anufudd meant and she replied that she didn’t know. I was about to look it up and she said it’s not a word other kids would use, it’s something only a teacher can say and she said her teacher doesn’t say it. She then said it’s for kids who are being naughty and not behaving, but her teachers never say it. So I still have no idea, how and where she has picked the word up, but she has developed very complicated associations with a word, that she still doesn’t feel she understands.
I looked the word up in Google Translate and it said disobedient, so I asked if she had heard the word disobediant in English and she hadn’t and couldn’t even guess what it might mean. I did tell her it was anufudd in English so she will probably now link that word to anufudd and other things, but maybe anufudd will always be the word that has the most interesting links to complicated pictures of teachers and kids being naughty etc.
I just wondered whether it was down to the amount of effort and links that have to be formed the very first time we hear a new word, particularly if we have to understand a completely new concept at the same time as well.
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I have been doing a lot of reading in German lately (and I need to get back to reading in Welsh, but that’s by the by). My vocabulary in German is pretty fair, but by no means 100%, and in more difficult books, there are plenty of words that at one time I would probably have stopped at and looked up. In more recent years, what I did was write them on a piece of card cut to size and used as a bookmark, and look up later (if I got around to it…). I’d end up with a lot of cards…
Just lately, I’ve been adopting the method that some people recommend of just getting through the book and not stopping for anything. Sometimes underlining in pencil, but quite often not even that.
What I find sometimes is that after a while, I will have a pretty good idea what a word is about, without always being able to come up with an English synonym for it. (Perhaps this is partly because - keeping away from dictionaries during this process, I’ve taken English out of the equation. I’m thinking in the target language and not in English any more).
It seems to me that what your daughter is doing is a bit similar. She know what the Welsh word is about, but not to the point that she can define it exactly in English, because her English vocabulary is still growing, and hasn’t covered those words yet.
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I can relate to the book thing etc - I’m happy to skip words and go with the gist, except when there are so many on a page that I can’t get an “in” to the story or get any flow going at all - in which case I will give up and find something else to read. I normally make that decision by about the third page.
There are certainly interesting patterns in here - adult learners can and do learn from context in the same way as you’re describing your daughter doing - but perhaps not to the same extent in terms of the amount of items they’re taking on board…?
My understanding of the native proficiency possible vs not possible is that there is evidence of different neurological patterns, although I’m not sure if that’s definitive or not.
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I’m definately no language expert, but flicking through some of the articles out there, it seems that for every study that talks about a crystallisation of the language at year 8 or so and supposedly large differences between early and late language aquisition, there are just as many saying the complete opposite, i.e. that the brain remains plastic and early language acquisition can even be completely overwritten in late learners. There are studies on Korean adoptees who are now regarded as native French speakers and can no longer even differentiate between Japanese and Korean.There are lots of people doing brain scans and neural imaging and they seem to be able to magic up lots of seemingly definitive, yet conflicting evidence.
In a sea of conflicting information, I wonder if the problems we have later in life are the shortcuts that we learn through life that sometimes trick us - Japanese speakers can learn to differentiate between r and l, but they have to be forced over the shortcuts they have developed, by strongly accentuating the differences. We can eventually see that famous dress that did the rounds last year in different colours, but we have to un-engineer some of our brain shortcuts first.
I don’t know, what is what here, but it is a very interesting area.
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It turns out that’s kinda what happened with my daughter and ty bach twt. She knew where it was in Cylch to say her jacket was there but she didn’t know nor had ever actually needed to know that it was a wendy house.
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I have been trying to remember how I learned words as a child. I was a voracious reader and must have met multitudinous words for the first time. The only time I remember being ‘taught’ words was in English Lit in school, in Shakespeare plays when he used words which have since become archaic. I do not recall rushing to a dictionary when reading. I think I just carried on and waited for all to become clear, Of course, one gets much more impatient as one gets older… “I won’t live long enough to learn if I wait for enlightenment!” But I suspect the child’s way is the best. Of course, teaching others is the very best way to learn anything!!!
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Yup, this is true - it’s impossible to know in advance which scans will turn out to be reliable and which will be conflicted with later - one thing that already seems very clear, though, is that we all ‘store’ different words in different places, so we all go through a very slightly different learning process. There’s also very interesting stuff on early exposure still being measurable in brain scans, even when it was prior to remembered experience - so kids who were in one language environment for the first 6 months and then changed, who have no conscious memory age 5 or so of the initial language, still react in neurologically different ways when they hear it spoken…
It is indeed all fascinating… 
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Sorry, Mike - I didn’t mean to suggest that there’s some sort of professional edict banning non-native speakers. It’s just that, in practice, it’s almost impossible to have the necessary ‘ear’ for the nuances of the language if it’s not your mother tongue. I know perhaps two or three excellent editors for whom English isn’t a first language - but that’s out of the hundreds that I know. Also, I teach proofreading and I’ve had a few occasions of students coming to me who are intelligent and literate, with excellent English and a very good eye. But they usually can’t spot the little problems with language that just don’t ‘sound’ right to a native speaker, or they over-correct by changing things that aren’t actually wrong because they don’t fit in with the ‘rules’ they have learned.
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That’s exactly it, Margaret - presuming I’ve passed, of course! 
There are no exams, I’m afraid (certainly not in English, so I’m assuming not in Welsh). Although one can gain professional recognition by working up through the various membership tiers of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (plug, plug), of which I was recently the Chair.
I wonder… I was all grown up when ‘exposed’ to German, around 3 years old, in fact. I know I could ‘talk’ it to Alfred (my Dad’s batman) and the other POWs, but I remember none! Would my brain show evidence of the experience of learning??[quote=“sarapeacock, post:31, topic:5246”]
impossible to have the necessary ‘ear’ for the nuances of the language if it’s not your mother tongue.
[/quote]
Diddorol!
I used to write this and that, SF stories, scientific papers, book reviews, editorials etc. I liked to get someone to ‘proofread’ my submission before sending it in. When younger, I found my Mam was ideal for scientific stuff because she didn’t understand a word of it, so just read it for grammar and whether it sounded right! She picked up all sorts of silly errors!
Later, I got a Polish friend to read stuff for me. She knew correct English and picked up what seemed wrong! She was a much better proof reader than I was!
I think we tend to see what we expect! My best example was a friend’s PhD thesis, in which it was only at the very last moment that someone passing by and looking over his shoulder noticed “decree of Doctor of Philosophy” instead of “degree”! That had been read by a load of us!!!
I do the same for my partners legal studies!! I have proof read every single essay, assignment etc because when I want to I have ‘incredibly’ good grammar and spelling, and I understood approximately 3% of what I have read over the last 6 years ha.
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It might be a little different to how it works with the first few months - but it certainly seems likely…
I have every confidence in you Sara. 
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Your Dad really had a batman called Alfred?
That’s a rather amusing co-incidence (?) when you consider…
This was the version of Alfred in the classic TV series:
(I think you will agree he bears a spooky resemblance to Derek Guyler…
http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTg2MTIyMDk1NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwODkzMDEz.V1_UX214_CR0,0,214,317_AL.jpg
(but sadly, it appears to have been someone else…Derek was probably too busy keeping Eric Sykes in order…)
I have never, ever associated ‘my’ Alfred with Batman! I came across comic books and films years later and, due to my Mam’s wish for me to be a ‘well brought up young lady’ the only comics I saw were ‘Girls Crystal’ and ‘School Friend’, which I soon tired of!! (Mam failed dismally - I was not and am not a ‘lady’!!!)
I’m truly sorry that I do not remember poor Alfred’s face and he was totally sweet and looked after me whenever I was on camp, so he deserved better. At least he was repatriated to somewhere in West Germany and kept in touch with my Dad for quite a while.
The other sweetie, who painted the Mess, including my choices for the lower parts of the walls and also my father’s portrait, which I still have, was repatriated to East Germany and we never heard about him again! He was a brilliant artist. we knew him as Casper or Kasper.
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