That’s nitpicking. Clearly, Hari Seldon is referring to having a foreign accent when pronouncing a certain language, as opposed to having an accent associated with a certain region or class or whatever but not with non-native speaker status.
English the medium of instruction of schools in the Philippines. Classes are taught in English and textbooks are in English, with the exception of Filipino language and Filipino history/civics classes.
Young children can definitely lose languages as quickly as they can learn them. My older sister lived in a small town in Guizhou, China, before my family left when she was 7. According to my parents, she could speak the local dialect very well. She doesn’t remember any of that now whatsoever as an adult.
Just curious what small city or where it was near? I spent some time traveling around Guizhou in the 1980’s and loved it – especially the Dong and Miao Minority areas.
I would like to point out that even though the university I went to also has an undergrad torture requirement and I actually managed to pass it I was never even close to having any ability to speak it with any sort of proficiency. (I’m not saying he does or doesn’t, I’m just pointing out you can’t assume it because you now know of one person where this is not true. Oh before anybody asks no I didn’t cheat although I should have cheated my ass off, both cheeks.)
I don’t know. These all happened in the late 60s and early 70s before I was even born, so I don’t know all the details. My parents were sent there after med school to work in a rural hospital. They are not very fond of the experience.
Though advised multiple times not to, I took Latin as my language as that’s what I took in HS. I even took a Latin Literature course for distros (less literature-analysis than in English Literature, right?). I never felt I really understood any of it, and definitely needed a dictionary as my vocabulary is absolutely atrocious. I can read textbook Latin decently, but anything people actually wrote? Forget it.
Yeah, my undergraduate college’s language requirement was exclusively about literature. We had a very difficult language requirement. Most kids had to take at least 2 or 3 semester to pass, but it wasn’t about speaking. I had 4 years of HS Spanish, and still had to do one semester. 100% literature.
On the topic of other presidents, I thought Nixon was proficient in French. Clinton, of course, was fluent in the universal language of love!
Yeah, this is my experience, too. I took high school Spanish (and two weeks in college before deciding that Spanish teachers were too damned bubbly - so I switched to German, seeking a more unfriendly language… and got what I bartered for). However, going on visits to various places in South America a decade later, I found that after about 1-2 days, I was conversationally proficient again (local idioms still being a tremendous source of confusion, however).
FWIW, I don’t know if/how I could find a cite online, but I read a book awhile back called “How to Learn any Language”, and it mentioned a few times that Indonesian is extraordinarily easy to learn. The easiest foreign language to learn, it said, if I recall correctly.
