Date:  Wed, 16 Mar 1994 09:15:51 EST

From:  BERGDAHL%A1.OUVAX.mrgate[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU

Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent



From:  NAME: David Bergdahl

    FUNC: English

    TEL: (614) 593-2783          <BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]A1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAX>

To:   NAME: MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu" <MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu"[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MRGATE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAX>



Rudy's anecdotes strike a familar cord, although I'm not as fluent in any

language: when I was on a Fulbright in Germany in '75/6 I relied heavily on my

German-speaking wife, but when I tried to access my year of college German I

kept coming up with Latin, from a semester of college study. Definitely there

must be a brain area for little-used languages! :-) In '88 when I was on an

exchange with the University of Toulouse I kept remembering German, although I

had studied French from grades 7-10 and for 2 yrs in college! The year of

living in Germany--and using it (or at least hearing it) with my wife's

family--must have switched it to L2 status!



Incidentally, my daughter Erika, who was placed in a 2nd grade classroom in

Goettingen, achieved native speaker competence (in Kinderdeutsch at least!) by

the time we'd left. Interestingly, her accent has degraded over the years and

now she speaks German with a decidedly American accent. She's gone on to study

French and Italian in h.s. and college and learned Spanish and Portuguese on her

own: she's convinved that the FL-exposure is what's made it easy for her to

learn languages.



David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU