The linguistic genius of adults: Deborah Fallows at TEDxMidwest

There is a fallacy between the relationship of old age and learning a new language. Deb Fallows contradicts this myth delcaring that the mature brain can experience higher level of processing. By applying these strengths she shares how to speed learn Chinese in a delightful and humorous manner.

You've been hearing a lot
in these sessions

about brain and language,
and also some references to China.

I'm going to try
to pull those all together

into a good news story,

which is about how you can use
your very powerful adult brain

to learn something
that is pretty difficult and also amazing,

a foreign language,
and especially Chinese.

I am a linguist by passion
and by training.

So when I moved with my husband to China
for a three-year stay

it was part of the bargain
that I would learn some Chinese.

I knew that this was going to be
a pretty difficult undertaking as an adult,

because we know that adult brains
can be forgetful, get distracted,

and have trouble with recall.

And there is also a special problem
with accent,

that it is really hard for adults
to pick up a good foreign accent.

A good native accent,
you can't never quite be there.

But I thought, if Henry Kissinger
doesn't have to worry about this,

we don't have to worry about this either.

(Laughter)

There is also a lot of good news
about brains.

We used to think
that once you were older than a kid,

you couldn't learn
a foreign language anymore,

but neurologists and linguists
have pretty much dismissed this

and said that your brain
doesn't become static or solidify,

rendering useful
to learn a foreign language.

The mature brain
can actually do lots of things,

and many of them apply directly
to our sense of language

and how language works.

We have the power to absorb
much higher level of processing

that is available to us.

If kids just seem to absorb languages,
like sponges,

adults can actively engage
in the process of foreign language learning.

For example, when you look
at signs like these,

you can tell that this is a warning,
but by looking at them carefully,

it takes it out of the case
of being a warning

and it is actually inviting us
to some kind of disaster or such.

Since we know a lot about languages,

the patterns of languages
of nouns and verbs,

you think, well, smoking is one
and why not photoing?

We know that with verbs you got
do and undo, tie and untie,

why not recycle and unrecycle?

Or enterness? It should be a noun,
just like entry or entrance.

Moving into the world of semantics,
you kind of know what evil rubbish means,

and you can look at this and laugh,

but the reason that you know

is that you know that evil
has some characteristics

that usually point to bad moral character,

while rubbish doesn't have
any bad moral character.

Same thing with vegetables,
you've got vegetables

but they are not going
into the realm of private.

Or stampede. Stampede is a good word

but you think of lots of legs
running as fast as they can,

not just one pair, leaping up
to squat on the toilet.

(Laughter)

So, the mature brain can also
make use of your lifetime

of wealth and experience

to help you process language
in more than a literal way.

We can put language in bigger contexts
or recognize reference and metaphor,

and we know propaganda when we see it.

We can pick up the tone of the messages.

In China, in the run up to the Olympics
when we were there,

there was a campaign called
"Let's get civilized",

where they were trying
to encourage the people

to behave in a much more civilized manner
to show their country in a good light.

There was a lot of bathroom Chinglish
going on during this campaign,

although some of the vocabulary choice
has worked against it.

(Laughter)

With our mature brains,
we can also grasp metaphor.

Chinese is a really blunt language
but they can also beat around the bush

to deliver a message very softly.

A nice way to say: Keep off the grass.

And sometimes their sense of language

just tells us that there is
too much nonsense going on.

We should just look at the pictures
and then move on from there.

(Laughter)

Now the tough part. Now, it's time
for your first Chinese lesson.

How can you apply some of this strength
of your very powerful brain

towards learning Chinese?
I have two lessons for you today.

One is speed learning Chinese vocabulary,
and the other is about

some really confusing
prepositions in Chinese.

First, the vocabulary.

One of the ways that language
can add a lot of new vocabulary

when it needs to create
a word for a new concept or a new idea,

is to put two small words together.

And often they will put
two opposites together.

You create a new whole
with these opposites.

Just like the sense of ying and yang.

Another way to create new words
is to latch on to one word,

in this case "dian", which means electric,

and put together
a whole group of words around it.

The thing this does for you
as a language learner

is to take things out
of the realm of arbitrary

and make them a lot more sensible.

If you are lucky,
you can remember all this

and you can even make up some new words
and sometimes you are likely to be right.

Your second language lesson.
(Laughter)

These are two really
confounding words in Chinese:

"Shang" and "xia", which are opposites.

First one is pretty easy.
"Shang" has a reference to time,

it means in the past.
"Xia", in the future.

OK. No problem. Straightforward.
But now here comes trouble.

"Shang" and "xia" also refer to place,

where you have "shang" meaning on top of
and "xia" meaning below.

So, for the new language learners
this is nothing short of confusing

because it is not in my world of English
and how the world works

that you should have a pair of words
that has both these references,

to time and to place.

But the good news is that you can use
your powerful adult brain

to create some kind of mnemonic device

or visual aid to help you
keep on learning things like these.

This was my grid.

You've got time and place.

In the southeast corner it's "xia".

Whenever I say it,
I can go to that visual aid.

In the northwest corner you have "shang",

meaning above in space and behind in time.

Whenever I wanted to learn these words,

I could come
to my very good visual aid and do it.

So, what have we learnt here?

We've learnt that as adults
you've got a powerful, quite supple brain,

where you can engage
your higher word order processing

and your accumulated experience
in the world

and send to the language,
to help learning a foreign language,

even Chinese.

So, today, this is your first step,
and, as Edie said, time moves really fast

so by next week you will be fluent.

Thank you.
(Applause)