Linguist: Cho's accent should've been perfectly American by the age of TEN

Interesting stuff here published just over a week after the shooting:
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"AS A linguist, one thing about Virginia Tech shooter Seung-hui Cho has stayed on my mind. Assorted recollections of him as a middle and high school student recall him as not speaking English well. That alone, if true, should have alerted responsible people who knew him that something was terribly wrong. Cho came to America when he was eight. Normally, people who come into a new language—English in this case—before their early teens quickly learn that language as well as people born to it.

Many Americans will be able to see this from Russian immigrants. A Russian who came over in his thirties, even if fluent in English, will speak it with a strong accent and make occasional mistakes a la Natasha and Boris in the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. A Russian who came over at six will talk just like us. A Russian who came over at 16 will speak fluent English with a whiff of an accent.

Linguists have long noted that the ability to pick up a language perfectly with no accent atrophies after about age thirteen. But this means that Cho, coming here at eight, should normally have been speaking ordinary American English by the time he was ten.

As it happens, I have known two Korean-Americans who came to America at just the age Cho came, eight. Both were, when I knew them, twenty and a bit, and both spoke English as native as my own. Both had learned English in school, where they had to learn English to interact socially as well as learn. Neither recounted this as a tragic effort. With the plasticity of their young brains, they did what they had to. It seems almost magical how quickly and well children pick up new languages, in fact. Children do this independently of whether they will later have a knack in their Spanish classes or not—it’s an innate skill.

But what this means is that there is no such thing as a middle- or high-schooler who has been in school with Americans since the age of eight who does not speak perfectly native English. At least, not a normal one: any such person is so uniquely socially withdrawn that they are indisputably very troubled, to an extent demanding intervention.

We must, of course, be careful with observers’ reports. Was it that Cho just talked "funny"—i.e. in an odd deep voice—or that he really did not speak proper English—i.e. had trouble conjugating verbs? The difference could throw the layman, especially when the person 1) didn’t talk much at all and 2) was of foreign ethnicity, in which case there could be an underlying expectation that he would have an accent or speak faulty English.

However, so many recollections have specified that Cho’s English itself was off that it is worth considering. In the now famous videos (Cho, incidentally, is already a Wikipedia entry) his English seems unaccented and normal enough, but he also seems to be reciting from a text, which is different from spontaneous speech production."

eyutytuheu wrote:

Interesting stuff here published just over a week after the shooting:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

"AS A linguist, one thing about Virginia Tech shooter Seung-hui Cho has stayed on my mind. Assorted recollections of him as a middle and high school student recall him as not speaking English well. That alone, if true, should have alerted responsible people who knew him that something was terribly wrong. Cho came to America when he was eight. Normally, people who come into a new language—English in this case—before their early teens quickly learn that language as well as people born to it.

Many Americans will be able to see this from Russian immigrants. A Russian who came over in his thirties, even if fluent in English, will speak it with a strong accent and make occasional mistakes a la Natasha and Boris in the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. A Russian who came over at six will talk just like us. A Russian who came over at 16 will speak fluent English with a whiff of an accent.

Linguists have long noted that the ability to pick up a language perfectly with no accent atrophies after about age thirteen. But this means that Cho, coming here at eight, should normally have been speaking ordinary American English by the time he was ten.

As it happens, I have known two Korean-Americans who came to America at just the age Cho came, eight. Both were, when I knew them, twenty and a bit, and both spoke English as native as my own. Both had learned English in school, where they had to learn English to interact socially as well as learn. Neither recounted this as a tragic effort. With the plasticity of their young brains, they did what they had to. It seems almost magical how quickly and well children pick up new languages, in fact. Children do this independently of whether they will later have a knack in their Spanish classes or not—it’s an innate skill.

But what this means is that there is no such thing as a middle- or high-schooler who has been in school with Americans since the age of eight who does not speak perfectly native English. At least, not a normal one: any such person is so uniquely socially withdrawn that they are indisputably very troubled, to an extent demanding intervention.

We must, of course, be careful with observers’ reports. Was it that Cho just talked "funny"—i.e. in an odd deep voice—or that he really did not speak proper English—i.e. had trouble conjugating verbs? The difference could throw the layman, especially when the person 1) didn’t talk much at all and 2) was of foreign ethnicity, in which case there could be an underlying expectation that he would have an accent or speak faulty English.

However, so many recollections have specified that Cho’s English itself was off that it is worth considering. In the now famous videos (Cho, incidentally, is already a Wikipedia entry) his English seems unaccented and normal enough, but he also seems to be reciting from a text, which is different from spontaneous speech production."

Reminds me of how Lanza had a lot of difficulties speaking English at a young age and tried to make up his own language. Their minds were resistant to normal methods of communication.

I imagine it must be hard to speak a foreign language properly when you yourself never speak or interact with others.