h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The contraction 'JoPoMo' may sound like patois one might hear along the route of a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade. To my ears Pomo sounds like my neighbors. The indigenous people of this part of northern California are Pomo.

Whether they are aware of it or not, nearly everyone around here knows a few words of one or another of the Pomoan languages. Quite a few places, plants and even animals have kept their traditional names despite dwindling numbers of native Pomoan speakers.

Of the seven Pomoan languages, three are extinct, meaning there are no living speakers of that language. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), these are the numbers of speakers of the four living Pomoan speakers:

- Northern Pomo: 3 speakers

- Kashaya (alternate names: Kashia; Southwestern Pomo): 24 speakers

- Central Pomo: 3 speakers

- Southern Pomo: 1 to 3 speakers

It isn't like people are too lazy to learn languages. Consider the large number of Klingon speakers. Perhaps we can all lend a hand to keep a language alive.

Yokayo means deep valley.

The US education system is largely at fault for our low rates of multilingualism. One's ability to innately learn a language lessen greatly around prepubescent ages. However, if one learns a second language by then, those skills, those connections in the brain remain open. The more languages you learn, the longer you can keep learning new languages. Most public schools in the US do not offer second language courses until middle or high school after those language centers in the brain become fixed. Learning second languages after that point is still possible, but relies mostly on rote learning and is much more difficult to retain.

Do you have any recent language learning research that backs that up, Baron Grim? After all, speakers of Klingon and Esperanto are adult learners.

At any age, there isn't anything like being dumped into an area where everyone speaks another language to help a person step up their game. Once the number of speakers of a particular language dips below a certain number, that situation is nearly impossible.

No, this is something I came across years ago but it made a lot of sense to me. As I said, it's not that you can't learn languages later in life, but that it's much more difficult. There is a lot of controversy about there being a "critical" age for language learning. I don't think it's critical but I definitely think there is a period where language learning skills are prime.

I thought those educational theories had been disproved long ago as research showed that the young were much better at rote learning but older learners were better at drawing more and deeper connections and that age was no barrier to learning a second language.

http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/age-and-language-learning.html

What continues to be a barrier is the teacher or the older student clinging fiercely to the 'age is barrier to learning a second language' myth.

Fine, I'm wrong.

Could be due to one of the teachers I had in high school. My first year (9) in Spanish seemed to go well, but the next two were pointless. The second two years were taught by a teacher who focused primarily on grammar and writing. I retained nothing and forgot most of what I learned the first year.

When we get Polyglot Plaza going we can practice our Spanish together. I got pretty good at it when I worked in the restaurant.