>> Do you think I do that for a new language? Josh> I'm pretty sure that I at least do it one word at a time. Last Josh> year I drove all the way across Austria and halfway back before Josh> I finally realized that those signs I kept seeing: "Einbahn", Josh> meant "One Way." Josh> Eric Drexler tells the story of being in Japan and becoming Josh> frustrated because he couldn't even recognize a string of Josh> characters on a sign as one he had on paper and was specifically Josh> looking for. So he forced himself to "read" a japanese book for Josh> some hours and slowly formed enough pattern memory for the Josh> characters to be able to identify a word as the one he was Josh> looking for. Josh> Whereas I had a head start, since German uses a familiar Josh> alphabet, and thus I could drive around wondering why every Josh> little town had an Einbahn Street. I don't think you've addressed the question, and in fact I think the examples you give are anecdotal evidence for my position. Raise a kid in a multilingual household within a country speaking yet a third language, and she'll speak three languages and never mix them up. You can't do that one word at a time-- you have to apportion three separate processes. Of course, language might be specially programmed-- but I think you'd have little trouble picking up three different games simultaneously-- say chess, bughouse, and poker. If you learn three fonts, you won't mix them up. Your two examples, I'd say, the problem is precisely that the learner hasn't invoked a new process, so couldn't learn. You drove across Austria trying not to learn any German, so you didn't. If you'd spun off a new object and started working, you might have learned some. Likewise Drexler, same deal. He couldn't do anything until he invested the effort to get his mind to go into new language mode. Then bang, it worked better. I'm not familiar with Actors. Can you explain the difference in a nutshell? ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
