[Suits]

(11-02-2017 07:42 AM)Going strong Wrote:  

By the way, talking about language-learning abilities, it is to be noted that people from Africa often have a natural skill for learning foreign languages, fast. African migrants pick up Spanish, in particular, in no time... There's for example this Senegalese tribe of illegal street-sellers, known worldwide, whose members seem to learn the basics of any language effortlessly in a few months. Strange.

Despite what the autists tell us about everyone from Africa, they do have no problem learning new languages.

My analysis (which I stand by) points to a combination of three contributing factors.

• Multilingualism - many folks in Africa learn several languages as a matter of course due to the varied cultural-lingual nature of Africa. I've met some who claim to know 14 or so languages, some of which don't even have a name. The best learner of a new language tends to be someone who knows what steps they need to take in order to reach their learning goals.
• Motivation - many Africans who move abroad are looking to better themselves by doing so and are thus personally invested in learning the new language(s) that will help them do that. This is different from Westerners who see even long term time spend abroad is nothing more of an extended vacation to tick off the "foreign experience" box on their life/resume goals.
• Situational Fluency - if a learner of a language gets repetitive practice doing a certain activity (such as selling a certain type of product), they'll become situationally (and deceivingly) fluent when engaged in that activity, even if they are completely lost when it comes to anything else.