24th Mar 2012 Language Study - Based On Genes?

The Spanish Education Ministry had been pushing the study of English gradually over the past years, and now it had become obligatory subject in schools as a foreign language instead of French as it had done all along until recently. Yet just now, as result of an investigation on bio-science, it was disclosed that a great part of the Spanish population is genetically programmed not able to ever speak English properly. (Not ever??)

But many can read better (that I can well understand), as Barcelona is pronounced Barcelona, and Gaudi, Gaudi. As to why London is Londres in Spanish quite baffles me as the most unnecessary change when the end part 'don' presents absolutely no difficulty to pronounce for the Spanish, but presents difficulty internationally, with people having to remember which is which, as many country or place names are erased altogether substituted by words entirely different. But that's another subject.

Scientifically speaking, I can't figure out about the gene-based inability to speak English, although, I did noticed right from the start when I first settled in Spain some years back, that most well educated Spanish, university graduates, business people even in international trade, can't speak English well at all; those who can and correctly in grammatical construction of sentences, and speaking fluently, simply can't manage to pronounce words properly. But I never knew that it had to do with preconditioned genes that are the culprits. Their accent is nearly always wrong.

I can easily distinguish by the way people of different countries speaking English whether they are say, German, French, Singapore, HK, Shanghai, India ... and some other countries. I am curious if this concerns just English, or any other foreign languages other than their own, that the genes are playing tricks on. The investigation only told the result, not the Why & How.

Wonder whether there is any antidote or remedy that could prevent the correct learning of a language? Don't they experiment a lot re. changing, altering and replacing genes already?

 

Tags: languagelearning, genes

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