# Is an aptitude for language independent of intelligence?



## everything

I would like to know what others think about whether language aptitude is independent of intelligence.

In my experience, there are people who are just generally intelligent, and when I was at school the people who were really good at languages were generally intelligent. For example, they might not have liked Science or Maths, they might have prefered arts subjects, but they were still able to understand the concepts of those subjects well.

I also noticed that some people who were generally less intelligent, were similarly poor at maths and languages - probably because they find it hard juggling concepts.

That said, I remember one boy at school who was very very intelligent, good at both arts and sciences, but especially arts. However he hated, and wasn't good at languages.

Perhaps it is analagous to the very intelligent people i know who "just can't do maths" - they would often get straight A's and then a C grade in maths.

Are people who seem to have an aptitude for languages always generally intelligent people? (i.e *can you get 'stupid' people who are very good at languages but stupid in other subjects?*)

*If you are generally very intelligent, does that mean you will be good at languages?*

*If you are not good at languages, does that mean you are generally stupid (or less intelligent than others who are good at languages)?
*
In a language class, *is there hope for the 'stupid' students* who always make 'beginner mistakes' but 'refuse to stop learning the language'? (I have come across such remarks from the arrogant class swots before)

*Do you know anyone of amazing intelligence, someone who you really respect, who is also someone who finds it impossible to learn languages?*

*¡Responder en español si prefieren!*


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## cuchuflete

Hi Everything,

Here are the patterns I've seen.

1- Most people I know who are good at foreign language learning are also good at math and music.  All three involve pattern recognition to some degree.

2- I know some highly intelligent people who have struggled with foreign languages, come to hate them due to their own failures, and then were amazed when a good instructor made language learning easy and fun.

I've had some success teaching a foreign language to students who were generally not good academic performers.
I suppose some would classify them as 'not very intelligent' based on their academic records, but I would not.  Many very bright people do not flourish in formal academic settings.


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## ablazza

The ability to learn languages is popularly (Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences) attributed to 'linguistic intelligence', which is closely related in various respects to 'musical intelligence'.  However, different people learn in different ways.  So it is possible that someone with a high linguistic intelligence may not thrive in a traditional academic environment or with a specific teaching methodology.  That it, they have the ability, but there may be barriers, either in that person's mind, like lack of motivation etc, or exterior barriers, like poor teaching, which will prevent them from learning.  Very often people who we would not perhaps think of as intelligent show a high ability in articulating their own language, but for one reason or another are unable to achieve in a foreign language.  Yet they have already demonstrated a high linguistic ability by performing well in their native language.  The ability to learn a 'mother tongue' must come from the same intelligence as the ability to learn a foreign language. Some extremely 'intelligent' people are not good speakers. And some good speakers are not necessarily 'intelligent'.  Having said all that, however, I do believe that generally intelligent people will perform well in most academic disciplines.


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## jimreilly

There are different kinds of intelligence. I, for example, have an emotional intelligence that is several levels lower than my musical intelligence (I am a musician). 

I agree that musical intelligence often goes with the ability to learn language. But I have two caveats: 1) there are also different kinds of musical intelligence, and 2) I have some (voice) students who are really not very good at languages, sometimes even their own, and this is a great handicap to them.


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## Sulizhen

I'm not really sure about the technical facts of intelligence related to the ability to learn languages, but when I read the title of your thread I just remembered an anecdote about Unamuno (a Spanih writer) that is usually told at school (I don't know if it's true): somebody said to Mr. Unamuno that certain person was very intelligent because he could speak two languages, Spanish and English. Hearing that, Unamuno just replied that that fact did not make him more intelligent, but just a silly speaking two languages...


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## danielfranco

One of my personal beliefs is that we are all intelligent, just not in the same way, about the same things... I, for example, have known people who are "bona fide" doctors, accountants, technicians, and other professionals who simply have not been able to learn English very well (or at all) when they immigrated to the USA. I, on the other hand, have not been very successful in the academic sense but had moderate success learning the English language after I moved to this country... So it's difficult to say precisely if your aptitude for language has anything to do with "general" intelligence, or if it is its own particular kind of intelligence...
For example, there are people that have no academic preparation, hardly speak their mother tongue proficiently, cannot even read or write, but can build a modern house with their own hands. In contrast, I can gab, read and write to you in English and Spanish all day long, but I think we'd be crap out of luck if we had to depend on my shelter-building abilities, you know?


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## Residente Calle 13

_Some severely mentally impaired children who also have hydrocephalus or Williams syndrome may acquire exceptional conversational language skills, sometimes called the "chatterbox syndrome." Some children (called savants) test as mentally retarded but learn their native language, as well as foreign languages, very easily.

http://health.enotes.com/childrens-health-encyclopedia/language-delay


_


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## ablazza

Sulizhen said:
			
		

> I'm not really sure about the technical facts of intelligence related to the ability to learn languages, but when I read the title of your thread I just remembered an anecdote about Unamuno (a Spanih writer) that is usually told at school (I don't know if it's true): somebody said to Mr. Unamuno that certain person was very intelligent because he could speak two languages, Spanish and English. Hearing that, Unamuno just replied that that fact did not make him more intelligent, but just a silly speaking two languages...


 
Hello Sulizhen, as you said you welcomed help with your English, here are some corrections: '...that certain people were ... they could speak ..... that fact did not make them .... but just an idiot ...'
'Silly' is an adjective, not a noun.

Sorry, don't understand the point of this anecdote at all.  That someone is silly because they can speak two languages ?


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## Sulizhen

ablazza said:
			
		

> Hello Sulizhen, as you said you welcomed help with your English, here are some corrections: '...that certain people were ... they could speak ..... that fact did not make them .... but just an idiot ...'
> 'Silly' is an adjective, not a noun.
> 
> Sorry, don't understand the point of this anecdote at all.  That someone is silly because they can speak two languages ?



I'm sorry for my mistakes. I was not trying to say that someone is stupid or something similar because he/she can speak two languages. What I was trying to say telling this anecdote -and what I think is the point of it- is that some people still think that a polyglot person is more intelligent than people who has no aptitudes regarding learning languages. Actually, the fact of talking two languages just proves that someone could say nonsenses using another language different from his/her mother tongue... Now that some scientists talk about different kinds of intelligence (emotional intelligence, linguistic intelligence, mathematical intelligence...), I guess the point of this anecdote is almost lost/useless...

(I hope you get me right this time )


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## Swettenham

Children acquire their native language through sheer exposure, practically effortlessly, regardless of intelligence, and they need not be taught.  A child in an English-speaking culture, for example, does not need to be taught that English is a SVO language and that "happy" is an adjective, not a noun.  They learn everything without explicit instruction.

Do adults learn the same way?  Most adults must be instructed, and many seem to require some use of their problem-solving skills as if languages were puzzles.  Some have little to no ability to acquire a second language, while others learn rapidly and well.  There was (is?) an idiot savant who, though unable to care for himself, mastered 20 or 30 languages.

For adults, then, the process by which we learn language and its relation to other measures of intelligence is less clear, whereas for children it is fairly clear that intelligence does not matter.


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## Residente Calle 13

Swettenham said:
			
		

> Children acquire their native language through sheer exposure, practically effortlessly, regardless of intelligence, and they need not be taught.  A child in an English-speaking culture, for example, does not need to be taught that English is a SVO language and that "happy" is an adjective, not a noun.  They learn everything without explicit instruction.
> 
> Do adults learn the same way?  Most adults must be instructed, and many seem to require some use of their problem-solving skills as if languages were puzzles.  Some have little to no ability to acquire a second language, while others learn rapidly and well.  There was (is?) an idiot savant who, though unable to care for himself, mastered 20 or 30 languages.
> 
> For adults, then, the process by which we learn language and its relation to other measures of intelligence is less clear, whereas for children it is fairly clear that intelligence does not matter.



I was bilingual English-Spanish before I knew how to tie my shoelaces or cross the street.


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## ablazza

If the intelligence is in the child, then it's in the adult too.  Some children learn to speak earlier and/or better than others, just as adult ability varies with the individual.  Learning a second language can never be in the same environment as learning the native language, but if this could be re-enacted, then I believe that adults would have the same innate ability as children, but as adults they would be more likely to be impaired in some way, for example, by attitude.


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## cubaMania

ablazza said:
			
		

> If the intelligence is in the child, then it's in the adult too...


I am not certain that it is quite that simple.  It is possible that there is something different about the neurology of a child's brain.  We don't know that for sure, of course, but it is worth studying.  For children who are born largely deaf, there is concern that they be diagnosed as early in life as possible.  The idea is that there is a window of opportunity for introducing language and that if the deafness is not recognized soon enough, the language-learning abilities never fully develop.  It is a complex subject.  There are also the current studies on a people in Brazil whose language does not include the concept of counting; they know one/little, two/few and much or something like that.  One researcher claims that he has tried and failed to teach any of the adults to count objects up to 10 in spite of the fact that they are demonstrably alert and intelligent in other matters.


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## Residente Calle 13

cubaMania said:
			
		

> I am not certain that it is quite that simple.  It is possible that there is something different about the neurology of a child's brain.  We don't know that for sure, of course, but it is worth studying.  For children who are born largely deaf, there is concern that they be diagnosed as early in life as possible.  The idea is that there is a window of opportunity for introducing language and that if the deafness is not recognized soon enough, the language-learning abilities never fully develop.  It is a complex subject.  There are also the current studies on a people in Brazil whose language does not include the concept of counting; they know one/little, two/few and much or something like that.  One researcher claims that he has tried and failed to teach any of the adults to count objects up to 10 in spite of the fact that they are demonstrably alert and intelligent in other matters.



Be careful with that research on Piraha. D. L. Everett and his wife are virtually the only two people who have done research on it. So "One research claims..." is more acurate than I would like and that is my opinion on this language.

But, getting back to the subject, I think the fact that people lose their language ability and remain just as intelligent (because of strokes or injury) and that people we consider retarded can develop excellent language skills should clue us in that intelligence and language performance don't go hand and hand.


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## ablazza

Actually I think perhaps the idea that there is an optimum window in a person's language learning ability, ie. childhood to a certain age, is quite likely.  I am constantly amazed by the ability of my 7 - 9 year old Spanish learners, who sometimes only have to hear a word once in passing to remember what it is several weeks later.  I can't imagine any of my older learners having this ability.  Some of it must come down to motivation and interest, but not all ...


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## fenixpollo

What you're calling "intelligence" is, I assume, the kind of problem-solving ability and abstract spatial thinking that is tested by the Stanford-Binet and other IQ tests.  As ablazza and others pointed out, this is just one of many intelligences.

Hopefully, the English language will undergo a change at some point (soon) and *the word intelligence will change from a non-count noun to a count noun*, and people will stop talking about whether a person is _smart_ or _dumb_, but rather in what way a person is smart.

The answer to your question, then, is "yes and no".  Aptitude for language is dependent on the verbal/linguistic intelligence, but independent of the other intelligences.


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## cirrus

We haven't mentioned the fact that the ability to learn languages tails off as you get older.  Even with the people on this forum who classify themselves as bilingual will, unless they learned both languages before say the age of 11 or 12, will still sound somehow "foreign" to natives of their target language.  This doesn't mean they aren't intelligent, but is simply an indication of how certain pathways in the brain shut down if they aren't used.  

This is also a major issue in communication for deaf people. In the UK many deaf children were taught to try to speak (with little success) and to avoid sign.  The upshot is that they are bad signers, can't make much headway speaking and find processing written language problematic.


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## ablazza

fenixpollo said:
			
		

> What you're calling "intelligence" is, I assume, the kind of problem-solving ability and abstract spatial thinking that is tested by the Stanford-Binet and other IQ tests. As ablazza and others pointed out, this is just one of many intelligences.
> 
> Hopefully, the English language will undergo a change at some point (soon) and *the word intelligence will change from a non-count noun to a count noun*, and people will stop talking about whether a person is _smart_ or _dumb_, but rather in what way a person is smart.
> 
> The answer to your question, then, is "yes and no". Aptitude for language is dependent on the verbal/linguistic intelligence, but independent of the other intelligences.


 
I personally believe that all the intelligences are linked and inter-dependent. A high ability to absorb languages may, for example, have strong links and dependence on musical intelligence, where the ability to recognise rhythm and aural patterns is important; the ability to speak the language may depend on emotional intelligence, the confidence and desire to communicate with others; or interpersonal intelligence where empathy or humour may be an important factor. An understanding of grammar would be helped by a high logistical-mathematic intelligence, etc, etc .....
So different techniques and styles of learning will influence the way that people learn effectively. High visual intelligence with produce an increased ability to learn from visual cues like pictures, diagrams, designs, etc.
When it comes to writing the language an additional or different set of intelligences will be required.


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## Chaska Ñawi

As Fenixpollo has pointed out in a different way, the question to be asking is not "How smart is Mary?" but rather "How is Mary smart?"

I really do not like the title of this thread, because it implies that intelligence is something to be neatly quantified.  It made me appreciate Daniel's post about house-building all the more.

Aptitude depends very much on the language one is learning, and the circumstances under which one is learning it.  I have a learning disability (spatial/sequencing), which makes things mathematical (including musical rhythms) very difficult.  I cannot hold numbers in my head for more than a few seconds, and it takes me years to memorize some phone numbers.  Neither am I an auditory learner, so I have to have a written sequence in front of me to retain it.  Logically, I should not be good at languages.  

The wild card is that, being a synesthete, I _see _sounds - so if I'm learning a language in situ I can store words in my memory by colour as well as by the written image and the sound.  _Under the right combination of circumstances_ (access to a written form, an oral form, and not too many declensions), I have an aptitude for language.  

I think that this is true of almost anybody - give a person the tools related to how he learns, and he has an aptitude for language.


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## ablazza

At the end of the day, most people have enough linguistic ability and all round intelligence to master their own language fairly effectively.  I always remind people of this when they say 'I'm no good at languages'.


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## Grosvenor1

It is very subjective, classing some people as "less intelligent" or "more intelligent". I have a lot to do with people who are immigrants, and their command of English varies from near-zero to fluent. One who learned English fluently after not very much time in Britain is generally referred to as the "fox", and is by all accounts a pretty clever guy. Sometimes though it is a matter of exposure. Immigrants to Britain who live outside of London seem to speak better English irrespective of their intelligence, because there may not be a large cluster of people around them who speak their own language, whereas in London there are a lot of foreign-language networks, community associations, districts where people speaking the same language tend to settle etc. 

People who live in border regions are quite often good linguists, irrespective of how intelligent they are - they simply have more exposure to one or more foreign languages. I know someone who speaks four languages - Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic (at least in Syrian colloquial form) and English. She probably is quite intelligent, but her ability may largely be down to geographic origin - she is a Kurd from a part of Turkey located close to the Syrian border, so she knows the first three languages from that, and she learned English after coming to the UK.


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## Horazio

I think it's an aptitude,a gift...just like being good with music,numbers....
You are born with it.
Of course if you study hard eventually you'll learn ,but the gifted ones will be always way ahead


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## Grosvenor1

I doubt whether the Swiss or, even more, the Luxembourgers are more intelligent than people in the more monoglot states around them - they simply happen to live in multilingual environments and on linguistic frontiers. In Luxembourg, they are right on the frontier between the Germanic and Romance zones. Its citizens are supposed to be trilingual - Letzebuergsch, French and German - although apparently many do not achieve this fully, according to Wikipedia.


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## CrazyArcher

Memory, formal analytic ability, imagination and a other qualities converge and form what is called "aptitude for learning languages"... I think it's a distinct ability, not correlating directly to other skills (math, music, writing), but linked to them at the same time. As long as the brain-cells are activated, doesn't matter how, it does contribute to learning languages.


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## Joomngpyiuakafng

I think an aptitude for languages is a sort of intellingence, in some terms independent to other types, but it is intelligence, definitely.

Miguel


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## jinti

I used to live next door to my landlady, who had immigrated from Italy with her family.  Her daughter was born in the US, and is fluent and comfortable in both her family's dialect of Italian and English, as usually happens.  She is also mentally retarded.  

Now, I don't know what would happen if she tried to learn another language now that she is grown up, especially if she had to learn it in an academic setting.  But she certainly had the ability to pick up at least two languages naturally as a child.


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## Musical Chairs

I don't think this really has to do with the OP but I don't know why being able to speak more than one language will get you comments like "you're smart", or that it is correlated to intelligence. If you're exposed to it (especially from a young age), you learn it and that's it. It does not mean you're smart, but nature took its course and that is why you speak another language. Whenever I go back to Japan, people think I'm god because I can speak English and I say "uh, but I moved to the US when I was still a kid and I have stayed there for a while, so  it only makes sense..."

Also, I think we need to take into consideration that "smart" people or people who get good grades are more likely to study a foreign language for good grades (if not for anything else) anyway, so this may make it look like they are naturally better at languages than "stupid" people or people who get bad grades.

Edit: Well, I take it back. I think historically speaking people who spoke more than one language (often because learning foreign languages was part of their education) were considered learned and that passed on throughout the generations. But almost everyone I know who can (really) speak two languages are people who learned naturally in their environments and not at school.


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## ColdomadeusX

I suppose it's like saying that just because I know the basics of cooking I'm going to be a wonderful chef. I don't think it works like that. I aslo don't think it has any thing to do with the genetic makeup of a person either. Just because there seems to be a trend doesn't mean that the pattern of people being 'good at maths who also are good at languages' can't be broken. Often it can just depend on your own interests-I hate maths but I love languages.


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## CrazyArcher

Musical Chairs said:


> I don't think this really has to do with the OP but I don't know why being able to speak more than one language will get you comments like "you're smart", or that it is correlated to intelligence. If you're exposed to it (especially from a young age), you learn it and that's it. It does not mean you're smart, but nature took its course and that is why you speak another language. Whenever I go back to Japan, people think I'm god because I can speak English and I say "uh, but I moved to the US when I was still a kid and I have stayed there for a while, so  it only makes sense..."
> 
> Also, I think we need to take into consideration that "smart" people or people who get good grades are more likely to study a foreign language for good grades (if not for anything else) anyway, so this may make it look like they are naturally better at languages than "stupid" people or people who get bad grades.
> 
> Edit: Well, I take it back. I think historically speaking people who spoke more than one language (often because learning foreign languages was part of their education) were considered learned and that passed on throughout the generations. But almost everyone I know who can (really) speak two languages are people who learned naturally in their environments and not at school.



Well, you've metioned an obvious point, for some reason neglected here: educated people tend to know foreign languages because it was part of their education, especially with English turning beeing _lingua franca_ of commerce, science and technology. An engineer must know English to read technical documentation, and a doctor - to read medical literature and medicines' descriptions. They didn't learn English for their personal fun, they have to know it because otherwise they won't be able to work. Likewise, knowing German is beneficial for anyone dealing with phylosophy 

Of course, probably a person who moved from one country to another will in a few years speak better English than a well-educated person who lives in a non-English environment, but that's due to complete immersion and not to better language-learning skills or intelligence. 
On the other hand, I can speak for myself: I've never been in an English-speaking country, and everything I've learnt is from personal study. Yet, I know it better than is commonly required for an engineer (halfway to my BSc ), because I _enjoy knowing a language well_, and not because I have to. My story is an exception and not a rule, though...


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