What would be the rating of a top chess player in the late 1800s today

I don't know who said this, because people don't know how to use quote boxes on this site.  Nonetheless, I HIGHLY, HIGHLY, HIGHLY doubt that this is true.  If it is, cite the study.  Even if you do, cite the study, I'm almost positive I will find ten studies finding the opposite for each that you cite.

My cousin and uncle both learned Yiddish, German, and Hebrew to a proficient level (able to read, write, and converse fluidly) in 2.5 years around the age of 6 or 7 to 9 or 10.  Three language in 2.5 years.  It's taken me 2.5 years to suck at reading a single one of those (Hebrew) --let's not even talk about the ability to creatively produce the language, as is required when writing in the language--, and most people regard me as the best learner, in general, they've ever met.  It took me 4 years to become close to proficient in Russian as an adult.  I can't imagine a study that comes anywhere close to presenting the opposite of this experience, but I am prepared to stand corrected.

You're a total dumbass and I am sure you're mono-lingual. If you knew anything about linguistics at all, you wouldn't be insisting that I cite sources.

Okay, so you lied.  Otherwise, cite.

Additionally, if you want to know whether I'm mono-lingual or not, you shouldn't assume and make derogatory remarks, you should just check my CV.  Hebrew is not on there, because I stink at reading it, but others are.

That total IDIOT Milliern blocked me.

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/17/children-learning-languages-faster-than-adults-the-argument-continues-in-vietnam/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/10315238/Are-children-really-better-at-foreign-language-learning.html

The notes on your page may be not-so-wrong.

And that is relevant to the discussion?

Hmmm!

Of course, I blocked you.  There seems to be something amiss with you, both in terms of emotional and psychological balance.  I don't want someone sending me all sorts of unwanted messages.

I appreciate your time in Googling those non-scholarly sources.  If I wanted those, I could have done that myself.  You didn't even link the most reputable of the institutions that is on your side, the Center for Applied Linguistics.  Naturally, being horribly political, they are biased toward the power of pedagogy, per se, because that's how they make their money, and so don't really care what the scientific studies say.

If you are ever interested in finding out what's true, whether it is adults or children who learn language better, I recommend you go into a academic article database (Nexus and JSTOR will do), and search literature reviews on the topic, which take the literature landscape into account, including methodologies of the studies.  The ratio is about 30-to-1 in favor of studies opposed to you position, and those review articles systematically breakdown which ones are the most reputable and why, as well as suggestig conclusions on the basis of the extant landscape.

And there is good scientific reason to believe children are better language learners, and the more general idea that children learn better than adults in every field (chess, too).  When a child is growing, neurons are being pruned away, atrophying, and disappearing --it's a winnowing process.  The way the engineering of mind works in developmental stages is to create a neural network with pathways that are used in youth, getting rid of all the neurons that are unnecesary for any pathways.  The activities of a youth are reflected in the pathways paved by this reverse-etching.  This is referred to, I think, as developmental neuronal reverse engineering, and it begins with an inordinate number of neurons at birth, and a diminished (almost risible) fraction by adulthood.  The reason that evolutionary biologists think that brains develop in this way is due to the horrible energy ineffeciency of trying to grow a new neuron (though it does happen sparingly!).  There is an undeniable correlation in the literature between the ability to learn and the number of neurons one has.  This is textbook neuroscience --first year stuff.  Those in linguistics, especially those in applied linguistics, whose livelihood depends on arguing to the contrary, should be dismissed in the face of the science; they seek bases for argument for their on capital gain.  Children learn better at all things.  In the recticular view of the neuronal setup of the brain or in the modular framework, there'd be a chance you were right, but all of these and similar theories have been exposed and discarded tout de suite.

Milliern, even the telegraph story acknowledges that children speak foreign languages better than adult learners. They just claim it's ok that a person speak with a foreign accent. 

Yeah, obviously I didn't read it.  I don't read newspaper-quality articles, I simply click on the links inside (or look at bibliographical notes) and determine whether the sources are reputable and see what they actually say.  It honestly doesn't surprise me that he cited material that does not support his conclusion.   

The FPJ article is just one person presenting his "theory" that if children and adults were exposed to the same number of hours of language learning adults (he doesn't specify ages) would learn better. There's absolutely no evidence presented in that article, just the author saying that myths are busted because he asked a question.

I read a constant amount of nonsense on this board, people that state things that just sound wrong, unreal or stupidly ignorant. I mostly don't comment, but that statement of yours was too much.

Since Linguistics is my field of studies I can doubtlessly ensure you that this is PURE NONSENSE, MR oogieboogie. 

In fact, it's the opposite. You have no clue what a kid mind can do in the first 2 years of his life: it's proven that he can learn something like 50 words a week constantly , for two years in a row, without anybody teaching him and without forgetting previously learnt things (which is a constant problem for adults). A kid brain in that period is a sponge. And the fascinating thing is that it has been discovered that a kid can easily learn two languages contemporarily with the same ease as if it was only one. This is how kids become bilingual.

This ability stays strong until the age of 5, then it starts to decline and by the age of 12 it's almost gone. If the area of the brain that is responsible for learning languages doesn't get properly stimulated at a young age, it becomes "atrophied" and the child will never learn to communicate properly. 

There are two cases proving what I am saying: in France in the 1700's and in Los Angeles in the 70', where two kids (Victor and Genie) where found to  have been living "wild" until teenager age. Once they were brought back to civilisation professors and linguists tried to teach them their language with every possible effort, but they didn't succeed. 

The kids' brain hadn't been stimulated at the right age (because they lived in the forest) and thus were never able to catch up.

Sorry for the long explanation, but I can't stand to read such stupid statements in this forum. Go learn something, oogieboogie. 

Milliern, rather than addressing the legitimate points in the article, you just block me, contradict me, and make a lot of unfounded assertions without providing any support. You can attack the links that I sent, without even reading them, but you provide none of your own.

You can all say whatever you want, but a "child" isn't literate by age 5. Many adults become literate in a foreign language in 4 to 8 years, with much less work at it. Observation isn't refutable.

I don't really know what you mean by "literate"... Do you mean to be able to read a "literary work"? Or to be able to express yourself in a very formal manner?

But those are not things that have to do with the language: those are social construction and obviously you have to be an adult to master them. That's why every child speaks differently than an adult. 

But learning a language is something difficult - it has to do with how fast you learn new words, pronounciations, way of sayings . A language is a "system" and children can aquire new systems way faster than we do. They can just easedrop and they learn. That's not how an adult learns a new language. We need to study, children just need to "listen".

Then again, for sure a kid won't know the meaning of words like "prepositerous" or "adequate" (he will learn these words at a later stage in his life), but every person can pretty much forget about learning a new language at a native speaker level once they are past the age of 12.

I work with Latin Americans that don't know English. It didn't take me 2 to 3 years to reach the level of a 5 year old. It took me a few months. However, it did require some instructional materials; which children can't use. If an adult moves to a foreign country and learns a language from native speakers + the use of instructional materials, he or she is going to learn faster than a child.

I started speaking simple, short sentences at 15 months approximately. When I was 24 months old, I could write on a board in English and Urdu. I used to watch TV and write the things they said in cartoons or ads. I was skilled in speaking, reading, writing and listening English and Urdu when I was very young. I'm 11 now, in 8th Grade O-Levels and am the best English-speaker in my grade. Um, looks I'm bragging while I'm not. Sorry.

But basically, if young children are exposed to learning material at an early age, they can master the language quickly and it helps them a lot overall.

I'm in favour of letting children do everything that is above their age, especially below the age of 5.

You have made a major error, arguing that infants don't learn languages as quickly as adults. That is not what the academic sources claim. You have presented a straw man argument and then proceeded to try to dismantle it with anecdotal evidence.

The academic literature doesn't argue that 5 year olds learn better than adults, it posits very clearly and consistently that the best age to learn a language is from ages 8-11 or 8-13. Students who begin to learn languages later do not perform as well. By the age of 8-11, children already have a good grasp of their mother tongue. 

You chose to argue that all adult learners are better at learning a second language than all children. Do 60 year olds learn better than 11 year olds? Studies have shown that the 11 year olds perform much better. In fact, young adolescents (8-13) learn languages more efficiently than even young adults according to the research!

Adults do learn the early stages of language acquisition (syntax and morphology) better than children, but they do not become fully proficient as quickly as children do.

The very best age to learn a language is early in puberty. That doesn't mean it's impossible to learn languages later. Also, if you have learned one second language, it becomes easier to assimilate other languages. 

Here are just a few sources to back up my claims:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2307/3586986/abstract

http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED415705

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3586451?uid=3739568&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21106088579241
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It looks like that was to me, whereas it was not.