I find it amazing that if a child is brought up in a community/country different from the origin of the child, the child is still able to pick up and speak their language fluently. Our ability, as humans, to imitate and communicate is incredibly complex regardless of where we are from.

So my question is, is there a language that cannot be spoken like this? One which only people with a certain genetic advantage can speak fluently during upbringing.

Of course anyone can learn a language by putting effort into it. My question is only for one learnt during upbringing (native language).

(Not sure why my responses are downvoted. I’m a non-native English speaker. Sorry if I didn’t communicate something properly. It’s just a scientific curiosity.)

  • Lvxferre
    2·
    10 months ago

    If they spoke a click language, for example, would that carry over? Or the inverse.

    Clicks are simply a category of consonants. They “carry over” as much as any other consonant. That is:

    • if your L1 doesn’t have clicks and your L2+ does, you’ll probably have a hard time pronouncing them
    • if your L1 has clicks and your L2+ doesn’t have anything similar, you simply don’t use them.

    It would be theoretically possible that, if your L1 has clicks and your L2 has a consonant that your L1 doesn’t, you end replacing some consonant there with a specific click. In practice I wouldn’t count on that.