Neuroscientists have long observed that learning a language presents a different set of opportunities and challenges for adults and children.

长期以来，神经学家一直认为语言的学习对成年人和孩子来说有着不同的机遇与挑战。

Adults easily grasp the vocabulary needed to navigate a grocery store or order food in a restaurant, but children have an innate ability to pick up on subtle nuances of language that often elude adults.

成年人很容易地掌握杂货店或餐馆必备词汇，孩子就有与生俱来能力，辨别语言中细微的差别，而这些差别经常会把成年人难住。

For example, within months of living in a foreign country, a young child may speak a second language like a native speaker.

比方说，孩子只要在国外生活几个月，就可以像外国人一样说外语。

Experts believe that brain structure plays an important role in this “sensitive period” for learning language, which is believed to end around adolescence.

一些专家认为大脑结构会影响人们语言学习的敏感期，而敏感期止于青春期。



The young brain is equipped with neural circuits that can analyze sounds and build a coherent set of rules for constructing words and sentences out of those sounds.

孩子的大脑含有神经回路，能够分析声音，建立起一套连贯的规则，从而利用这些声音组词造句。

Once these language structures are established, it’s difficult to build another one for a new language.

这些语言结构建立完成，大脑就很难形成新的结构，学习新一门语言。

In a new study, a team of neuroscientists and psychologists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered another factor that contributes to adults’ language difficulties: When learning certain elements of language, adults’ more highly developed cognitive skills actually get in the way.

在一项研究中，由来自麻省理工学院（MIT）神经学家及心理学家组成的研究团队发现另一种因素，可以解释成年人学习语言的难点：在学习语言的某一方面时，成年人高度发达的认知技能实际上阻碍了语言的学习。

The researchers discovered that the harder adults tried to learn an artificial language, the worse they were at deciphering the language’s morphology —the structure and deployment of linguistic units such as root words, suffixes, and prefixes.

研究人员发现，成年人在学习人造语言的过程中越努力，那么他们在学习语言形态学方面表现就越糟糕。（形态学指的是词根、后缀及前缀等语言单位的结构及组合。）

“We found that effort helps you in most situations, for things like figuring out what the units of language that you need to know are, and basic ordering of elements. But when trying to learn morphology, at least in this artificial language we created, it’s actually worse when you try,” said Amy Flynn a postdoc at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

“研究发现，多数情况下，努力有所作用，比如，你想要解出你需要知道的是那种语言单位及基础的成分顺序安排。但是，当你想要学习形态学的时候，学习我们自己创造的语言时，越努力，效果越差。”麻省理工学院麦戈文人脑研究所的博士后艾米·弗林（Amy Flynn）表示。