Thanks so much for your very detailed reply. I understand better now what you meant there.
Sir Richard Burton was an extremely talented man, though his reputation in UK at the time was not, well, the best due to the extreme prudery of Victorian Britain. He also illustrates another point about language learning. In order to enter Mecca, his language skills must have been good, but they would have to have been supported with a good cultural understanding for him to have been believed and accepted. The two walk hand-in-hand, I believe.

Good to hear from you again. Let me try to respond to your questions.

1. I also don’t know how anyone can live in a country and not be able to speak to the people there in their own language. But it happens. Just today I was with another American who literally doesn’t speak a word of Thai. But he gets along fine, has lots of American friends, and his wife speaks English quite well. He doesn’t seem that interested in things Thai or in the Thai people around him so his motivation to learn the language is non-existent. And he seems quite happy.

2. I am sure that a good teacher helps us obtain new language skills but in fact teachers are not absolutely necessary. One of my heroes is Sir Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) 1821-1890. It is said that he could speak 29 languages (European, Asian, and African), and even more dialects. He was one of the first and only people during that time to fake his way into Mecca (where non Muslims are not allowed) because his Arabic was so good. I don’t believe he learned all those languages by going to class with a teacher – he wouldn’t have had any time for exploring. But I am sure he had what is called “linguistic informants” though and they probably helped a lot. We all use “informants”, people we can turn to for help learning the language. Sometimes we call them teachers, sometimes we call them husbands or wives and I am sure that the better they are the better our language abilities will be.

3. I was referring to a person’s physical ability to both distinguish and produce language sounds. Since we have the physical ability and we still have problems in these areas then something else must be getting in the way. That something else is usually “first language interference”. We have been trained to say a sound in a certain way and that blocks our ability to make other less familiar sounds. A good illustration of this is the native speakers of Issan (northeastern Thailand). They have trouble with the “R” sound (although if they work at it they will be able to say it fine). Now the Thai language has both the “R” and the “L” sounds but Issan has no “R” sound so it is usually replaced with the “L”. You can see this clearly when you read a westerner’s writing the Thai word for “foreigner” using English script. If the person writes “Falang” then he usually says it that way and he usually lives in the northeast and has learned this word from the people there. If he writes “Farang’ then he probably learned the word from a Thai living outside of Issan. Written in Thai this word uses an “R” but since the Issan people say it with an “L” that is what the westerner hears and then later says.