Critical Periods For Language: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

MMTYWTK on whether children really learn languages faster than adults. Reviews the evidence: a genuine critical period for FIRST language (feral children, Chelsea the deaf woman), age-of-acquisition decline for second language, the Hartshorne-Tenenbaum-Pinker big-data crash at ~18, the school-ending confound (van der Slik), and the accent critical period (~10-12). Concludes kids do pick up second languages faster, but it's murky whether biological or schooling/low-hanging-fruit, and babies aren't magic -- just exposed and motivated.

Quality 70 · Strong. Strong: a careful, numerate, comprehensive literature synthesis that is honest about the murk; kept mid-Strong because Scott ends fairly stumped and it breaks little new ground beyond organizing others' findings.

Claude’s paradigm shift 42 · Moderate. Moderate-low: a synthesis of existing studies with no novel thesis; the value is clarity, not originality.

Real-world impact 1 · Negligible. Negligible/within-community: an educational explainer with no material real-world footprint.