Kalleh, Shufitz, Tinman and I had a discussion last night about whether one can ever learn a second language so well as to be taken to be a native speaker, especially one which uses sounds outside the scope of our native tongue. I mused as to whether we might have a language proprioceptive sense that atrophies with disuse. Can the muscles that control how we control our vocal chords, tongue, lips, and throat be retrained after the stage of first language acquisition?

Can the muscles that control how we control our vocal chords, tongue, lips, and throat be retrained after the stage of first language acquisition?

An interesting question, Geoff. I'm sure that studies have been made and reported in the literature. I'm just not much of a\ language acquisition kinda linguist. Maybe Goofy or Bob can give you some pointers. I can related what little I've picked up by way of some texts, lectures, and observation. Some folks are good mimics and have a good ear. A friend who studied phonetics at UCLA told me that it is hard to train to hear sounds even within one's dialect. He taught classes in Sweden in a smaller university town in the north of the country. In winter, not many Swedes were expecting a non-Swede to be there, and occasionally he would be mistaken for a Swede, but owing to his grammar mistakes, many thought he was mentally impaired. One of my professors, a Ukrainian Jew by birth, who studied Romance philology in Berlin in the '30s, used to correct the French and Spanish grammar of native scholars who submitted papers for the journal he edited. And, he got away with it. His English was mildly accented, but fluent and idiomatic. Personally, I think it has more to do with the wiring of the brain, which is pretty much finished by seven or eight. Learn a language after that and you learn it with an accent.