Quirky quotation on language learning that our little Henry makes particularly relevant to us:

“When you study a language in the field, you do so as a big baby. Like a baby, and like a drowning person, you hungrily seize new linguistic data and associate it with what you know. Only, unlike a baby, you are contaminated with one or more native languages, whose grasp upon the mind is fiercely jealous, blocking your view of any other language system. So if you come to understand your field language primarily in terms of your linguistic knowledge, the overwhelming influence of your native language inevitably wins, no matter how good a field worker you are. For the most part perhaps, it does not matter since the greater part of any language is universal grammar, or so we think. But it is a mistake to be too sanguinr about this. We cannot easily avoid mistakes.”

Quotation from pages 92-93 of Maria Bittner and Ken Hale. 1995. “Remarks on definiteness in Warlpiri.” In E. Bach, E. Jelinek, A. Kratzer, and B. H. Partee, eds. Quantification in natural languages. Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 81-105.