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A Hypothetical Question About Vocabulary | ||
Tags: Transparency | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| crafedog Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5820 days ago 166 posts - 337 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean, Tok Pisin, French | Message 9 of 18 20 March 2010 at 7:31am | IP Logged | ||
(I added the numbers to this quote to clarify my reply)
That's a really interesting and informative perspective on this conundrum. I'll try to counter some of these points (if I can) just for the sake of perspective/debate. 1. 'in context' - This is a good point and there's no denying that context is a very important part of learning vocabulary/using a language. My only counter to this is that as the learner would have already learnt the word before seeing the context, when he does in turn see the word in proper context it would be easier for him to remember the word and it's surrounding context just because he wouldn't have to worry about the word being initially unfamiliar. He would just 'add' the appropriate context to his existing memory of the word. What I mean by this messy point is that he'd still learn context but he'd almost be learning it in reverse (word then context). The context would cement and clarify his learning of the word and his future use of it (in theory). 2. 'become more familiar with pronunciation' - I have no counter to this point. It's a very good point. 3. 'overlap' and 'context-dependent' - Again, I see absolutely no counter to this. 4. 'grammatical functions' - Yet another good point. One wouldn't know if a verb was transitive/instransitive or mainly used passively or any other grammatical change it may commonly undergo in its usage. The learner would have to learn this all from scratch, just like any other less 'vocabulary-advantaged' learner would have to. 5. grammatical "play pen" - my only tiny counter-point to this would be that it would depend on how much the verbs change. If the language was Spanish for example with its many different variations of the verb depending on who/what the subject was, then this would cause problems as the learner would still have the task of becoming familar with all of these verb changes. I believe that some languages change the word quite considerably depending on the rest of the sentence (German perhaps?) so this would be a major drawback for the learner as well. Of course if the language is one that does not change the verbs/nouns considerably when they are used, or at least does so in a logical, uncomplicated, consistent manner, then this point is weakened somewhat. 6. 'collocations' - This is another big one as well. If the learner were learning English then I think this would be a big hassle because I can't help but feel that English has an annoying amount of these (much to my students' dismay). The only counter to this is personal experience. In my study of Korean, I saw that rather than 'read a newspaper' Koreans can say 'see a newspaper' (신문 보다). Knowing the words seperately makes the collocation much easier to remember. Likewise, when I learnt 'support' and 'socialism' seperately and then saw them as a collocation together it was simple to remember (of course this is the same in English so that's a cheaply made point). I did not learn them originally in context/connection with one another because I did not presume that they were connected in a manner similar to English but seeing them together reinforced my knowledge of these words and hence their collocated form. Your final point about getting to the high levels of the language quicker is interesting. In my experience, a major part of what seems to slow down getting past an upper-intermediate/Advanced stage is the vocabulary acquisition. At that point in your learning you should be strong enough to have a decent command of/familiarity with the workings of the language. Obviously your practise/usage of the language will determine your overall fluency but I think the vocabulary is what tends to hold back some learners. The learner in this scenario could theoretically pass this in a much quicker fashion as you point out which is an intriguing point. I think your points (and others) seem to show/conclude that though the learner would save time in the long run, he wouldn't have a true advantage over any other learner who did not have this vocabulary base to begin with due to the inherent differences in learning vocabulary and learning/using a language correctly. Edited by crafedog on 20 March 2010 at 7:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6495 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 10 of 18 20 March 2010 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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There are related languages that share vocabulary, but not grammar, nor phonology. This lets you read a text and get the idea what it's about, but not more. Still you need to start learning the language from scratch: grammar, pronunciation and listening. That's a lot of work, and knowledge of vocabulary doesn't seem an advantage in a long term.
(for me it's Bulgarian: the same script, very similar vocabulary, but very different grammar and phonology) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 11 of 18 20 March 2010 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose what we're talking about here is someone who buys a flashcard program and takes a long time to realise that there's more to language than vocabulary.
Obviously having any sort of knowledge of any element of the language is going to help in learning the rest of it, but our hypothetical learner is going to encounter a problem that most learners encounter at one period or another, but at a higher level: Over-reliance on a single form. Any time you learn vocabulary from a wordlist or set of flashcards, you "bias" your brain into thinking of dictionary headword form. Regardless of what tense you want, you always think through the headword form. It takes a lot of conscious effort to redress the balance and start recalling the inflected forms as required. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 12 of 18 20 March 2010 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm not sure I agree here; however, I do agree that you are relying on the flashcards to tell you what is or isn't a common word. For all you know, the words could represent the translation of the most common English words, leaving you with none of the words natives use most. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5449 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 13 of 18 20 March 2010 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not sure this is purely hypothetical. The amount of Persian/Arabic vocabulary in Uzbek and Uyghur (and I presume the other Central Asian Turkic languages) is astounding. Even though my Arabic and Farsi are nil, I frequently stumble across things in Uzbek where I see the root and immediately have a better understanding of what the word means.
To reiterate, however, my Farsi and Arabic are nil. So I can't say for myself how this experiment would work. But I'm pretty sure that an Uzbek who took up Farsi or an Iranian who took up Uzbek would be able to answer this riddle for us. On a side note, as someone who has dozens (at best) of Arabic and Farsi words to bring to the study of Uzbek, I've found this knowledge more useful for a-has and memory than for scanning. Take this Uzbek expression: Safaringiz bexatar bo'lsin. At a glance, it looks pretty foreign. But if you know that it means "Have a safe trip," then you can see that the root of the first word is "safari," from the Arabic. I imagine this is what our hypothetical situation would be like: You'd still have to look up a lot of things to make sure the meaning really was the same or to realize that underneath the grammar stuff there lurked a word you knew. But whereas someone totally new to the language would need to see the word tens of times to totally get it, after seeing it once or twice in context it would be yours. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 14 of 18 20 March 2010 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some time ago, I wanted to google information about Mägo de Oz. Somehow I ended up on their Chavacano wikipedia entry.
("Much of the words in the Chavacano vocabulary are mostly derived from the Spanish language, while its grammar is mostly based on Philippine languages, primarily Tagalog and Cebuano.") As my Spanish is still relatively bad, and I've been learning Spanish Castellano and passive Argentinian Castellano and Catalan at the same time, I managed to read through most of the article believing Chavacano was some obscure Spanish minority language. It seems that vocabulary and some sort of knowledge about the subject is enough for some level of comprehension, but complex grammar and production still have to be acquired like for any second language? I know that Chavacano is a creole language, but it seemed to fit your hypothetical situation. Edited by Bao on 21 March 2010 at 4:04am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5988 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 15 of 18 21 March 2010 at 11:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I think this hypothetical situation can almost apply to learning related languages. For instance, as I've been learning Swedish, I've found lots and lots of words that are either related to English or related to German. With some thinking, I can guess quite a few words, which sometimes leads to some seemingly absurd "aha!" moments where I don't get a sentence at all the first 3 times I read it, but then suddenly I get the whole thing because I realize how some of the vocab lines up with either an obscure English word or with German. (for example, today I learned "del" for "part", and "dela upp" for "share or divide up something", and I realized that this is the same root word as English "deal" for what you do with a deck of cards.)
Having a massive vocab would definitely help you start to read real native materials. If I were in that situation, I'd grab some audiobooks with the text versions, and I'd do a lot of Listening/Reading. The vocab would allow you to semi-understand almost everything, and then you'd eventually catch up on the rest of it by osmosis. Overall, I'd say that this vocabulary knowledge would greatly advance this hypothetical person's rate of learning the new language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 16 of 18 21 March 2010 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||
I started to do an L-R experiment with Swedish (without any translation or dictionary; neither do I know the story) and it's pretty hard. I think I get the main story line but except for random words everything else stays cryptic. I'll continue when I don't have to cram French, just to see if I will notice any kind of improvement. =D 1 person has voted this message useful |
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