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Relearning your mother tongue? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mpete16 Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5524 days ago 98 posts - 114 votes  Speaks: Tagalog, English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 9 17 February 2010 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm a native English speaker pleased with my recent progress in German (I'm somewhere in
between intermediate and advanced fluency). However, I've been making lots of grammar mistakes in English (probably due to first-language attrition). For example, I sometimes don't know which preposition I should use in a given sentence. When that happens, I just sort of "mumble" my way through the uncertain part of that sentence. So, my question is, has anyone here felt the need to relearn your mother tongue like how you learned your foreign languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5962 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 9 17 February 2010 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
My English suffered while I was living in Germany as well but I found that the only thing necessary to polish it up was increased exposure to the language. It's not like you need to relearn anything, just refresh your memory. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lindsay19 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5823 days ago 183 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC1 Studies: Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic | Message 3 of 9 17 February 2010 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've noticed this happen to me to...vvhen it does, I just read some books in English, or vvatch a movie, tv, etc. One just needs more exposure to it.
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| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5530 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 4 of 9 18 February 2010 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Before I discovered HWTLAL I always thought that language learning took place in schools or special language classes for adults, with an occasional and not effective CD-ROM thrown in for good measure. So improving my Danish (and English) was more or less out of the question, just as learning any other language was.
Then HWTLAL came along, and a whole new world opened up for me. After having decided what my target languages should be, and having decided for a long-term time frame to get time enough to reach the different levels of competency I desire, only then did it occur to me that I could use these language learning skills to improve Danish and English as well. At some point in the future I will study Danish and English "on the side" to improve both. For instance, different grammar points, insight in how to use different words to express different meanings, increase vocab, study etymology, study more or less archaic forms of the languages, engage in caligraphy, writing poetry, combine it with drawing and music (two other skills on my long term character development skills list) and in general use the languages with greater precision and linguistic awareness. These days I am reading a wonderful book by Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat called "The Sanskrit Language: An Overview. History and Structure, Linguistic and Philosophical Representations, Uses and Users" (original version: 1992). In this book, the author, a professor of Sanskrit, among other things describes how Sanskrit was only named Sanskrit after Panini, the most famous Sanskrit grammarian, had created his peerless grammar 2500 years ago, after it had become the second language, and grammar an integral part of it use. According to the author we have no reliable information of the language beeing called Sanskrit before 5-600 AD. It was thus the conscious use of the language, through mastery of all its linguistic aspects as codified by the grammarians, as a tool for thinking and expressing ideas of the highest quality that gave Sanskrit its name. I find this elevation through conscious and deliberate use very fascinating and consider it a model to follow for all my other languages as well. Raising the bar for English and Danish with this in mind would give me the power to use both with the highest degree of precision and clarity these languages may offer. Edited by Rikyu-san on 19 February 2010 at 7:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5587 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 5 of 9 18 February 2010 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
My English suffers now, and I'm living in Pennsylvania! I used brauchen the other day, kaufen, and para (spanish) in normal sentences. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| victor-osorio Diglot Groupie Venezuela Joined 5434 days ago 73 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 9 18 February 2010 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am not an expert, but I decided to take a look at what experts have to say on this,
since I'm also interested and wanted to learn a bit more. Check this awesome essay for both, a review of all psychologic and neurophysiologic theories about forgetting and a new theory, quite convincing, proposed by the author himself. It's a good reading: find it here. It seems that, as we all know just by observation, the things you learn usually are forgotten when new things are learned. Some argues this is because a physical deterioration of the brain, others that is because limited resources for memory and others because the brain wants to avoid confusing relations. In any case, the only way to not forget something is to simply review it. You'll constantly forget things so you have to be constantly reviewing them. It's a natural trend: nothing lasts forever. So you have to put on top of your mind anything you want to always remember because if not it will go to the bottom, sooner or later, So nothing new, you have to expose yourself again to stimulus in your native tongue and remember that whichever you don't recall constantly it will be eventually forgotten. Even your native tongue. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 7 of 9 19 February 2010 at 3:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, I have the same problem with my English, especially since the beginning of last summer, which I spent in Greece. I have also been intensively studying foreign languages since then. I have felt the urge to buy an ESL grammar workbook before to remedy this problem, because I can really feel its effects a lot, even though I am living in the United States. A couple weeks ago when writing an essay, it took me about fifteen minutes just to craft one sentence because I couldn't figure out how to phrase it so that it would be correct. My problem, like yours, has especially been the prepositions (such a nightmare in English!), but also the verbs to an extent...
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| Vinlander Groupie Canada Joined 5823 days ago 62 posts - 69 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 8 of 9 19 February 2010 at 3:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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I may have the same problem after listening to a lot of German. however i'm not sure. I'm a newf so i've always had bad grammar. I might just becoming more aware when I f**k it up
1 person has voted this message useful |
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