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How do you people cram in so many? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| klusek Pentaglot Newbie PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5819 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German, Russian, Swedish Studies: Italian, Macedonian | Message 33 of 73 04 April 2009 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I have always had these colour-related associations while counting and learning new words but I thought it's me who's not quite normal. Every time I tried to explain it to someone people were baffled and said that it's strange. As a matter of fact I can't separate numbers and letters from colours: 1 - black, 2 - blue/white, 3 - red, 4 - green, 5 - dark blue, 6 - orange/yellowish, 7 - yellow, 8 - darkish, 9 - purple and so on. It helps me while learning new vocabulary but unfortunately my memory could be better. As people say "My memory is very good but very short too".
For me action speaks louder than words which means that a word in context is much easier to learn than as a separated unit. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leonidus Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6318 days ago 113 posts - 123 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 34 of 73 04 April 2009 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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To the original post question: how? I don't, yet :) It takes so much will power to perfect them day in and day out, that at times I give up and just take a slack for as long as a year even, and then pick up again :) I guess I am a lazy linguist, I like it when it's fun to learn, but more often than not it gets boring and I get distracted by other things in life.
I don't try to be a polyglot or something, but if in 10 years I can speak the 3 languages I am working on now (French, German and Mandarin) just as good as I speak Russian (my first) and English (my second) or close, I'll be one happy camper and then maybe dive into others, provided I have free time for all of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 35 of 73 05 April 2009 at 1:37am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'm studying three languages daily, and a few others when I have time. People always ask me: "Don't you think your [language X] would be better if you just studied that?", "Can you really learn a language on your own?", "Isn't it best to go the country?" et.c.
Of course my German would be better if I just studied that one, but as none of my languages are really "important" (I study mainly "for fun" and my own interest, which is indeed the most important factor for me), I don't want to leave the others just to focus on one. After all, what do they think will happen? Is it the end of the world if I devote my time on several languages? As long as I improve (no matter how little) I'm happy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5915 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 36 of 73 05 April 2009 at 1:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
This is the most difficult thing to explain! As strange as it sounds I don't think eingebildet is connected to its meaning in English, just as the English word isn't connected to anything or doesn't need to be connected to anything for me to recall it. It feels like it's kind of floating in the nearby area but not directly linked in a this is English this is German kind of way (as in the busy example). It kind of exists in and of itself if that makes any sense. The boundaries between one language and another kind of blur, they kind of co-exist. Each representation of a word is very unique even though the first letter of a word usually gives it its predominant colour. Words beginning with 'a' are usually red but there is always something that stands out to distinguish it from another word beginning with 'a'.
I think you're right. Though perhaps it's another route to the same end?
Perhaps, though the representation I see of a word is fixed. I haven't (consciously) chosen the colours, textures or feelings associated with it and cannot change them. Most of the time they have no logical connection to what they represent. But I think seeing words in a 3D way helps to remember them more easily.
When I saw the word konijn my brain instantly stuck it to conejo (Spanish for rabbit) then made the word conejín in order to remember the Dutch form. It also has a thick orange tinge to it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 37 of 73 05 April 2009 at 11:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
To quote TheBiscuit:
How can you set up a system that models something that has no logic? Furthermore, consider the theory that all language is synaesthetic (Google "Ramachandran synesthesia"), and the consequence that all humans have some degree of synaesthesia, even if it's not consciously noticeable. Any artificial synaesthetic mnemonic would then risk interfering with your existing weak associations. Look at tones in Chinese. Traditionally these have been numbered, but not to patterns present in the numbers themselves (the word "two" has a falling tone, but tone 2 is rising). To me the numbering seems completely arbitrary. But what's to say that the original designer wasn't synaesthetic and associated tones with numbers, but didn't know it? He then designed what seemed like a mnemonic to him, but just isn't much help to the rest of us. And then other people come up with other notions, like colours. Again, to me it's arbitrary, but to the designer it probably isn't -- there's probably a synaesthetic association in there somewhere. We've had plenty of examples of seemingly meaningless networks of associations that just haven't helped the learner -- it does seem like you can't build synaesthetic associations under normal conditions. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6256 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 39 of 73 05 April 2009 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You could always try. One time I tried to assign different colors to Korean letters because there were too many letters with similar colors. But once I wasn't focusing on remembering the new colors, the original natural associations just took over. Now, I didn't work on this very long. It was a bit like trying to redefine words I already know well(The word cat now means bird...that won't work.). Maybe if I didn't already have colors for those letters, and if I'd tried longer, it would have worked. It's always interesting to hear how other people's synesthesia works. My associations are much simpler than TheBiscuits'. The color of the first letter of a word doesn't dominate. It's just like a string of colors. The color of "House" isn't just the color of "H", it's H, then O, then U, etc. Aside from homonyms(same spelling and pronunciation), every word has a different set and order of colors. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5858 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 40 of 73 05 April 2009 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
However, I did set up a little system of colours for the 26 letters and tried it a bit. I was able to visualise a word and visualise the translation. But I didn't have much success with association. However, the process of "colouring" a target language word seemed to greatly improve my concentration on it. Recall that TheBiscuit described not really seeing associations or links to the English word. To TheBiscuit, the target word seemed to just "exist", presumably as what it means. That is ideally what should happen if you look at a nice (colour?) photo of an object in a photo dictionary. You associate the target language name with the object, not with your native language. So all this colour, shape, texture and feeling may be facilitating that direct learning. At least improving concentration. I often find that when trying to learn a bunch of new words, I can feel my concentration failing. That is probably why I learn a lot better by learning the words in context, in a sentence, where it is easier to concentrate. So if "colouring" can improve concentration, that would be a good thing. I suppose that the people who naturally make synaesthetic associations are also very good at concentrating. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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