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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes  Speaks: Swedish* | Message 49 of 60 12 November 2009 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am all for the natural method but case usage in Russian really isn't difficult. Anyone can understand the basic usage of all cases in 5 minutes, given the right material. Same with verbal aspect, the basic idea is extremely simple. Verbal voice (active passive) is very similar in all European languages, including English. Spending a few minutes on this won't make you a competent speaker, but it will speed up learning immensely. To be honest, I think you are pretending here. It doesn't seem possible to be able to speak so many languages and still have trouble with trivialities like passive voice. Either your grammar book is rubbish or you're putting on a show. "Look at me, I am completely hopeless at grammar, but I can speak a million languages, thanks to LingQ. You can also learn Hungarian without the sweat." Seriously though, LingQ sounds interesting, and I will give it a try. For some languages it makes sense to include grammar explanations in the popup dictionaries, just like at Perseus Digital Library, a brilliant and free resource for Greek and Latin. They use a grammar motor, but since your texts are short (shorter than the Iliad at least), words and constructions could be individually annotated by hand. But perhaps this is already in place. Edited by Gusutafu on 12 November 2009 at 4:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5669 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 50 of 60 12 November 2009 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe you are a super-genius, but that sounds unrealistic. Maybe I am dumb, but I found those concepts took a lot longer to grasp than five minutes. In fact, I would say it took me years to really absorb them. And I don't think I am alone: When I hear learners speaking slavic languages - even after months or years of learning - I see them pausing and thinking hard to try to figure which out which case applies and which ending to use. In terms of verbal aspect, I often wonder if it is impossible to fully grasp without being a native speaker. Sure, you can get to a level of high confidence, but even now I still am puzzled by aspect choice in some situations. It is one of those things where Slavic speakers say you just "feel" it. Having said that, if you have a means of explaining those concepts that only takes five minutes to grasp, please do share them with us. It would be a tremendous contribution to the language learning community. Edited by Splog on 12 November 2009 at 6:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 51 of 60 12 November 2009 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Like I said, it will take time to get a feeling for all the nuances and idiosyncracies of case usage, but what is hard about the basic idea?
The distinction (Nominative) vs (Accusative + Dative) is surely obvious? It's what you have in English. HE is running vs Help HIM or Do you see HIM. The difference between Dative and Accusative is also there, behind the scenes, in English. I suppose everyone learns about direct and indirect objects at school? Dative is for indirect object, give HIM the book. Accusative for direct objects, Give him THE BOOK. So far so good. Genitive in Russian is used both as in English "The roof OF THE HOUSE" and as a partitive "a bottle OF WHISKY". A special case of partitive is instead of direct objects in negations "i never drink COFFEE" (coffee is genetive here in Russian). Instrumental is not very common, but is used when you are talking about the means, the tool. "open the door with THE KEY". this includes the agent in passive constructions. "he was shot by THE POLICE". additionally, it is used after certain verbs, often with meanings related to "be", or that verb itself. "when I was A STUDENT" or "I work as A POSTMAN". Locative is easy, it denotes location. "I live in MOSCOW". another common use is after the preoposition about "o/ob". "let's not talk about POLITICS". I don't remember ever reflecting on the usage of passive and active, so I don't think it is very different from Swedish or English. Do you have any tricky examples? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 52 of 60 13 November 2009 at 12:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have to agree with Gusutafu. That rundown sums it up pretty well, and should give even the most grammar-hostile students a basic idea of what to expect.
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| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5669 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 53 of 60 13 November 2009 at 1:10am | IP Logged | |||||
But that is the whole point. Understanding cases is all about the idiosyncrasies. Even though your five-minute summary is great, I contend it is only great after you already understand lots of details. Just hearing the basic idea as your introduction to case isn't very useful in practice. To be able to have even the most trivial conversations you have to get masses of tables and rules absorbed - and doing that takes an immense amount of time. For example, if I wanted to say "I will ask him a question", just thinking "Hey, we have the same concept in English" isn't much assistance here. Getting the "big picture" doesn't help you work out if you are "asking a question OF him" or "asking a question TO him". There is simply a huge number of rules to absorb, and telling people that "hey, you can get the basics in five minutes" is exaggerating the benefit of that big picture, and is trivialising the massive amount of work that lays ahead.
The issue was really to do with verbal aspect. Here is a very trivial example where most folks at early stages would have to think hard about which aspect applies (and after deciding would likely be unsure of themselves): "I go to school, and tram number 100 goes to my school. Today I am taking the tram, but tomorrow the tram isn't going there, and all next week it won't be going there either. So, I am going to be walking to school instead." Sure, once you have a good grasp of aspect, you can figure this out. But after reading the rules for five minutes, anybody apart from a genius will be left struggling and full of uncertainty about where to use which aspect here. What Steve Kaufman says is that lots of exposure to real-life use takes that feeling of uncertainly away, and that staring at the grammar (even for five minutes) isn't going to do that. Edited by Splog on 13 November 2009 at 1:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 54 of 60 13 November 2009 at 8:24am | IP Logged | |||||
Actually, the point in this case, if you read the post that I was referring to, was that Steve professed to be unable to grasp even the very basics of Russian case usage, and even the distinction active/passive eluded him. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 55 of 60 13 November 2009 at 9:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Getting back to the topic after my detour, I tried out LingQ yesterday and while the idea is brilliant, just what I would need for Polish, there are some flaws that make it unusable to me:
It seems that by default, all words are considered unknown, and you have to select each individual word to change that. Unless there is a way to reverse this, so that words are assumed known until you tell it otherwise, LingQ would take too much time to be usable. Similarly, it should be possible to just double-click on a word to mark it as unknown, rather than right-clicking and moving the cursor rather far before clicking again. Perhaps this is configurable, but otherwise it's a dealbreaker! LingQ should be optimised for fast and efficient usage, whether people use it to read extensively or intensively. Generally speaking, I think the site is poorly organised. It's unclear what a course is and exactly what lessons are available. Sure, if I spend some time there I will understand these things, but you should really try to make it as intuitive as possible, otherwise potential user will move on to something more obviously usable. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 56 of 60 13 November 2009 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In fact, you don't have to select a word to make it known. You can do, but you will save time by saving the unknown first, and then click the "I know all" button. The system will add those automatically to your statistics.
Example: Let's assume that a text has 100 unique words. You save 30 of them, click "I know all" and the statistics will show that you have saved 30 and "learned" 70. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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