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Language confusion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 17 of 27 14 June 2008 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | ||
I haven't confused a word in one language with that of another consistently. That's because that when I did use the wrong word, someone would either look at me with puzzlement or would correct me realizing that I was mixing languages. However, I do have a general problem with confusing Polish and Slovak (not so much Czech, since I often stick to Slovak when dealing with Czechs.) When I complete Polish homework, I sometimes put Slovak words or constructions within Polish sentences, and I haven't quite been able to eradicate this type of mistake. However when I'm shown that I'm using the wrong word, I can correct my behaviour for that word. Yet that doesn't preclude me from making the same mistake with a new word in a future piece of homework. I believe that this arises from the fact that Slovak has somehow been easier for me to grasp than Polish. This seems even more strange since I've spent more time studying Polish (I even attended Polish classes at university in addition to all of the self-study and travel to Poland since that time) over Slovak and Polish was my first Slavonic language. Slovak on the other hand has been a self-study pursuit of mine from Day 1 and my learning of Slovak started a couple of years after I had started Polish. It seems that what I learned from Slovak has stuck better than what I've been learning from Polish, and that I still bear this Slovak influence in my Polish even though I'm concentrating on Polish these days. A more insidious type of confusion is between Croatian and Serbian. I'd be rich if I got a nickel for every time a Croat marked me for using something that in his/her view wasn't Croatian enough. The problem that I've found is that standard Croatian and standard Serbian are still very close, and indeed about as similar to each other as American and British English. They aren't identical, but they're much more similar to each other than nationalists and purists on both sides would like to believe. In contrast with Czech and Slovak which indeed have different declension and conjugation patterns in addition to all of the different words, Croatian and Serbian don't differ in these areas as much (indeed if I recall correctly, the substantive difference in Croatian and Serbian declension happens in one instance of the dative/locative singular). In less heated discussions with Croats and Serbs, many words that Croats think are purely Croatian and distinct from Serbian turn out to be acceptable and familiar to Serbs too. Differences between Croatian and Serbian conjugation and declension reflect either differences in spelling or style - either cosmetic or hard to define respectively. As with choice of vocabulary, syntax or declension that is declared as purely Croatian is acceptable (but less frequently-used) in Serbian also, and vice-versa. This makes it confusing for a foreigner since it seems that what is correct or incorrect seems to depend more on the ideological convictions or even mood of the native speaker rather than what a course or reference manual states. It would be comparable to an American speaker continually finding fault in someone who uses the British word "speciality" instead of "specialty" or who prefers to spell the word as "colour" instead of "color" even though "colour" and "color" would be pronounced identically by the same person. I wonder what would happen if I were to learn Croatian and Serbian now using newly-approved textbooks published in Croatia and Serbia respectively. I don't think that I'd be confusing myself as much as duplicating the work... :-P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 19 of 27 15 June 2008 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree that it's normal, and I wouldn't worry about it, because the problem goes away as one becomes more advanced. I also agree that if one doesn't speak, they won't have the problem, because it is a speaking problem. But I think this suggestion is an extreme reaction to solve a problem that's going away anyway. Do you really advocate delaying production until one reaches a high level, or do I not understand your post? I would rather start conversing as soon as practical. For me, conversation is the most important and difficult aspect of language learning, and should not be treated as an after thought. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 20 of 27 16 June 2008 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
Very intriguing. This reminds me of this quote from an article about languages spoken in Iceland: “Danish is mostly spoken in a way largely comprehensible to Swedes and Norwegians – it is often referred to as "Scandinavian" in Iceland.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland#Language From reading this thread it sounds like Danish/Norwegian/Swedish, Czech/Slovak, and Serbian/Croatian are the most closely related languages? It sounds like these three groups are more closely related than Spanish/Italian/Portuguese? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Earle Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6316 days ago 276 posts - 276 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Norwegian, Spanish | Message 21 of 27 16 June 2008 at 11:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Wiki means Danish as spoken in Iceland, as contrasted with the way it's spoken in Denmark...
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 22 of 27 16 June 2008 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I can speak for the last two pairs.
Despite the differences, Czech and Slovak are closely related and from what little I can gather about Spanish and Portuguese, Czech and Slovak are closer to each other than Spanish and Portuguese. Serbian and Croatian in my experience are even closer than Spanish and Portuguese or Czech and Slovak. The degree of similarity between standard Czech and standard Slovak has been aided greatly by the facts that Czechs and Slovaks lived in one country for most of the 20th century, relations between the two groups were relatively good and intermarriage was and still is common even though both standards arose from groups of dialects that were about 350 kilometers apart. The degree of similarity between standard Serbian and standard Croatian has been aided greatly by the facts that the modern standards arose primarily from the same group of dialects, Croats and Serbs lived in one country for most of the 20th century, relations between the two groups weren't always so bad that intermarriage was uncommon. This case is still contentious since the results are comparable to the situation within English or Spanish and you can argue that Serbian and Croatian are now both standardized variants of the same group of dialects or different languages. The bottom line is that confusion between the pairs still happens no matter how pedantic the purists are. In Slovakia, it's common to use slang that would be labelled as Czech as well as "Slovakified" equivalents of Czech words. (e.g. Slovak "diaľnica" 'highway' is taken from the Czech "dálnice", and is more common than the prescribed Slovak "autostráda"). In a case of reverse confusion, a Slovak politician (I think that it was Gustáv Husák, one of the presidents of Czechoslovakia in the Cold War) once addressed a Czech crowd and used "apříl" in his speech. In Czech 'April' is "duben" but in Slovak it's "apríl". He "Czechified" a Slovak word. In Croatia during the mid-1990s there was a case with President Tudjman who used the prescribed Serbian word "srećan" 'happy' rather than the prescribed Croatian word "sretan" while greeting President Clinton on national television. Rebroadcasts of Tudjman's greetings were edited by state-controlled media to cover up his flub. Given Tudjman's nationalism and support for the politically-motivated Croatian purism of the 1990s, it was ironic to say the least. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6473 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 23 of 27 16 June 2008 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today I had something odd happen... I was doing my flash card repetitions as usual, and I was asked to translate "Normally I pay by credit card" into Spanish. The first thing that popped into my head was the Japanese word, "kurejitto kaado". I knew immediately that that was Japanese and couldn't possibly be Spanish, but the Japanese word seemed to be blocking the Spanish word, "tarjeta de crédito", from my mind for a few seconds. I haven't even been studying Japanese that much lately, and don't currently have any Japanese flash cards in my database. (I did learn -- or rather re-learn -- this word about a week ago, though.)
I think it was just a fluke, but it was pretty funny. - Kef 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 27 16 June 2008 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
While Danish/Norwegian/Swedish sound completely different from each other (although Norwegian and Swedish have a certain "lilt") the written forms are quite similar (especially Danish and Norwegian), and that is what I meant when I said that I would have problems learning either of them (or both). Mainly, to solidify the language(s) enough to be able to separate them - give me a random text in either one and I'd probably make a wrong guess in 50% of the tries. And another thing, I would probably not focus on producing spoken/written Danish/Norwegian, as that would almost feel like faking another Swedish accent. I emphasize almost. That being said, I HAVE heard Swedes _speaking_ Norwegian and Danish, but that is probably as uncommon as Martians in your backyard. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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