Language confusion (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

Language confusion
Tags: Confusion/mixing up languages
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Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

27 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4

Earle
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6316 days ago
276 posts - 276 votes

Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Norwegian, Spanish

Message 25 of 27

16 June 2008 at 11:16pm | IP Logged

It seems to me that both spoken Swedish and Norwegian (at least Bokmal) are much closer to their orthographies than spoken Danish is. Would you agree?
1 person has voted this message useful

tricoteuse
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Norway
littlang.blogspot.co
Joined 6679 days ago
745 posts - 845 votes

Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, English^C1, Russian, French
Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian

Message 26 of 27

17 June 2008 at 2:16am | IP Logged

jeff_lindqvist wrote:

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.

You only need some exposure to either Norwegian or Danish to be able to easily tell them apart in their written form! Norwegian now looks like a proper language to me, and not only poorly spelled Swedish, but Danish is still "HAHA, they can't spell!" since it is now poorly spelled Norwegian. And this is not after one year in Norway, I felt this quite early on. And to write in Norwegian is *quite* easy, there are enough differences to have to change "mode", and feel that you are writing in another language, albeit a very similar one. It's not just 10 words that you have to change, like some people seem to think, but rather MOST words that need some modification. For the speaking part, on the other hand, I agree to 100%, it feels like imitating a dialect...

I saw a Danish girl on the news speaking fluent Norwegian recently, and that was impressive.
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Raincrowlee
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6703 days ago
621 posts - 808 votes

Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French
Studies: Indonesian, Japanese

Message 27 of 27

17 June 2008 at 2:24am | IP Logged

furrykef wrote:

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.)

This actually reminds me of something that happened years ago when I first started learning Chinese in college. Sometimes, especially during the bloody oral tests, I would be asked how to say something in Chinese and the French word would come up and my mind would fixate on it and not let me think of the Chinese. I had studied French in high school, some two years before and wasn't even keeping it active at the time. It also happened to another friend of mine whose circumstances were similar.

An amusing echo of this happened a few years ago, when I was starting to revive my French. I had been living in Taiwan for a few years and I was proficient in Chinese, and it would come out any time I ran into a "blank" in my French--words I had forgotten or maybe never learned. I found the oddest thing was that it was mostly conjunctions. Anyway, I have a better handle on it now, and they don't interfere with each other much.

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