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"Myths" of foreign language learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 25 of 72 28 April 2010 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I'll try not to be long-winded. But I feel that this statement is wrong and, above all, very misleading for those readers who are learning French. Two problems. First, unlike Spanish, French grammatical gender is only very approximately indicated by vowel ending. Certain suffixes or word endings are gender specific. For example, all nouns ending in -ment and -al are masculine and all words ending in -tion, -ure, -ette are feminine. But as any learner of French can attest, word ending is a poor clue in very many cases and there are all kinds of exceptions. There is "la journée" and "la soirée" but "le musée" and "le mausolée"; "la maison" and "le baton". Secondly, the main point I would like to make however is that the main reason for this common and egregious error of English-speakers in French is precisely the very fact that the "grammar" of gender and vocabulary are not acquired at the same time. One can separate the two in Spanish, for example, because the gender marking system is very regular. To do so in French where gender marking is quite irregular is a recipe for disaster, and that is exactly what we see so often. When French-speakers make fun of English-speakers in French, the first thing they do is mix up the genders. How do you acquire the system, the so-called "feel" for the right gender agreement? A simple answer: Learn the "grammar of gender" and the word at the same time. You will avoid much grief and potential embarrassment later on. For example, learn "le musée" as in "Le musée des beaux arts" or "un très bon musée". Learn "la journée" in "Bonne journée" or in "une belle journée ensoleillée". This way when you have to use either word you'll get the gender agreement right. Learn in context. For beginners, I will even go so far as to say: learn the context and then generalize. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 26 of 72 28 April 2010 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Knowing a core meaning doesn't make it possible to predict figurative uses and fixed expressions, and neither Mondria nor Cainntear nor me would ever claim that. But it is practical to know it because not all uses are figurative (sometime there is a little furry animal running around somewhere), partly because guessing the correct meaning of an expression may be easier when you know a core meaning. And understanding something makes it easier to remember it. S-allard aks "why does "smell a rat" mean to be suspicious about something?". Well, because of the unpleasant associations of rats, especially the one that dead rats stink. Expressions normally appear because someone sees a connection somewhere. And with time an expression can become fixed, so that it isn't changed even though the original comparison has become obsolete. Learning the core meanings of words can't tell you whether a certain expression is used by native speakers - you have to read and listen to a lot of material to get a feel for that - but they can help you to get a grip on the expressions you actually find. It is actually difficult to find words totally without a meaning of their own. Those that come closest would be auxiliary verbs and 'particles'. What's the meaning of "do" in "I do not like it"?, and why can you do without it in "I like it" (assuming that the negation carries the whole semantic weight of the denial in the first sentence). The answer is that "to do" can be used about carrying out any action implicitely or explicitely expressed by a verb, and it still does so even where it is prescribed by a syntactical rule. The real problem is why someone decided that *"I like not it" wasn't OK (a decision somewhat reminiscent of the interdiction against white tennis socks with formal black attire), but it was not illogical to solve the resulting problem by inserting a verb with a suitable vague, but relevant meaning. And now the meaning of "do" could be to be a filler-verb in cases where syntactical rules makes it necessary to have one. That's also a meaningful meaning.
If you cut the context down to something that shows necessary morphological and syntactical information then I don't mind - actually it may be a good idea. For instance learning the article together with nouns where there can be any doubt about the gender is an excellent idea (and much better than memorizing a noun and the Latin name of its gender). Learning verbs and the case or preposition they govern is also an excellent idea. The problem arises when you learn more than that, as in "une belle journée ensoleillée". This example really doesn't teach you anything about "journée" that "la journée" alone doesn't cover. But you learn something about "belle" (masculine form: beau), nemaly that this is one of e limited group of adjectives that have a tendency to slip in front of the noun. The problem with those that say that you always should learn things in context is that they seem to think in terms of of whole sentences or totally accidental quotes, instead of actually thinking through how to represent the relevant information in a standardized form. Another example: if I want to learn the construction possibilities of a verb, I don't want to memorize a whole sentence, but just a standardized formula like "to do something to somebody". Choosing all kinds of random direct and indirect objects just obscures the pertinent information. Edited by Iversen on 28 April 2010 at 10:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 27 of 72 28 April 2010 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I think we're getting close to the fundamental difference between our respective positions. But before I start to pontificate, I will say that, theoretical discussions and speculations aside, the important thing is to use what works for you. We all have our own ways of learning and only you know best what works for you. But let's get to the crux of the matter. Iversen asks: what does "une belle journée ensoleillée" tells us about "journée" that "la journée" does not. The answer is nothing. Iversen is totally right. But this misses the point of learning in context. The specific goal here is to illustrate and inculcate the gender agreements associated with "journée" by using two very common examples that can be immediately put into practice by the learner. The problem of gender agreement is not how to remember whether a word is masculine or feminine but how to fluently concatenate the appropriate associated forms. This is precisely why example such as "un très bon musée" and "une bonne journée ensoleillée" are good because they illustrate in a contrasting manner the workings of the agreement system. One does not have to memorize entire sentences chosen haphazardly. Short, well chosen phrases will do the job. And as I have said repeatedly, there is a place for minimalist word lists. Edited by s_allard on 28 April 2010 at 10:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 28 of 72 29 April 2010 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
And this leads us back to the point Iversen made earlier -- Mondria deliberately uses the word always in this myth. Once you know the rules of a language, you do not need to learn the rules of agreement for each example -- if you know "une bonne journée ensoleillée" and you're taught the word "matinée", you should be able to just drop it in in place of "journée" without needing any context. Your last response to me was about how gender was not explicit in the words, but note that I was talking about "regular" words, and the existence or irregular words doesn't disprove the existence of a statistically-significant "regular" set. We teach the -re conjugation as a general rule so that we don't have to memorise the conjugation of each verb individually. The fact that être has to be taught separately doesn't change this. Iversen's example of "une bonne journée ensoleillée" contains three words that can be considered regular and only one irregular one. "Bonne" needs more context because it cannot be generalised. Irregularity is OK, though, because only the most common words are irregular -- irregularity relies on high frequency of use and when a word loses that frequency of use, it regularises. "La maison" is irregular, but it's very very common. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 29 of 72 29 April 2010 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I've never heard of the concept of regularity and irregularity being applied to the gender marking system in French. A small number of word endings indicate either masculine or feminine noun class, it is true. But, as I point out, and totally unlike Spanish, word ending is a poor indicator of gender. For example, many words ending in -eur will be masculine if that is associated with a masculine agent, e.g. le voyeur, le coureur. But you have words like la grosseur and la grandeur. And there are all the words that are spelled the same or sound the same but can have different genders, e.g. la physique and le physique, le manche and la manche, le poste and la poste, le tour and la tour, le foie, la fois and la foi. For all French learners out there, I would strongly urge you to learn these examples, and the many like them, ALWAYS in context because they are extremely confusing. And for this reason they are an indicator of mastery of French grammar. There are a couple of other related issues on this interesting topic, but the point I would like to make here is that gender marking in French is not regular with irregular exceptions. Au contraire, it is very arbitrary with a few subsets of morphological marked homogeneous groups. The existence of these subsets does facilitate learning somewhat, but there are very many cases where the distinction is not marked morphologically. This is why gender is much more of a problem in French than in Spanish where one can speak of a regular system with exceptions e.g. el planeta and little idiosyncracies like el mar and la mar. On a final note, for those who are familiar with Spanish, the French gender marking system is way more complex because certain agreements are not made in Spanish whereas they are mandatory in French. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 30 of 72 30 April 2010 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Neither have I. I'm the only person I know who talks about it, but it's applicable to every language I've ever studied. Every language has "exceptions" in all areas, and the way exceptions work is the same in all areas. Having different terminology doesn't help. As you'll know from French, "regularity" is just the property of following rules. "Irregularity" is something that doesn't follow the rules exactly. That's a nice contrasting pair, but there is no opposite to "exceptions", which is why most people don't notice it.
Those are two different classes of noun. One is a noun derived from a verb (as you say, an agent) the other is a noun derived from an adjective. The rule is -eur agent = masculine, adjective+eur = feminine There are exceptions to this rule (I think! must spend more time on French) but again, we learn the rule and generalise for the regular items, then we memorise the irregular exceptions.
But again you're taking about exceptional cases -- irregular nouns -- and we were talking about the myth of "always" needing to learn in context. And besides, I still don't see the absolute need for context in these cases -- the only irregularity here is grammatical gender, which you can learn explicitly if you need to.
As an outsider looking in, that seems like an exaggeration. Sometimes as a native speaker of a language it's hard to see the rules because you've never actually needed to notice them. I was certainly surprised when I started studying English grammar, because there was all these things that I'd never noticed -- things I just took for granted and just said without needing to think about them at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 31 of 72 01 May 2010 at 2:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I would certainly agree that there is no absolute need to learn in context. As I have said many times, do what works for you. My general concern here is that the grammatical gender agreement system is one of the areas of greatest difficulty for English-speakers. (The other area is verb conjugation). Why is gender so complicated in French and much less so in Spanish? It is because gender is much less predictable in French than in Spanish. Why "une espèce" and "un espace"? (Note that "une espace" is a technical term in typography). Neither is an exception to a rule. It's an arbitrary distinction. The problem of gender in French is of course not one of learning whether the word is masculine or feminine. The real issue is how to quickly make all the necessary morphological adjustments in the accompanying words, something that is totally unnecessary in English. As an aside, it's a similar problem with verb conjugation in French and very much in Spanish where the forms vary considerably when compared to verb conjugation in English. The fundamental problem is one of learning strategy. I can stare at the words in a list and make a mental note that one is masculine and the other is feminine. Fine, that can work. I take the view, however, that by learning the words "accompanied" by a little phrase such as "une nouvelle espèce de poisson" and "un bel espace de travai", I'm killing three birds with one stone" First, I'm learning the word with a meaning. Second, I'm practicing the gender agreement system. Third, I'm acquiring a ready-to-use chunk of vocabulary. Now, I understand that one runs the risk not being able to generalize the word outside of the context. So, someone who has learned one of the above phrases might not recognize "quelle espèce d'imbécile". I doubt it. I think the advantages by far outweigh this small risk. I'm particularly adamant about learning in context when one comes to homonyms. Why? This is the area of greatest difficulty for English-speakers learning French because the words sound the same. What is the difference between le poste and la poste, le moule and la moule? There is nothing "irregular" about these words. One is simply masculine and the other feminine. Learning that is not problem. The real problem is how to remember the difference in meaning and how to effortlessly adjust the agreeing words. In my humble opinion, phrases such as: "j'ai eu un nouveau poste" and "la poste est très lente en ce moment" are helpful for the three reasons I have given above. Essentially, learning in context, while not always necessary I will admit, is a sort of mnemonic device that can go a long way in making certain very complex rules easier to use. Just to use a different perspective, French-speakers learning English have a problem distinguishing "to do" and "to make" because it is the same word in French "faire". In this kind of situation, I would again insist on learning in context precisely because it would help to clarify the subtle distinction. Edited by s_allard on 01 May 2010 at 2:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 32 of 72 01 May 2010 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
But that is grammar and the myth is regarding vocabulary. Once you have learned the rules of agreement, you know them. You do not need to relearn the same rules for every single vocabulary item in the language.
Yes, but as I've already said, this is down to a high number of exceptions rather than a lack of rule. Most of your examples are irregular because of the loss of a distinction still present in other Romance languages. This in itself doesn't help a learner who doesn't speak another Romance language, but it shows that there are various classes of noun and only certain classes are truly unpredictable. A large number of your examples were monosyllabic. If the general rule of "drop final Latin syllable, leave silent final consonants in masculine" applied, you'd get "le post" with silent ST, which is too short to be clear. You've got funny consonant clusters like "le manche". If you lost the E, you'd have "le manch", which just doesn't look like French. If you reduced it to "le man", you'd have the same problem as with "le post".
If you think the real problem is grammar, then say that. This is true. The other side of this is that learning vocabulary is easy.
Are you killing three birds with one stone, or are you simply throwing one stone at three birds? I've always found that trying to do two or more things things at once is far less effective a strategy than focusing on one thing. The more unclear things in a sentence, the less clear the sentence. I can then incorrect ascribe parts of the meaning to the wrong parts of the sentence.
Yes there is. La règle: nouns ending in E are feminine. Régulier: la poste Irrégulier: le poste. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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