Aspects learners know better than natives (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Aspects learners know better than natives
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41 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next >>

Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5059 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes

Speaks: Russian*

Message 9 of 41

16 March 2013 at 11:53am | IP Logged

Chung wrote:

- *przyjerzdżać, *tesz "to arrive (by vehicle), "also, too" (vs. codified
przyjeżdżać and też respectively. The first one involves rz and
ż with both being pronounced identically as a voiced retroflex sibilant (i.e.
something similar to s in "pleasure"). Despite the audio identity, the
spelling betrays the fact that the rz is a reflex of an older palatalized
r while that of ż is of an older g). The second mispelling arises
from Polish's tendency for devoicing of certain final consonants. In this example,
też indeed sounds like something written using the Polish alphabet as
tesz (it'd sound like the English slang word
tesh)

ż is a reflex of an older palatalized version of the same sound. And are the English
sounds really similar to the Polish ones?
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FELlX
Diglot
Groupie
France
Joined 4773 days ago
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Speaks: French*, English

Message 10 of 41

16 March 2013 at 12:04pm | IP Logged

cmmah wrote:

Reading through YouTube comments, I've noticed that French speakers (well, the Youtube French speakers) tend to
mix up verb endings, that sound the same in speech, but are written differently e.g "J'adores cette chanson", "Ce
film sors quand?". These are things that most learners of French would have no problem with.

It's more about them not rereading themselves. You'll see even worse mistakes like mixing "c'est" with "sait" (Happens to me sometimes). A bit like English's they're/their/there.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
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Message 11 of 41

16 March 2013 at 12:05pm | IP Logged

Hampie wrote:

Funny thing: I hear and I think their, they're and there differently and sometimes I think I pronounce them differently

Me too! And your vs you're.
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Serpent
Octoglot
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serpent-849.livejour
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Message 12 of 41

16 March 2013 at 12:17pm | IP Logged

Majka wrote:

It used to be that a non-native had a better grasp on spelling than the average native. I don't mean writing correctly - the grammar remained a problem - but spelling of single words.
The reason was that the "average" learner, whoever it might be, did see the word first, read it several times before the sound got connected with it. With current audio only methods, conversational courses and language exchanges, the written form is less important.

Currently, it is again down to math. Among the language learners, you will meet higher number of people better educated in the technicalities of grammar and orthography than among the natives. I did meet quite a few native speaker of German, whose grasp on German grammar was worse than mine. The simple reason is that I am working mainly with the language and in technical field as second, and they are working above all in technical field, and the language (even their own) is ... not cultivated consciously. These are educated people. Their education and work is simply in different field.

The problems nowadays are more visible. Internet, e-mail, sms, twitter - this all brought immense opportunities to communicate. But we have lost the quality in exchange for speed. I can still remember getting a polite rebuke because of typo in e-mail, and the practice of leaving drafts of e-mail messages wait for few hours before proofreading them. What do you think will happen now, unless the message is full of typos?

For me, in English, there is quite a solid distinction between it's and its, their and they're etc. However, I can understand why natives have problems - they hear the words for years before they discover that there are differences...

Good points!

BTE I've heard that in Czech y and i are pronounced the same, and native speakers have to memorize the spelling for words that contain them, whereas they correspond to Russian words where the distinction was not lost.
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modus.irrealis
Bilingual Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 5881 days ago
29 posts - 37 votes
Speaks: English*, Greek*, French
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Danish, Turkish

Message 13 of 41

16 March 2013 at 12:32pm | IP Logged

I've been told that Danish speakers tend to confuse "at" = "to" (with infinitives) with "og" = "and" in writing, since they're pronounced the same way, but that learners don't since they incorrectly pronounce "at" the same way all the time, whether it means "to" or "that".

In English, there's also "of", like in "could of, should of, etc." that I don't think I've ever seen learners write.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5059 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes

Speaks: Russian*

Message 14 of 41

16 March 2013 at 6:18pm | IP Logged

Native speakers do not make mistakes everywhere. Certain grammatical points cause trouble
for them. For example, a relatively simple rule about тся - ться cause a big difficulty
for native speakers of Russian, but they do not confuse words like кот - код, луг - лук
and so on. In this case learners have an advantage over native spekers. The same happens
in close languages like Czech i/y, like Serpent said, which would be easy for a native
Polish speaker. But in most other cases when a learner hears a new word, he makes much
more mistakes than an average native speaker.
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Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4654 days ago
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Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English

Message 15 of 41

16 March 2013 at 7:37pm | IP Logged

modus.irrealis wrote:

I know a Frenchman who writes could of, should of...

But yes, since we learn the language as foreign, we pay more attention to the grammar than the native speakers do.
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jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
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SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Message 16 of 41

16 March 2013 at 7:44pm | IP Logged

modus.irrealis wrote:

In English, there's also "of", like in "could of, should of, etc." that I don't think I've ever seen learners write.

I've seen experienced learners do that (as well as the dreadful "then", as in "more then", "better then" etc.).

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