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What makes some people good at languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 91 30 July 2007 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree with all of the other points except this last one. I don't see anything wrong with someone who asks why a language works in a certain way (so long as it's not excessive or hindering learning how to use the language). Such questions about why a language has so-and-so characteristic or expresses itself in so-and-so way often lead to topics in historical linguistics. By itself, interest in etymology or historical linguistics shouldn't lead to resistance to learning or using the new language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 7026 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 91 30 July 2007 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I started learning Mandarin I had a fellow Canadian learning with me. Confronted with the Chinese way of asking a question "You go not go?", he looked puzzled and said, "why would they say things that way?" He did not get too far in his Chinese. I have seen this over and over. Except for dedicated linguists, the average learner is, in my opinion, better off not to ask questions like
"Which of these sentences is correct?" Usually one of them was invented by the learner. "Should I say I will go or I am going to school tomorrow?" In my experience, a new language is something that gradually comes into clearer and clearer focus. There is lots of uncertainty and fuzziness along the way. It is better to go for more exposure and less explanation and get used to the language. In my experience and in observing students, it seems that the attitude of accepting uncertainty and not questioning the language works best. Edited by Zhuangzi on 30 July 2007 at 5:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 11 of 91 30 July 2007 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose that I form some sort of minority. I've always been fascinated with etymology and historical linguistics. If anything, these fascinations have helped me in language learning since I have developed a certain ability to discern patterns or remember certain constructions and words when learning languages.
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| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6357 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 12 of 91 30 July 2007 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Agreed. Head down, focus on input. The more one takes in, the sooner one's brain will sort it out. It's better to trust the mind to comprehend the language as one continues to absorb the language. Interfering with this by using one's "higher" thinking is a good way to get stuck demanding "why doesn't this L2 do everything just the way my L1 does?" This frequently leads to the novel learner abandoning his or her study out of (a) frustration, and (b) an inability to stop treating the L2 as a bad translation of the L1. To learn a language, it's best to take it as it comes - in the written form, in the spoken form. The more time one spends simply absorbing the language and not questioning why the L2 does things differently from their L1, the faster one tends to learn. This doesn't mean eschewing grammar texts (though I do) or swearing off explanations in any form - but paralysis by analysis (or rather, frustration by over-expectation) is a common pitfall new language learners would do well to avoid. A language "just is", to phrase it in meditatory fashion. For me, a language is simply a means to an end (usage), not the end itself. I don't need to know why things are as they are; I just need to learn to use them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sarah_owen Newbie Bahrain Joined 6389 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 13 of 91 30 July 2007 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I believe that anyone (within reason) can learn any language given the following:
1. The right method. You only have to look at how each method is discussed in such minute detail on these boards to realise the importance of this. So many people get nowhere and are discouraged by a poor approach to language learning. 2. Motivation. There must be a strong reason for learning the language. The reason must be strong enough to sustain one through the initial tough period of language learning where one is still unable to comprehend literature or converse with natives. 3. Discipline. The ability to put the required work in day after day that will ensure one's goal is reached. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| therumsgone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6535 days ago 93 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 14 of 91 30 July 2007 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree with this 100%. I get frustrated with people who say that different languages "don't make sense." People say so often things like "It doesn't make sense to have genders in a language. What makes a television feminine?" or "It doesn't make sense not to use subject pronouns. You need to have them!" The people who do well don't over think it, they just accept the things that are different and roll with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Roq71 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6592 days ago 63 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Haitian Creole | Message 15 of 91 30 July 2007 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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It all comes down to motivation.
Some learners love to dissect and reverse-engineer a language and find similarities in it that may match their L1, or may match another language that they know. I love to know the history behind a certain work or grammatical feature of a language. If new constructions in French don't match English, I think "Ah, just like Spanish!" That helps me remember by giving me a framework to hang a new fact on. That is a positive way to analyze a language. When a learner negatively analyzes a language ("It doesn't make sense to do it that way!"), it is usually an excuse why they don't have the motivation to learn it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 16 of 91 30 July 2007 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Chung, Rog71 and others, who like to analyze a language and to study its history and its similarities with other languages. In fact doing these things is one way of coming to grips with a language. In particular I like to find new and hopefully more efficient ways of describing the grammar of my languages. Sometimes it is just a matter of drawing the line between rules and exceptions in another place than the usual one. I also write tables where the elements are put in another order than in my grammars or text books if I can see a good reason to do it. And last, but not least, I have developed my own way of describing the syntax of the languages I know (a constituent structure grammar with a limited amount of transformations), and so far the system has been able to cope with all the languages I have tried it on.
Of course a description that doesn't fit the language that it is used on has no value. And a description that has become unduly complicated to make it easier to compare one language with another (in my case it could be Danish or English) is simply an abomination. The same applies to systems that pretend to be synchronic, but in reality refer to diachronic criteria in places where it just spoils the description. There is always something that can be formulated in a better way in any grammar, and trying to discover how, forces me to consider elements in the grammar that I might otherwise just have read through and then forgotten.It may be an extreme way of studying, but it suits my way of thinking better than just accepting anything that I read. Edited by Iversen on 30 July 2007 at 7:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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