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What makes some people good at languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tmesis Senior Member Mayotte Joined 6645 days ago 154 posts - 146 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 17 of 91 30 July 2007 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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- Edited by tmesis on 17 February 2008 at 2:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 7025 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 18 of 91 30 July 2007 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
I also vey much enjoy comparing languages in this way. Certainly a knowledge of different ways of saying things makes us more open to new ways of saying things. It is just that most often when people ask questions like "why are the personal pronouns not always used in Spanish" they do not mean "they are always used in French, isn't that interesting?" They mean either 'what is the reason" as if grammar has to have a reason,or they mean "what is wrong with Spanish". Or they mean "why does this sentences spoken by a native speaker not conform to my interpretation of some rule I think I remember and think I understand?" Or "I invented this way of saying things and was told it was wrong, but according to rule such and such it should be right." Most of these questions disappear with enough exposure and familiarity with the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6330 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 19 of 91 30 July 2007 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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As some of you I'm also those that like to know the reasons of some of the features that foreign languages have but always within certain limits so that not to get discouraged at the fact that other languages simply work differently and we must accept that.
I remember having a hard time years ago to understand why Basque verbal system worked as it does. I was so obsessed with the Indoeuropean model that I could not understand the Ergative system. Till one day, I just let myself go and everything was clear. From then on, Basque, Georgian, Aygha... there were no secrets. And if Georgian uses the Ergative model only for certain verbal tenses, it's just the way it is. Why bother? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7180 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 20 of 91 31 July 2007 at 2:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I think the most important factors are actually interest and motivation. It is my firm belief that anyone can actually learn any language with a native-like accent and to a high level if they make up their mind to do so. For instance when learning mandarin I intially thought that I would never be able to speak anything close to a native speaker in terms of correctness and fluency when speaking freely. When I started I could do isolated tones and tone combinations fairly quickly but as soon as I said anything in conversation my tones were all over the place. So I decided to work intesively on my accent and after some looking around on the internet found the "chorus method".
Also found Zhuangzis "the linguist" blog and his theories on "repeated listening" and on using real content instead of text books. From these two sources I constructed my own method for learning mandarin and have gotten quite good results with it. Of course I must admit that having a chinese wife helps a lot as well :-) I agree with Zhuangzi that grammar is not very important in language learning. My two strongest foreign languages are mandarin and english. Both of these I have learnt without any focus on grammar. Although I am a proponent of focusing on pronunciation from the beginning this should only involve chorusing of example sentences. I think free conversation should be delayed until you have had alot of input. In my mind most of the "fossilized" mistakes that language learners make are due to forcing yourself to communicate when you don't have a very good grasp of the language. In this situation you will often don't know how to say something and will thus find your own (probably incorrect) way of saying it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Wings Senior Member Ireland n/a Joined 6351 days ago 130 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 91 31 July 2007 at 5:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I can see what everyone here is saying collectively, and I’m paraphrasing heavily here: don’t be afraid, accept certain truths i.e. you may not like every aspect of your target language, whether it’s the sound or the grammar. Know your Grammar?? A good education in your native tongue may be what’s giving you the edge. Confidence; a huge factor. To just let go…………. And exposure to your target language, siomotteikiru who posted a reply on this topic has a very interesting way of doing this, called shawdoing, I think.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/saywhatyouthink.shtml How does your brain work to learn a new language? ^^^^^^^^Visit the wep page above^^^^^^^^^. Edited by Wings on 02 August 2007 at 3:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 22 of 91 31 July 2007 at 5:48am | IP Logged | ||
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To Tmesis: I have written something like a syntactical credo in this thread, because it just grew and grew until it was totally outside the scope of the present thread.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wings Senior Member Ireland n/a Joined 6351 days ago 130 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 23 of 91 01 August 2007 at 5:22am | IP Logged | ||
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/saywhatyouthink.shtml How does your brain work to learn a new language? Visit the wep page above for some interesting insights. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Edited by Wings on 01 August 2007 at 5:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cymro Triglot Groupie Wales Joined 6451 days ago 76 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 24 of 91 01 August 2007 at 5:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I have yet to listen to the radio programmes provided but I do have some insight.
td have skipped another year. These factors I think help. Being a chatty extravert. I find talking to strangers easy. That helps. Having a good memory a good memory that does the Harry Loraynne menmonic stuff and subtle indescriable extensions easily. I can lock in new words fast. Not worrying about making mistakes and being confident. Already ready having learned another language. THe first one is the most difficult. Having an interest in languages and how they work. Incedentally a number of people make a point that boils down to being open to new experiences, cultures etc. This is a recognised personality trait and has been shown to be linked statistically to higher intelligence test scores. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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