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How important is the cognate discount? | ||
Tags: False friends | Language Interference | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| chiara-sai Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3707 days ago 54 posts - 146 votes  Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German, Japanese | Message 57 of 64 17 January 2015 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
To some extent it can make it harder, for example it took me ages to be able to use ‘actually’ in its correct English meaning, and once I did I started finding it harder to use ‘attualmente’ in its correct Italian meaning. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 58 of 64 17 January 2015 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is a classic example (it happens with Spanish too) of L1 interference even among supposedly professional translators... Edited by mrwarper on 17 January 2015 at 12:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 59 of 64 17 January 2015 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Of course. But to suggest that it outweighs the benefits seems absurd. All the words that are the same, and all the words that are almost the same, give a boost to speaking that is hardly compensated by the interference problems of those words. Heck, even the interference words benefit from being easier to remember than words in a language with few cognates. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 60 of 64 18 January 2015 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually, I think it's all a bit more complicated. True cognates are only beneficial -- it's actually the same word doubling in two languages, so it's all gain, a true discount. False friends trip up understanding (which is bad but recoverable, for context may give you clues that stuff just doesn't add) both in passive and active use, so they have a negative side that would have to be somehow (good question!) weighted in. Finally there are those words in between, that are 'almost the same' (I'll call them 'false synonyms') that may translate the same general meaning, so they don't affect passive understanding, but will interfere with active use of the language because they trick the speaker into using the wrong collocations. These would only have a slightly negative side. But we can go further and find all sorts of in-between areas and overlaps between them, probably forming a sort of continuum between completely different words for the same meaning and words perfectly shared across languages. To top it off, I'd further guess that waters can only get muddier the more factors are taken into account. For example, these 'false synonyms' could be a minor nuisance or even a true help for a beginner that has serious problems with their language, while they may be actually an advanced learner's biggest problem (and thus a true negative) if they only have to polish their skills. I would advocate for keeping in mind these traits of the general problem at all times rather than wasting much time trying to establish a meter, which I'm not sure can even be done. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 61 of 64 18 January 2015 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Surely we can get an approximate answer by considering that the more closely related two languages are, the more cognates they will share, and the easier it is for the learner. Sure, there are other factors, such as the similarity of grammar, but the clear correlation between amount of cognates and ease of learning leaves little room for doubt as to the net positive effect, in my mind. False friends and similar but different expressions are little details that can be annoying, but hardly major impediments to learning. If not, we'd expect that it would take longer for a Spaniard to learn to speak Portuguese than French, since Spanish and Portuguese share more cognates. Not to mention Russian or Thai. Cognates are a huge boon and far, far from being a net drawback. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 62 of 64 24 January 2015 at 12:46am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think anyone doubts the value of lexical cognates in facilitating initial language learning. As a matter of fact, there is a whole school of thought that thinks that cognates could even form the basis for a learning strategy. Here is a quote from the website of something called Cognate Linguistics. Cognates are more than 25,000 frequently used English words that are unmistakably understood by Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan speakers, among others. These words are found not only in isolation but also forming thousands of Cognate Collocations and even fully comprehensible statements thanks to a common Subject-Verb-Object Cognate Syntax. This site promotes the use of Cognates as the most reasonable foundation for easier and more motivating English and Foreign Language Acquisition. Cognate Linguistics Think about it for a moment. If a French-speaker unmistakably understands 25,000 frequently used words in English, then the opposite must be true; our English-speaker understands a similar number of words in French. That's huge. But how important is this for the learning of French by an English-speaker? Is it helpful? There is no doubt; it's very helpful. All these cognates facilitate de learning of French. So when we encounter monnaie in French, we can see the resemblance with money in English. But there are two issues. First of all, we must not confuse grammatical relatedness and lexical cognates. Highly related languages like the Romance and Scandinavian languages share both extensively. We all agree, that, all things considered, languages related to one's native language are easier to learn than non-related languages. Other languages, like English and German, may be related but have substantial differences in grammar. Here we can also assume that the presence of at least lexical cognates does facilitate learning. The second issue, and the real heart of the matter here, is whether at some point many of these cognates create problems of their own. We can dismiss these as minor hiccups that do not diminish the overall advantage of having cognates in the first place. I believe there is more to it than just minor problems or false friends. it becomes a serious problem with increasing proficiency in the target language. The problem is that the same resemblances that make initial learning easy are the cause of confusion where there are differences of use between similar words in L1 and L2. This, in my opinion, is one reason why it requires more marginal effort to reach higher levels of active proficiency. In addition to learning new material to be mastered, we must also explicitly "unlearn" some of the superficial resemblances between the two languages. In French we have to learn the differences between monnaie, devise and argent. For example, we must learn that monnaie in French is often used for change and mint in English. And we mustn't forget that change in French is exchange in English. So exchange rate is taux de change. Similarly the Spanish ilusión is looks a lot like illusion in French or English but can be used very differently. So, this is not to say that cognates are not important nor good to have. But neither are the concomitant problems mere bumps in the road of the learning process. Edited by s_allard on 24 January 2015 at 12:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 63 of 64 24 January 2015 at 2:30am | IP Logged | |||||
It's not that simple. The words may exist in both languages, but often they are more literary in English than in the Romance languages. Which also means that English native speakers who read "difficult" literature in L1 have an advantage over those who don't. Edited by Serpent on 24 January 2015 at 2:32am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 64 of 64 12 February 2015 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that the general outsight is that it helps more than not. Although it is good
to learn the commonest false friends that are used in speech (at least in writing one can look up the false friends). One time when I was undergraduate when I was even worse at languages that now (and spoke no Dutch), I had a Dutch friend with whom I used to party a lot. I asked her one night, "Will you come with us to the disco tonight?" and her English was somehow not very good despite being from the Netherlands (Utrecht, of all places), and said, "I will, but I cannot tonight" after which I paused for a few seconds trying to decipher what the hell that meant and failed, and just said, "...Oh okay.." Then a year later I started Dutch and I realised that "willen" means "to want" and only then figured that what she said might be a confusion between English will (= shall) and the Dutch willen, which shares meanings with German willen, Swedish att villa, Norwegian å ville, Danish at ville. Old English also uses it that way with "willan", so by logic maybe she thought that Modern English could also. Edited by 1e4e6 on 12 February 2015 at 11:26pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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