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What’s the science behind comprehension? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4635 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 1 of 7 20 March 2015 at 9:26pm | IP Logged |
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It's always been weird to me how someone(including myself) could learn an alphabet, the correct pronunciation, be a fluent reader, and still have problems with watching movies. Why is that? If I read out loud to myself for hours a day and everything makes sense in my head, why does it take me a few more months to be comfortable with watching series or movies? Also, how come even with the same accent and context, some people or programs are understandable but others aren't?
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| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4307 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 2 of 7 20 March 2015 at 10:14pm | IP Logged |
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I just wrote a long message that got deleted by an accidental pressing og the "back" button in my
browser. Damn it. Anyway this is a picture of a "spectograph" that phoneticians use to visualize the acoustic realization of an utterance. Just as the grammatical information in the image, extending in space, in very subtley conveyed through the scattered blotches on the graph, the audible information, extending in time and wave frequency, is equally impoverished and it requires you to add your own "best guesses" at almost every point. SPECTROGRAPH IMAGE Notice that the image looks very smudged: different to our "beads on a string" perceptual illusion of speech. The more "smudged" the sound, such as in a film with sound effects and emotional rendering of utterances, the more inherently difficult it will be to comprehend the meaning accurately. Didactic recordings are unnnaturally crystal clear. Re reading - in reading no grammatical information is obscure or impoverished on the page. It's literally there in black and white. In comparison, most everyday speech both unfolds in real time and distorts the acoustic clues as to what a very careful pronunciation would reveal. A high level of listening comprehension involves familiarity with the subtle mispronunciations of native speakers, known as "allophones" as opposed to "phonemes." The former are from one point of view abberant, whilst the latter the real deal, but from a more pragmatic point of view they're all the bona fide sounds of the language. For example where I am in Spain, the plural "-s" is usually absent, so I must use inference to supply the missing linguistic information. However if hte same person were to write down what they want to say, they would not omit these pieces of linguistic information. Edited by Retinend on 20 March 2015 at 10:17pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 7 20 March 2015 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
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A few ideas:
1.actors speak fast. Or rather, they speak normally, while readers do not read aloud that fast (including natives. including native actors who are hired to record an audiobook for their qualities) 2.it is easier to understand yourself as you know your manner of speaking perfectly. But other people (those crowds of actors in movies and tv series) speak fast, with their own accents or even speech impediments, sometimes the voice may be more difficult to understand and so on. And they do not usually speak on a clear background, which is what I suppose most aloud reading learners do. 3.there may as well be a gap in the vocab+grammar base you are used to as movies and tv series use a bit different language than books However, those are ideas that make sense to me, no science. Why some people are understandable and others not? Well, there are people in my native language that I have harder time understanding. Accent is not the only quality of speech that varies. It is the voice (lower, higher, female, male, child), obstacles to speaking (such as having a sore throat or being used to speaking fast and/or silently) and so on. 1 person has 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 4 of 7 20 March 2015 at 10:44pm | IP Logged |
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An audiobook is the ideal instead of what happens in actuality. Theory and praxis
basically, it is like asking why it is impossible to prevent a heat exchanger from accumulating 0 fouling. In addition to accent, voice pitch, syntaxis, etc., there are other factors, like if the person is ill as said before, speaks faster than most natives, slurs speech, and does things that even natives would have trouble comprehending. It becomes even more difficult when listening to people who have a hoarse voice, speak in fragments or run-ons, make noises in between words, speak with terrible grammar (either on purpose or without noticing), are missing teeth, mumble, and other things for which cannot all be prepared. Just in real life, try to speak to a friend who is drunk, missing a few teeth, is hoarse, is drooling whilst speaking, mumbles, and speaks in fragments. It is hard enough in native language, in foreign language this strays very far from "ideal" or "standard" speech of an audiobook, but it common for example, on a television programme. Edited by 1e4e6 on 20 March 2015 at 10:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 5 of 7 21 March 2015 at 3:48am | IP Logged |
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In movies speech is also often used not simply to pass on information but used for
artistic effect - extremely slangy dialogue may be used on purpose, people may be flanderized to use old-fashioned language, etc. There's just so many reasons. What I can tell you is - don't worry too much about it. I'm considered a fluent French speaker, and even at this stage, I once had to transcribe a scene from a French movie word-by-word. The first time I tried it was impossible and the 20th time I tried I still didn't hear everything. It's just hard. Keep chugging away and watch movies with TL subtitles and you'll get there. Getting movie comprehension to 100% is one of the last skills you will learn to appreciate in full. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 7 21 March 2015 at 4:07am | IP Logged |
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Reading in a foreign language is probably the easier than listening to a conversation. Take a newspaper for
instance, you see the headlines in large + bold letters. And you get 1 or several related images to go with a news article. When you read, you don't have to understand everything but all you need is to understand the general context. The other thing about reading a language like French is that the language has a lot of run-on syllables as if words are tied together in 1 long chain. If you read a simple phrase like: "Je ne sais pas" for "I don't know", your eyes would separate the "Je" for I and the verb "sais" for "know" and the "ne & pas" around it for negative. But if a native French-speaker would say the exact same phrase it would sound like "Jene sais pas" with the "Je" & "ne" glued together. This is a common feature in French. When you are reading, you can take time off to look up words & phrases that you don't know. But if you are talking to somebody, it gets a bit embarrassing to have to ask a person to repeat what he said a few times. In any language, it takes time to get your ears trained to pick up words & phrases. A lot of times people started a conversation. You come in the middle of a discussion. Based on the words & phrases being spoken you are trying to piece together the topic of discussion. A place like China people speak Mandarin as the official language. Chinese tend to separate Mandarin into 2 categories: the Beijing accent with a lot of "r" sounds in word endings and a lot of times added intentionally by the speaker. The other is normally classified as southern Mandarin accent without a lot of added "r" sounds in word endings. Yesterday I was listening to a local Chinese radio program. The host of the show was a Chinese lady who spoke fluent Mandarin. In the studio was a guest, presumably Caucasian from Canada who lived in Beijing for a few years and played a Rock band there. His Chinese on the radio was understandable but you can pick out certain words where he mispronounced intonations. At times he had trouble with coming up with the Chinese equivalent for certain phrases and would fill in the conversation with an English phrase instead. Even if you really have trouble listening to Chinese from a person who isn't a native, you can go by the questions the radio show host asked as a guide to what he said. The 1 thing about Chinese programs on TV and the movies is that most have captions for people who speak other Chinese dialects. If you don't understand Cantonese in a movie for instance, you can read your way through an entire movie. Edited by shk00design on 21 March 2015 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 7 of 7 21 March 2015 at 4:11am | IP Logged |
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Actually even more common is dropping the ne and for it to sound like J'sais pas or and
then for the j and s to assimilate as well: jchai pa or something in that vein. (considering the s is also silent) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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