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What is correct current usage? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5394 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 9 of 17 04 December 2014 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Another mention for picking them up as you encounter them. You'll encounter references
to well-known sayings quite frequently in titles of articles, for example (when they often use a saying for the basis of a pun). Song lyrics (especially bad cliched ones) will have them too. Proverbs are weird in that there are so many that natives never use but will recognize instantly. Or one person will use one frequently while another will never use it - something that just depends on each individual's language habits (my sister says "the whole nine yards" at least twice a day whereas I don't think I've ever used the expression in my entire life). One of my rules for learning idiomatic usage that I come across in textbooks is to sort of file it away and then see if I encounter it in the "wild" - then I know it's worth learning (and even using - though I wait to hear it from more than one source). In general, I'd say it's more cultural knowledge rather than linguistic knowledge. Useful to know in the same sense as references to parables or Greek/Roman mythology as references to them will be made from time to time but not crucial. Though, for what it's worth, what I've learned about Irish so far is that proverbs figure prominently in that language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 10 of 17 04 December 2014 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Context. Context is everything when it comes to trends in usage that are moderated by culture. That does not necessarily mean more input, but rather paying more attention to why it is used and who uses it.
Looking up expressions (in books, in corpora or using the search engine of your choice) may help, but it also may make things even more unclear. Asking people has similar limitations; after all, when you ask somebody about an expression they will not tell you everything they know about that expression: the quality of the information about the expression that they remember during your conversation will be influenced by recent events and your conversation, and from that information the other person will select what they think you can understand, should know and/or want to know about the expression. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 11 of 17 05 December 2014 at 4:35am | IP Logged | ||
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I think that these questions of current usage are important only at relatively high levels of proficiency.
At lower levels, let's say B1 and lower, the basics of a language are relatively common to all the varieties and the learners shouldn't be too concerned about dialectal and sociolectal differences. But at the higher levels where the learner is interacting with native speakers, major choices have to be made. One could argue that these choices are probably imposed by the people that one interacts with. If you are spending a lot of time with Mexicans, your Spanish will sound Mexican. If you study Spanish in Buenos Aires, you Spanish will invariably take on an Argentinian flavour. Similarly, one is probably influenced by one's tutors or instructor. My current tutor is Mexican, and I am quite certain that my spoken Spanish now shows a strong Mexican influence. I'm comfortable with this, but I am beginning to think that it may be a good thing to work with a variety of tutors from different countries. Edited by s_allard on 05 December 2014 at 1:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| epictetus Groupie Canada Joined 3885 days ago 54 posts - 87 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 17 05 December 2014 at 8:06am | IP Logged | ||
I agree with the 4th approach for Spanish. With such a huge variety of speakers and sources of media, it would be a challenge to stick with a Peruvian dialect only, or to master the nuance between Caribbean Spanish and American Spanish, or to try and sound like a native of Valladolid while travelling in only Latin America. If you were to spend much more time in one place or with certain people then I can see a good reason to pick one dialect over others. I'm sticking towards a Latin American sound, but I'm not going to be picky about regionally-correct words and phrases. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 17 05 December 2014 at 9:17am | IP Logged | ||
You are assuming that a learner will learn the overall most common expressions and usages first. That's not necessarily the case, it depends on the material the learner works with and the range of exposure they get to different variants. Exposure to a wide varietey is great for improving comprehension, but not so much for adopting good usage, especially when one is not inclined to remember whether an expression was used only by a certain type of people, people from a certain region, in books or for comical relief. When you're working with a good teacher or tutor you will not learn the variety of language they use in their own community, you will learn a variety of the language they believe will be most useful for you in communicating with people from different communities. When using others as a model for your own usage, it's a good idea to concentrate on people who are similar to you in education, sociocultural standing and the roles they assume in a group, and to pay close attention to how they communicate with people from their own region (especially family and close friends), with people from other regions and with non-native speakers to figure out when they deem a certain usage appropriate. If you don't spend a lot of time with the same group of people it is good to concentrate on the overregional usage patterns you can observe, if you do spend a lot of time in that community you will also pick up some of the usage patterns of that community. In short, if you're working with a competent teacher or tutor they will encourage you to adopt contemporary overregional usage they esteem to be relatively timeless. If you are part of a community of native speakers you will surely learn the common usage in that group. For all other expressions, context is vital. If you remember that you learnt an expression in a situation that was very similar to your current situation, chances are that it's appropriate to use. At the same time, having learnt the expression in a certain context means being in the same context makes remembering it easier. Now, some people seem to be naturally good at adopting exactly the usage that is appropriate for a situation. I am not. So when I have the capacity for it, I make a game out of trying to predict what expressions somebody will use, when I can guess what they are about to say. I try to pay attention to the relationships between different conversation partners, the nuances in meaning that are conveyed and how this is done. Sometimes you can figure out why an expression is used a certain way, sometimes you can't, and then you can always ask native speakers (who might not even know) or research the expression. I think doing that when you already have a solid idea of when it is used is more helpful than doing it the other way around, because many expressions do indeed sort themselves out if you just pay attention to how other people use them. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6154 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 14 of 17 05 December 2014 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I picked up the following book for Spanish, and it’s very good at highlighting idioms and adaptions of idioms as they are used currently, as well as explaining the meaning of the idioms.
Diccionario fraseológico documentado del español actual: Locuciones y modismos españoles Obviously it’s entirely in Spanish, but I prefer knowing usage rather than an attempt to translate it to an English idiom. I haven’t found something similar for French, but the bookworm in me is enjoying, Le Petit Robert Dictionnaire des expressions et locutions This covers the origins and first usage of common expressions. It’s surprising the number of idioms that survive from Latin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 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 15 of 17 05 December 2014 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Looking expressions up in dictionaries or specialized literate may be necessary to check their precise meaning, but it would be of doubtful value to start learning them systematically from such sources. The problem is that many, if not most of the expressions in such sources are quite rare, more rare than those lexicalized word combinations with a couple of words which abound in the English language. A couple of times I have checked a series of expressions with the help of Google, and it regularly turns out that a lot of the expressions from those expression books simply aren't in active use anymore. Slang 'dictionaries' can be even more misleading because they have a tendency to emphasize the more colorful expressions over common, but bleak and seemingly banal ones . Edited by Iversen on 05 December 2014 at 12:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5265 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 16 of 17 05 December 2014 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | ||
If you've made the choice to work with a tutor (which has been a good choice for me), I think it's a good idea to stick with a country or region, in a pluricentric language. As s_allard pointed out, if you have a tutor, you will, indeed, be influenced a great deal by this interaction. My Portuguese tutor is from São Paulo, so as a consequence, I have a heavy Paulista influence in my Portuguese. In Haitian Creole the influence is Pòtoprens (Port au Prince), that's where my Haitian friend is from. Most of my interaction with Spanish-speakers is with Puerto Ricans and to some extent- Dominicans, so for example, I say "la guagua" for bus instead of "autobús". One of my favorite drinks is "ron negro con jugo de china" or (dark rum and orange juice). I have to consciously stop myself from talking like this outside of the Caribbean or I probably won't get the information I need about where to catch the bus or my drink. Still, having a definable accent and/or location influence in your speech can provoke curiosity and provide a good opening for conversation. I like being "meio paulista" in Portuguese and a "boricua" in Spanish. Also, as s_allard points out, this is at the higher levels. A good tutor will teach you the standard language no matter where they may be from. The location influence is a nice bonus. Edited by iguanamon on 06 December 2014 at 3:44am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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