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Going native | ||
Tags: Native Materials | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 24 18 August 2014 at 7:56pm | IP Logged |
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Some years ago my husband, daughter and I were invited to a Tuscan villa by an American friend of mine. I
was tickled pink, because staying in a villa with a private swimming pool was a huge deal to us - regardless of the fact that the air fare was too expensive for us at the time, so we had to take the train all the way from Norway, and my three year old threw up in my bed at the train. Twice. Anyhow, my friend said, "oh you know I have to warn you, I have gone completely native here". I was delighted, because my friend is generally monolingual, so I assumed that meant that he had learned a little of the language and was communicating with the locals, perhaps reading some Italian (I knew he had studied Latin) and possibly listened to Italian music. I was therefore extremely surprised to find out that his idea of going native, was eating at local restaurants. Period. Like what else would he do? It is not like he would have found Sushi restaurants or McDonald's in the Tuscan countryside 15 years ago. Anyhow, as I am here many years later, in a big city where there are every sort of restaurants, I do try to use the local ones - except for when we had our tiny bathroom problem, when McDonald's was a life savior. Literally. I obviously speak as much Russian as I can, I read Russian, watch Russian films and listen to Russian music. And the only reason why I don't watch TV is because I am too technically inept to switch it on. In spite of having been shown how to do so. So my question is: Do you? When you learn a language do you do the language only, or do you also immerse yourself in every aspect of the culture of your target language? And how easy/difficult/beneficial do you find this? Personally, it depends. I had a long time when I would only listen to Spanish music, or Italian music and only eat Italian food (which if I do not take into account the consequences for my waistline was absolutely brilliant). I have never done that for German though, which is probably why I have never gotten a total feel for that language. How does it work for you? Edit: Oh, and before someone points that out- I know the term can be used in a way which has negative connotations. Obviously, here, among language learners, absolutely none are intended. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 18 August 2014 at 7:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| holly heels Groupie United States Joined 3888 days ago 47 posts - 107 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 24 19 August 2014 at 12:22am | IP Logged |
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Motivation is key, because I know someone who lived and worked in Taiwan for a couple of years in an all-Mandarin environment, even studying it beforehand, but after returning to the USA he couldn't remember much of the language at all, so "going native" for him wasn't very useful.
I would die for an opportunity like that, but in the meantime I can only go native by only watching and listening to Mandarin media which sort of does make my apartment a little Chinese universe, complete with commercials, even to the point of annoyance. But it does have it's purpose because now the only time I watch or listen to American news it is to check my comprehension level of Mandarin news. I feel I am making progress if now I can say I learn most of my news these days from Mandarin radio news. I found these stations from China Whisper and Mandarin Portal. I know that some language schools offer a Tuscan villa-like in-country experience, which seems exciting and tempting to students, but how much more effective is it in acquiring actual language skills required to comprehend TV shows than actually watching the TV shows themselves? There are many ways to be creative at going native thanks to the internet, even if you're studying an endangered language where you're not likely to run into a random native speaker asking for directions. The fact that monolingual minority language communities exist in the USA and elsewhere proves that you can go native without leaving your local area if you live in a large city, which I don't, so I will have to wait for a Panda Express to open in my area, I guess. I know that some Berber immigrants to France speak Berber at home, Arabic in the market/on the streets, French at school, and English with tourists if they deal with them at work, so they can go native in 4 languages on a daily basis and probably think nothing of it. So yeah I go native in the most extreme way, depriving myself of English as much as possible, and it is it effective with some native speakers some of the time but it obviously has its limits, and if I thought learning to eat with chopsticks would help my Chinese, I would do it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 3 of 24 19 August 2014 at 1:17am | IP Logged |
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I would say that I try to go native during every monolingual voyage - but after that I become Danish again.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 4 of 24 19 August 2014 at 10:40am | IP Logged |
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I never go native, only postal! :D
Ok, I usually try to go native, but sometimes there are things that are hard to accept and going full-on native in an Arab country might not entirely suit my character. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mowli Triglot Newbie Norway Joined 4925 days ago 19 posts - 40 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Mandarin | Message 5 of 24 19 August 2014 at 3:42pm | IP Logged |
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I'm not doing it now, but as a teenager who got poor grades in German I did. A period of time I knew more about what was going in i Germany than what was going on in Norway as only read German news. I listened to everything German I could get my hands on. I read the few German books I could find in the library. We even had a German television channel (it was a mystery why we got it, even for the cable company we used) which I watched with much joy. My goal of going native was learning the language and it really helped reach this goal. I'm not sure if reading about the German culture in Norwegian would have helped me though, so learning about the culture was more a bi-effect of trying to improve the language than it was a tool to improve it, if that makes sense? I guess it might help if I went to Germany since I might have a better understanding of their culture than my classmates who only read textbook texts.
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| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 6 of 24 19 August 2014 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
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I do my best to "go native" when in another country, or at my Tagalog-speaking inlaws' house. I immerse myself in
the culture as best I can: food, language, music, food, media, body language, food, social norms, news, food. (And also food.) At home? No. I have a relatively multi-lingual life, but I'm still immersed in all things Canada. I live in English at home (my husband and I are both bilingual, but English is our shared language), work in French, false-immerse myself in Spanish (novels, news, podcasts), and study Tagalog. But culture-wise, I'm all Canadian when I'm home. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 24 19 August 2014 at 10:39pm | IP Logged |
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The closest thing to going native would be my immersion holidays in the Irish speaking Gaeltacht, during which I make new friends through Irish, explore the culture and play music with the locals (music which I already know darn well, from decades of experience). Does that count?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5132 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 8 of 24 19 August 2014 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
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If I'm with a friend of mine (Italian) in Italy, "going native" most likely means finding a Chinese restaurant. :-/
Although once on a country drive, we did manage to find a really good Bagna Càuda that he was willing to eat, so I suppose there's that. Culture-wise, if I'm pretty much anywhere in Western Europe, there's not much difference if we're talking about middle-class type stuff. Life is pretty much the same as it is here in the US, save for the language. And of course I'll speak the local language if I know it. Outside of Western Europe, sure, there are more cultural differences that I'd certainly try to observe, even if language had nothing to do with them. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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