Languages you disliked but grew on you? (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Languages you disliked but grew on you?
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tarvos
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Message 17 of 39

29 October 2013 at 3:45pm | IP Logged

eyðimörk wrote:

tarvos wrote:

Do they do the mutations as well in French? I read
that Brittophone French speakers say ma vère for ma mère.

I haven't noticed that personally, but that's not to say that it doesn't happen.

tarvos wrote:

Breton does sound a bit French to me, but that is probably because many
people on the Assimil recordings use the French "r" (and not a rolled r.)

That's a slightly odd thing to base the whole "they sound French" on since R is
pronounced differently in different parts of Brittany and by different speakers.
There's a rolling R that's high in the throat, a rolling R that's low in the throat,
there's a non-rolling R... Here's an
example of the dialect local to me, in Haute-Cornouaille, by a speaker born ca
1900. Cf. the rolling R of Denez
Prigent, born in Léon in the 1960s.

I meant the Breton on those recordings which is definitely a uvular r. I am aware that
Breton people are equally able to use different variants of this r, but the standard
one is equivalent to the uvular r of French nowadays and is what is given on Wikipedia
as the standard. That makes it sound more "French" than using an "r" higher up in your
mouth. It is not a generalization across all accents. I wasn't talking about Breton as
a whole, just the Assimil recordings.
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Chung
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Message 18 of 39

29 October 2013 at 4:30pm | IP Logged

Ukrainian is probably the best example even though I've never really disliked it in the first place.

By the time I got to Ukrainian, my ear was very attuned to Slavonic languages in which unstressed and stressed vowels aren't realized that differently, if at all. Ukrainian sounded really off in comparison to those languages because there is a noticeable difference (it's even more prominent in Russian which sounds even less attractive to me). On the other hand, I've known for a while that Ukrainian vocabulary and to a certain degree its structure are pleasingly familiar because of influence from Polish (it's rather quaint for me to hear Ukrainians using terms such as пан, панi, прошу and так among many other terms reminiscent of Polish) so that offset my negative impression of the language's sound. As I've been plowing through Ukrainian over the last year or so, I've come to terms with the sound of the language (but the sound of Russian still makes me cringe). As alluded to in my comments about the link with Polish (and other Western Slavonic languages) grammatically and lexically there's nothing really mind-blowing for me in Ukrainian but just variations on a theme.
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montmorency
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Message 19 of 39

29 October 2013 at 5:14pm | IP Logged

eyðimörk wrote:

I read recently that they are picking up the immersion strategy that is so popular here
in Brittany (and which Bretons stole from the Basques), so there are in fact
kindergarteners today going about their entire day in Cornish. :)

Excellent!

Quote:

montmorency wrote:

OTOH, I've heard part of Assimil's Breton course, and the only thing
I could recognise was the strong French accent! :-)

Not sure what you mean with a strong French accent, since the current Assimil course
doesn't sound particularly French to me at all. I suppose there are some common sounds
between Welsh and Breton that don't exist in English or French, and by comparison the
rest of the sounds in Welsh can sound very English to a Breton speaker and I suppose
Breton can sound very French to the Welsh speaker.

I think the course i got hold of was quite old. It was in MP3 form, but had probably
been copied from older format recordings.
I could see some resemblance to Welsh in the textbook.

Quote:

Of course if you're used to Bretons speaking French there's not necessarily much
difference. ;) Sometimes when I'm not listening, I can't tell if my neighbours are
speaking French or Breton because their French is so Breton. :D It took me 6 months to
learn how to listen to decode what they were saying to me because the sounds and the
stress were so off, not to mention various celticisms and pronouncing letters that are
silent in French.

Makes sense. Welsh speakers essentially use the same accent in either Welsh or English.
The main difference I've noticed is that they roll their "r"s more in Welsh.

montmorency wrote:

Ah well, Cymru (and Cornwall and Brittany) am byth! ("for ever")

Breizh (ha Kernev-Veur ha Kembre) atav! :D [/QUOTE]

:-) Diolch yn fawr. (Thanks very much).

On the origins of Breton: It occurred to me that the Romans referred to Brittany as
Armorica (although the term took in more than modern Brittany I believe).

"Armor" could be regarded as almost pure Welsh: "Ar y mor" or "A'r mor".("On the sea",
or "at sea").

Which suggests a Welsh-like language being used thereabouts in Roman times, i.e. well
before the influx of Cornish or Welsh speakers from Britain (in the 5th-7th century
AD?).

Not much evidence, admittedly, but interesting.

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eyðimörk
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Message 20 of 39

29 October 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

I meant the Breton on those recordings which is definitely a uvular r. I am aware that Breton people are equally able to use different variants of this r, but the standard one is equivalent to the uvular r of French nowadays and is what is given on Wikipedia as the standard. That makes it sound more "French" than using an "r" higher up in your mouth. It is not a generalization across all accents. I wasn't talking about Breton as a whole, just the Assimil recordings.

I don't really know what your point is? Essentially you appear to be saying that the Breton speakers (on Assimil specifically, because you're not generalising, even though you also say that this is "standard" Breton, so I don't know what makes Assimil special) sound French because they are using a variation of the R-sound, that has been current for a long time and is common in a wide variety of Breton dialects (but not all), because said sound is also available in French (and German and southern Scandinavian dialects).

So maybe you're trying to say that Breton isn't unaffected by being next door to French (just like Irish, Scottish, and Welsh are very clearly affected by English)... but in that case I don't know what the point is about Assimil specifically.

Nonetheless, this is veering very much off topic. If you want to clarify with a final word, I'll gladly read but I won't comment so as to not steer the thread even further off its course. Cheers!
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tarvos
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Message 21 of 39

29 October 2013 at 7:35pm | IP Logged

Assimil is just an example.
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anethara
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Message 22 of 39

30 October 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged

I hated Spanish and French! I learnt them in school, because I had to, and it was an awful
environment and a dull way to learn, so it turned me off them for a long time. I'm just
getting back into them, though!
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montmorency
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Message 23 of 39

30 October 2013 at 6:29pm | IP Logged

anethara wrote:

I hated Spanish and French! I learnt them in school, because I had
to, and it was an awful
environment and a dull way to learn, so it turned me off them for a long time. I'm just
getting back into them, though!

That's a point that should ring a lot of bells with HTLAL members.

We self-learn (in general) because we found traditional ways of learning (at least at
school, and sometimes also at university) disappointing.

We might say that we are claiming back what was "taken from us" by our school
experience.

But perhaps that is overstating it, and maybe not everyone had a bad experience at
school, or university, with languages.

EDIT: Sorry, perhaps that is also getting away from the main point that the OP was
trying to develop. School isn't the only reason that people dislike particular
languages, but then maybe later on change their mind, for a variety of reasons.

Edited by montmorency on 30 October 2013 at 6:32pm
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Cavesa
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Message 24 of 39

30 October 2013 at 7:43pm | IP Logged

Well, surely not everyone but far too many people began to hate a language or just gave
up due to school. Considering only teachers I met during my formal education (no tutors
or outside classes even though I count in people I had for shorter period of time but
enough to see), this is the score:

2 were totally awesome
3 were quite good
5 were horrible (in various ways but all of them totally destroyed the potential of the
classes)

tutors and private classes:

1 very good,
2 good,
4 not bad but nothing to get excited about,
1 bad (not horrible but still bad. And she was a native educated in teaching the
language with many years of experience),
1 horrible (again a native with the proper education in teaching her language).

No wonder I prefer self-teaching. And if more people have a similar score, no wonder so
many either give up or just hate the language they had been forced to study in past.

edit: somehow forgot to add the Berlin experience
+1 awesome, +1 mediocre, that goes to the second cathegory and slightly changes the
score.

Edited by Cavesa on 30 October 2013 at 11:23pm

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