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Getting a language "for free" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 9 of 19 27 August 2013 at 1:25am | IP Logged | ||
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EMK's post reminds me that in remote farming communities there would probably a very
strong oral tradition, perhaps to balance out the relative lack of a written one, and it would not be surprising if the oral grammar developed to be quite complex. My Mother grew up in an essentially rural environment, and her father, not a particularly educated man, and to the outside world very quiet, used to entertain his large family with endless stories and songs, and they grew up with a rich verbal tradition, even if reading was not particularly encouraged. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 10 of 19 27 August 2013 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is pretty clear that children work hard for their first language, so like montmorency I think that only closely related languages can be learned for free, and only if you have access to an awful lot of free speech and writing. Furthermore I believe that your free lunch normally only will comprise the passive part, namely getting the meaning from the things you see or hear. The active part will almost certainly demand some active study, although certain individuals may be equipped with circuitry that allows them to do reasonable imitations on the fly.
For instance most of us can understand other dialects of our languages if we hear them often enough, and as a Dane I have watched enough Swedish TV to understand just about anything I hear there. I might even have faked a Swedish accent, but luckily I didn't - when I hear other Danes try to speak 'Swedish' I more often than not find it deeply embarassing bordering on painful, and it took me months of intensive study before I even dared try to write in the language. But passive understanding, yes - you can get that through lots of exposure. Edited by Iversen on 28 August 2013 at 9:46am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4557 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 11 of 19 27 August 2013 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Iversen, if you have written about your experiences with Swedish in your log or elsewhere, I would be very interested in reading it. In the unfortunate event that you haven't, please consider tackling the topic some time in the not so distant future. I'm sure I'm not the only one on the forum who is fascinated by stories of Scandinavians learning their nabospråk.
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| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 12 of 19 28 August 2013 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I have commented on just about anything in the world in my log, and presumably that includes Swedish, but I don't remember where or when or how, so here goes (in the hope that my experiences with Swedish and Norwegian may be relevant for other learners of neighbouring languages).
Let's first consider the general situation. In Denmark films in TV aren't dubbed, but subtitled (except films for children), and besides those who live in Copenhagen or have cable TV can watch several TV channels in Swedish. Besides we have a fair amount of traffic across the border so it is quite common to meet Swedes and other Scandinavians here. Finally our libraries have a number of books in Sweddish and Norwegian, and at least non fictional books are placed between books in Danish and English on the shelves, which shows that the powers that be excpects us to be able to read them. I have no idea about the level of information about Swedish and Norwegian in modern Danish schools, but in my time (in the 60s) we were led or pushed through a number of texts in both languages without any specific preparation. We basically survived the ordeal. And nowadays we have mixed charter groups where the guides can be from other Scandinavian countries, so for instance a Danish charterguest may be served by a Swedish guide on a trip to Madeira. And generally this goes quite well - although the guides have to say certain notorious false friends in all relevant languages in order to be understood by everyone. So essentially we treat Swedish and Norwegian as dialects - in the same way a person from Dover is expected to understand a person from Edinburgh or Melbourne or Nelspruit. Actually some linguists consider our languages as dialects of one common language, but that's not the way we see it - we have strictly separate orthographies, grammars and vocabularies, and there is not much language mixing going on. So there is a glossy picture of a big happy Scandinavian family where everybody understands everybody. But this is not the reality - behind the glitzy facade things aren't running nearly as smoothly as some think. Many Danes have big problems understanding Swedish, and even more Swedes don't understand spoken Danish at all, and you will have to look hard to find a Danish person with a Swedish newspaper. Our 'kändisser' (VIPs) are not the same, and we have very different political situations (Norway is not even member of the EU, and the Norwegians have no desire to join). So in practice the information sources we have standing gaping open aren't used nearly to the extent you might have expected. In spite of this those who do accept some initial comprehension problems will soon accommodate sufficiently to be able to understand both Swedish and Norwegian fluently. Personally I can't even remember when I had problems understanding anything written or spoken in Swedish or Norwegian - not even TV programs in Norwegian dialects or humoristic programs, which often ae among the most difficult to decode. In spite of this I still have reservations about speaking both languages - though less so with Swedish, where I'm less bothered by dialectal differences. When I decided to activate these languages I basically did the ssame things as I would have done with more distant languages - although I had to settle for less grammar, because it actually is hard to find decent grammars in the Swedish and Norwegian bookshops. I found a pathetically thin Swedish one in Göteborg which would have cost me something like 50 US$, and no way I'm going to pay that! But I had lots of texts to copy, translate literally and study from a grammatical point of view, and dictionaries are easy to get - except bilingual Bokmål-Nynorsk dictionaries, which are all but non-existant. So I went through my usual routines, but it just took less times to reach a decent level, and I have not tried to become a near-native active speaker/writer of any of these languages. As I have mentioned earlier I sometimes have heard Danes who tried to speak Swedish just by imitating the sound and inserting a few wellknown 'false friends' - and the result is generally unbearable. Just to supplement this witness report I would like to add that I learnt to understand spoken Low German/Platt purely through talkshows on NDR (Norddeutsche Rundfunk) without ever having seen a full text in the language - but that source has become quite unreliable since my youth. Instead I have bought books in Platt and studied them while trying to remember the sound of the language from my old memories. And I have only tried to write and speak Low German after a lot of intensive study time. Edited by Iversen on 19 September 2013 at 9:53am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5691 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 13 of 19 29 August 2013 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
Your statements about what 'everyone' does are not applicable in 100% of cases. I didn't have any type of schooling until I was fifteen, which I would suggest is far too late for it to have played a fundamental role in the process of learning my native tongue, English. I also never watched TV or listened to radio as a kid, and didn't start using the computer until I was about 13 or 14 (and then was only allowed to do so for an hour a day, until I was in my mid-teens). What I did do was read, like crazy. My parents also read aloud to my sister and me all our childhood, as well. This did not feel like work at all to me; I was quite a bibliophile from the age of 3 or so onward and reading was one of my favorite leisure activities. This all resulted in me having somewhat advanced linguistic skills for my age when I finally started high school at age 15, without having done anything that felt like 'work' for it, and by age 17 I was correcting my English teachers from time to time (I was such a little prescriptivist back then... aw, bless). Just my two cents... I guess the conclusion I draw from this is that learning can indeed be fun and not feel like work in the slightest, although I suppose that's not exactly what you were going for in your original post. Maybe my question is: is it still 'hard work' if it feels like fun all the way? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4686 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 14 of 19 29 August 2013 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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You had "no schooling" as a child? Did I understand that correctly? I'm really struggling to figure out how that
could be accurate. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mountains Newbie Norway Joined 4591 days ago 12 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 15 of 19 29 August 2013 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am slowly moving into B2 territory with Norwegian, and after having moved back to Norway I've been amazed lately
how much Swedish I understand. I've had many conversations with Swedes too and can manage fine without switching to English. So for me it feels like I am getting another language "for free" so to say. Still have a lot of trouble understanding spoken Danish, but can read it with ease. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Qaanaaq Newbie United States Joined 4122 days ago 14 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 19 31 August 2013 at 7:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say it is indeed "getting for free", because it is solidified by the time one gains real and solid conscious
memories (e.g., past 5-6 years of age). I doubt that very many people remember their struggles with their future native tongues when they were toddlers. My mother's first languages was Yiddish, and she spoke no English until she was six, but she doesn't remember learning English. So of course there is tremendous effort, but these efforts are forgotten! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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