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Choosing a dialect from day 1 | ||
Tags: Dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4101 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 33 of 45 04 September 2013 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I am not quite sure that I follow. What is one thing about natives and another among learners? The need to decide on a dialect? As a learner, I actually think it's potentially quite an important choice to make. But, it depends on your reasons for learning the language. I gave an example of a situation when dialect is rather unimportant as a learner. I'll give one where I think it matters: I live in Cornouaille, very near the border between Léon and Trégor. I choose to study Breton because French is actually the second language of a great many of my neighbours and I often hear as much Breton in the village as I hear French. My intent is to one day speak Breton fluently, to be able to fully participate in day to day life here, and to volunteer my time and effort to the community for maintaining local culture. Therefore, I make an effort to find materials that native speakers have said are in KLT and have reviewed as relatively "pure" KLT. Relearning how to make basic sounds later makes no sense to me when I could learn them the way that is the most useful to me from the beginning. Edited by eyðimörk on 04 September 2013 at 6:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 34 of 45 04 September 2013 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In the Spanish case the decision was not mine but my mother's and her main concern was to make sure I came into the Castilian and not the Catalan area. Had she known about the accents within Castilian she would have wanted me to go to Salamanca :-) And you are right, of course, when we are doing immersion we simply adopt the accent they have, but I still believe that when you study on your own, in some languages you need to make a choice fairly quickly, if or no other reason because you may need different textbooks. At some point in my life I would like to learn Portuguese, and when I do I realise that I will need to make the choice between Brazilian and European Portuguese. And presumably from day 1 :-) Ps. I ended up in Granada, and trust me: They are not left behind as far as partying goes... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 35 of 45 04 September 2013 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This reminds me a bit of "What to do with pluricentric languages". As an outsider learning a foreign language, you may not have that much leeway to pick a dialect or variant since it's heavily dependent on whatever is used in the course and/or the understanding/background of the author or instructor. As I study Northern Saami, my books state that there are two broadly defined dialects in "Western" and "Eastern". Most chapters indicate one or two isoglosses showing the differences but the authors still teach the "Western" dialect with the key to the exercises aligned to this strategy. In other words, I'm supposed to gain a decent grasp of the western version of Northern Saami, but also become familiar with some traits that are found only in the eastern version. As mentioned earlier, there are also cases where the dialect or variant learned depends on geographical or social accident (e.g. a Pole working as an au-pair in Australia for a couple of years would unsurprisingly become most comfortable in Australian English relative to other variants). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 36 of 45 04 September 2013 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Learning sounds is easy. That doesn't take a lot of time. If you live in a small village, of course you're bound to the accent of that village. I did the same thing when I studied French. That makes sense. For a general learner of Breton however, these aren't really relevant. It doesn't matter to me if I speak vannetais or cornouillais because I've been to Bretagne (Brest) once. And in that sense natives can complain what they want, they should be happy I speak their language at all considering it's endangered. If you live somewhere locally it makes a lot of sense to pick up the local habit, I wouldn't do that any differently. But I do not understand the vitriol some brittophones have against people who speak with a more unified or mixed dialect. There are foreigners learning your language that a couple hundred thousand speak, be happy someone from Sweden or the Netherlands bothered to speak your language at all and isn't coasting on their French, or worse, English. If you are a language in dire need of speakers, then scaring them away by saying "but you must learn dialect x and otherwise you are not speaking Pure Breton(tm) " is profoundly unhelpful. That makes no sense to me whatsoever. I understand the need for blending in with the locals if you're planning to actually live in a small village in Brittany where they speak a particular variant of Breton (and the changes associated with it). But for everyone else, who is simply interested in Breton lifestyle and culture, demanding that they learn the pure Breton of village X (unless that's actually the standard) is useless. Having a nice orthographical standard which crosses a few bridges is much better than a scattered diglossic system. And the pronunciation can always be adapted to the locals and taught - I speak Breton with a French r but if they want me to roll it - sure. Or zh as an h, not as an s or a z. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4101 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 37 of 45 04 September 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I personally don't find it an easy task to relearn the entire sound of a non-native level language — vowel sounds, consonant sounds, and intonation — after I have already taught myself to speak it one way.
Not to go entirely off topic, but I think that what you're referring to here as "a general learner of Breton", and what I referred to in my example of a situation when dialect in unimportant to a Breton learner, is actually something like a 1% minority. The general Breton learner is probably someone who lives in Brittany.
To be fair, in the past 2 years of living in Brittany I've never personally heard anyone complain about a foreign accent, whether in Breton or French. And there are some very very very thick British accents around here. All (western) foreigners who have attempted to learn either language have always been lauded. Of course, that is to my face, and I am a foreigner. The way things sound, when speaking about native Francophones speaking Breton in Breton language media, at the online elitist (francophone!) Breton culture fora is a whole different story. Edited by eyðimörk on 04 September 2013 at 7:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 38 of 45 04 September 2013 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I did get the vitriol. And in the case of Breton, you may be correct about the living in
Brittany situation. I'm not one of them though, I don't plan on moving there. The first thing I usually do is cultivate pronunciation in any language (also in Breton), the problem was moreso that I have had no exposure to Breton in any oral form since my holiday there. So maybe the differences between dialect are more marked than I expect them to be. You just change the things particular to the dialect. Edited by tarvos on 04 September 2013 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 39 of 45 04 September 2013 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The difficulty -- and I'm sure this applies to several other dialects -- is that speakers have access to a whole spectrum of language ranging from the written standard all the way to unrecognisable dialect forms. In other words, teaching Québécois French from the start means to also have to teach standard French in parallel. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| gmatt539 Newbie Canada Joined 5097 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 40 of 45 05 September 2013 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hehe, St. John's is definitely not a place for 'Canadian English'. Newfoundlnd has a very unique accent due to its' isolated history. I like the Newfie accent a lot (you can definitely hear the Irish influence) and they are probably some of the nicest people you will ever meet. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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