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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| jody Senior Member United States Joined 6224 days ago 242 posts - 252 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Bulgarian | Message 1 of 10 18 November 2011 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I recently watched the movie The Other Side of Heaven. The young missionary went to Tonga and had to learn the language quickly. He went onto a small island and began reading from the Bible. He read one verse in English, and then in Tongan. He continued this for (apparantly) days on end. Finally he collapsed in exhaustion, and when he awoke he was able to speak the language very well.
I realize this is not completely feasible. I just wanted to ask your thoughts on the approach. Could you gain some level of language learning simply by reading in two languages. I have a few books in two different languages and could mimic the movie character's idea, on a much more relaxed scale. I will not go to exhaustion, but maybe an hour per day. This is similar, perhaps, to the L-R method that has been discussed here. I would love to try L-R, but i can never seem to find audio that matches the text for books I would enjoy. Thanks for your input. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6568 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 10 18 November 2011 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess you could call it the L-L method? I'd say it'd work best under two conditions:
1: The learner has already acquired a base knowledge in the language, knowing at least the most common couple of hundred words and some overview of at least what the grammar contains, though not necessarily all the details. 2: She treats the reading as a kind of puzzle, figuring out what words mean what, not just reading blindly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5367 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 10 18 November 2011 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Bible is filled with archaic and poetic language. It's the worst imaginable book to learn a language from.
You'd be entirely relying on a translation of archaic and poetic language, unable to determine whether the translation is accurate, or whether the language used is currently still used or acceptable. A fair amount of time would have to be spent trying to find correspondences between words and grammatical structures and words would have to show up several times before you could reach any conclusion. You'd have to give yourself the time to compute all the given grammatical rules so you can also produce them. This might be different in a cognate language, but not with English and Tongan. Finally, reading a language doesn't give you the ability to speak it. Especially if you read while you were tired. There is only so much info the brain can take and it needs to rest to process it. The Wikipedia article about the movie says "He has difficulty with the Tongan language. [...] He isolates himself and studies the Bible in both English and Tongan. He becomes more familiar with the language." We're very far from speaking the language after a 4-day reading spree. Of course, the story was written by Groberg himself, a missionary who would be more than happy to have us believe that the Bible is a great tool for language learning, on the one hand, and that God helped him, on the other, so it's hard to know where the truth actually lies. Edited by Arekkusu on 18 November 2011 at 6:03pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5248 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 10 18 November 2011 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know how close to fact the movie actually is. Obviously, one would assume that a missionary should know the Bible forwards and backwards in his/her native language. So I could see that helping, but magically speaking the language afterwards, with no input on pronunciation or non-formal usage? Well, Hollywood is what it is.
I was curious about how Mormon missionaries learn their languages and found this link on reddit How do Mormon missionaries learn the languages of their host countries Here are a couple of links from this forum regarding the Bible and language learning: Best Bible chapter for language learning HTLAL The Bible and language learning Obviously, the right biblical translation to use is very important. You don't want to end up speaking "Thou hast done it unto me, yea verily I say unto thee" in the language(s) you're studying. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4889 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 5 of 10 18 November 2011 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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iguanamon i think you're the first poster on here to make me laugh out loud. good job.
i bought a Heilige Schrift. I think the new testament, if the translation is of a certain grounded (non archaic ala NIV) style it's GREAT. The Gospel of Mark is so simple i've read it in Latin 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5997 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 10 18 November 2011 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Clearly you can decode a language from parallel texts (or at least as much of the language as is used in the texts), but it's a long way for a short-cut.
Basically, you're starting from scratch and trying to discover everything for yourself. Human intellectual development over the last few millenia hasn't been the result of natural selection, it's been because we learn from what others have already discovered. You didn't discover how to tie your shoelaces -- you were taught. You didn't discover how to write -- you were taught. You didn't discover silicon semiconductors and magnetic media, develop sophisticated coding techniques and write the Windows operating system from the ground up before you connected to the internet -- there isn't enough time in a single human lifespan for all of that. Why should learning a language be any different. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6689 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 7 of 10 18 November 2011 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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It isn't LR beause there is no L. Instead it is a use of a bilingual text where you assume that the two versions are parallel, i.e. two out of the three elements in LR. Bilingual texts are very efficient tools in language learning, but you need to listen to the language and then train a lot in order to learn to speak it, it doesn't come just from analyzing bilingual texts.
Edited by Iversen on 18 November 2011 at 11:20pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4895 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 8 of 10 28 November 2011 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||
I assume you meant R-R? The L-L method would be hilarious: simultaneously listening to a text in two languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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