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Victorian Explorers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| rb27 Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4455 days ago 1 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 1 of 14 25 March 2013 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've always been interested in how the great explorers and adventurers learnt their languages.
People like Richard Burton/T.E. Lawrence/Wilfred Thesiger became fluent in various languages - and I assume they did this simply through immersion. I find it hard to believe they all brought the equivalent of 'teach yourself arabic' with them, not to mention large dictionaries. If they did learn by pure immersion, couldn't we do something similar today? If we just had the Arabic TV or radio on for the next year or two, wouldn't this work? P.S. if you have any other favourite explorers, feel free to share :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes  Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 14 25 March 2013 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is an interesting topic. When I think of those explorers, I usually ask myself just how fluent they really were. Isn't it possible their reputation is a bit exaggerated?
Also, how much writing did they have to do? Do we know about such things? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 14 25 March 2013 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Welcome to the forum, rb27! Richard Burton has been discussed on this recent HTLAL thread (check out kanewai's post on pg 3) and this older HTLAL thread referenced within the thread. There was also an attempt by member pfn123 to use Burton's methods to learn Volapük: Burton in Volapükistan.
To me, language learning is a little like a restaurant buffet, a little from here, a little from there and you may end up with a satisfying meal. While Victorian language-learning methods are less relevant to today's world, you can always pick up some useful tips. If it looks like it may work for me I'll use it.
In a word, no. There has to be some component of active participation, i.e.: actively listening, reading subtitles, conversation. Just having TL TV on in the background won't serve to learn the language but will serve to accustom you to it's rhythms, cadences and sound. Background listening, along with active learning, can be useful. Edited by iguanamon on 25 March 2013 at 4:44pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4302 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 4 of 14 25 March 2013 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My opinion is that even though we have more materials today to be immersed, we aren't required to be immersed to get the basic materials that we need. Recently I went to a store to buy some paper and this is what I saw, laptops having 9+ languages (Some type of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Dutch and others). Headphones in 4-5 languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese), and pens and pencils in 3 languages (English, French, Spanish).
Back then, it would be a more of a necessity.Either be as immersed as possible or die. They didn't have cars. So a 2hour subway ride could take up to days or weeks for them. If you sailed to a new country, you'd have to wait at least 3months or even more before your ship returns. Whereas nowadays we have canned food that can last up for months, food back then might go rotten by the end of a week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5084 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 14 28 April 2013 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Welcome to the forum rb27.
As mentioned above, I tried applying Burton's method to learning Volapuk. I have to say, that attempt failed pretty spectacularly. But not because of Burton's system. It was a bad idea to try and learn Volapuk like this, a really bad idea. In preparing for the experiment, I read a few biographies of Burton, and tried to distil the most important information into the introductory posts of my 'Burton in Volapukistan' thread. Burton's system relied on memorisation and interaction. He would memorise the most important words and grammar, and the read and converse as much as possible. But it seems he tried to make everything 'active'. Even when he was listening to other people talk to him, he was repeating to himself what they were saying. So you can use radio and TV, but at least some of the time it has to be 'active' listening, and it supplements the learning of words and grammar, not replaces it. His method was hands on. Prepare yourself a little and jump in. As for other explorer-linguists from that time: I recently read The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk. He mentions a number of great adventurers who were at home in foreign tongues. A great read. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4278 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 6 of 14 28 April 2013 at 6:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is a fascinating subject.
Sail everywhere and learn the language there - what a dream! ... I think you can succeed by "pure immersion" too. But by it I refer to a process which involves everything - passive elements, active participation, interactive exchange and feedback, and all these have to happen in context which you know, and the whole process has to proceed without interference of the presence of any other language. So you are not likely to win a language with radio. TV, perhaps, but it would be extremely slow to enable you to sustain the needed momentum to own the language. Some can, but the average learner cannot. ... an odyssey into the far West... Edited by Paco on 28 April 2013 at 6:51am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 14 28 April 2013 at 8:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree with iguanamon. I've had the fascinating privilege of learning French to a decent level while raising two kids who were learning to speak. And my language learning methods have always been relatively "natural" and input-driven. So I've been able to compare my own learning process with that of my kids. Here are some things that I've noticed: 1. Kids work really hard to learn their languages. They get frustrated, they make mistakes, and they get excited and start spewing "word salad". 2. Kids get lots of very special input. Parents speak slowly, explain things over and over again, use hand gestures, and repeat simple instructions thousands of times. This gives kids context and repetition that you could never get from Internet radio, or even from TV shows like Sesame Street, which already assume relatively advanced linguistic skills. 3. Kids are often much better at listening than they are at speaking. It's perfectly possible for an adult to be able to write grammatical French without being able to enjoy a simple movie. But I guarantee that kids kids can understand full-speed native speech long before they can speak grammatically—after all, they can only learn the grammar if they correctly hear what people are saying! 4. Kids learn because they have no choice. If an adult puts themselves in a similar situation—where they have no choice but to learn a language or risk being deprived of all human communication—I guarantee that most adults will learn extremely quickly. But adults usually have the willpower and resources to avoid this situation, and to create a private linguistic bubble even in a foreign country. So it comes as no surprise that the 19th century explorers could learn a language via immersion. Burton's techniques seem rather straightforward: He'd memorize a few hundred words, read a couple of interesting books, and cram as much grammar as he could. And then I imagine that he'd throw himself into using the language. But I also bet that this process involved a lot of hard work, confusion, miscommunication and frustration. Even kids go through that:
So I think that there's probably nothing magical about the techniques used by the Victorian explorers, and I'm sure that they struggled as much as any of us—and as much as any 6-year-old suddenly forced to learn French by immersion. Edited by emk on 28 April 2013 at 1:18pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 14 28 April 2013 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And of course this is just as possible for adults as well. Adult learners usually try to speak as soon as possible, so they learn to produce grammatically correct writing (or even speech) before they have a large vocabulary. However, for various idiosyncratic reasons I am reading, learning grammar passively by reading (though I do have explicit grammar rules in my head which helped with reading), and watching movies/tv, but I am not really doing much output (neither writing or speaking). So it's quite possible for me to enjoy a simple movie or understand what someone is saying to me or read a children's book (like Harry Potter) without being able to have a particularly grammatical conversation or write something in my TL. Edited by patrickwilken on 28 April 2013 at 2:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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