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Strategy for Non-Related Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| 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 9 of 12 08 August 2011 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When it comes to internalizing unrelated languages, I did notice certain points when I started using features like a native without having to think for more than a second. For example, Hungarian vowel harmony came to me after some drilling and reading about the subject in a grammar manual. I got so used to vowel harmony that I later started sometimes to apply vowel harmony when reading aloud new words that I was learning in Slovak. Another thing that came to me as "natural" was the Hungarian concept of conjugating for indefinite and definite direct objects. I initially had a lot of problems with it and regularly mixed up the patterns but again after some practice and reading about the topic, I got to the point where I could use the correct conjugation 90% of the time at a native's speed. The concept still doesn't necessarily make sense since Hungarian is the only language that I've studied that conjugates in this way, but I am at the point where I can use it and not fret about it or get obsessed over why it had to be that way.
It's not easy to stop comparing to other languages but I think that knowing about the pitfall/matter can solve half of the problem as one can think about the interference when mixing occurs as a mistake in the new language. Even my recent log about studying Inari Saami is littered with comparisons to Finnish. It has been a double-edged sword in that I wanted to make use of my background in Finnish (in some cases it was very helpful and valid) yet I have to guard against producing Inari Saami with Finnicisms as has been pointed out to me by a native speaker who recently checked privately all of my homework in Inari Saami. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6552 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 10 of 12 10 August 2011 at 4:40am | IP Logged | |||||
Disagree. In general 1) learning a language outside your family will be more difficult (require more time) than one in 2) learners will benefit from having a language plan that is tailored to the specific language 3) language plans for a given learner will be different for a given language, regardless of the material availability issue 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 11 of 12 10 August 2011 at 6:18am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't quite see how you disagree, because: 1) learning a language outside the family can be more difficult / time-consuming, however it is not inordinately so (as noted). I also speak from experience when I say that I had greater difficulty learning the Indo-European Lithuanian than the Uralic Hungarian (and this also takes into account that by the time I started working on Lithuanian, I had already acquainted myself with several languages including the somewhat distantly-related Slavonic ones. Hungarian however was my first Uralic language and whatever I could draw on from my I-E background turned out to be of little use. No matter since the Hungarian stuck a lot better than the Lithuanian even though in both cases I was starting out with effectively the same method: Colloquial Hungarian and TY Lithuanian). 2) Learners can indeed benefit from a special plan that is tailored to the specified target language BUT this has nothing to do with whether learners are targeting IE languages or not. If I were to planning on tackling Kurdish and Turkish in the near future, should I go nuts with devising brand-new or special methods for myself to learn Turkish, but relax on devising such preparations when thinking about Kurdish? Again it's no accident that FSI treated both Kurdish and Turkish as category II languages. And by special plan, how do you mean? Basically I follow the same plan/method when starting to teach myself any language (get a decent self-study course with audio, a dictionary, a reference guide on grammar, and some links to authentic content); no special plan here. 3) From a certain point of view, the plan's details can differ from one language to the next but this again this doesn't imply that learning non IE languages forces the learner to make unusual plans compared to learning IE languages. This goes back to 2). Basically just learn the language in a way that works best for yourself but that in itself isn't the definition of "special" and considering also that the need for "special" approaches (if required at all) doesn't necessarily align to genetic language groupings. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 12 of 12 11 August 2011 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You only need to adjust your learning strategy if your usual learning strategy is a "cheat".
Someone posted a link to this study here recently, and its results confirm* my suspicions about learning-by-immersion: immersion in a foreign language only seems to help you tie new forms to known concepts, so if you aren't already familiar with the concept, you need instruction in it. The more "foreign" a language, the more new concepts to learn. In the end it's more difficult simply because there's more to learn -- it doesn't really change how you learn it though.... * Note that it's a pretty small study, so it doesn't really prove anything. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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