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Field Linguistics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Alacritas Tetraglot Newbie Portugal Joined 4863 days ago 24 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English*, French, Portuguese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, German, Latin, Bulgarian | Message 1 of 10 03 July 2011 at 4:43pm | IP Logged |
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Hello Forum,
I was wondering -- how does one go about learning a language in the field, namely a language that has hardly, if at all, documented? I am currently undertaking a bachelor's degree in linguistics, and plan on getting a doctorate in Field Linguistics after this, documenting endangered languages. I've looked at some field linguistics textbooks that the better doctoral programmes use, and none of them seem to have any advice on how to go about learning the language you're studying. All of the methods I've used up to now, like LR, shadowing, and studying grammar, seem completely useless to me when put in this perspective. Obviously I'll keep using them for the languages that I'm currently studying, as the materials are available, but I was wondering how to go about learning a language when all you have at your disposal are a community of native speakers. I mean, sure, that's a great thing to have, but usually after you have at least some knowledge of the language. Thanks! Alacritas Edited by Alacritas on 03 July 2011 at 4:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 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 2 of 10 03 July 2011 at 5:02pm | IP Logged |
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Try to find books and articles written by the old 'structuralists' (Bloomfield et al.)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Alacritas Tetraglot Newbie Portugal Joined 4863 days ago 24 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English*, French, Portuguese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, German, Latin, Bulgarian | Message 4 of 10 03 July 2011 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
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paranday - To be honest, I'm not looking at any particular languages yet. I want to
finish my degree before I start trying to decide which language to tackle. I'm basically wondering what techniques are used in learning a language with no didactic materials whatsoever, regardless of the particular situation of the language. Iversen - I'll check it out, thank you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6594 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 6 of 10 04 July 2011 at 3:08am | IP Logged |
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Maybe you’ll just have to endure the slow point-at-tree-saying-‹tree›-method and gradually build your vocabulary
and grammar from that. Exactly like babies do it :). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6138 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 7 of 10 04 July 2011 at 4:21pm | IP Logged |
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I think a lot of the time, if you are documenting endangered languages, you will also be creating resources for the
community to use in order to teach their language to community members who don't speak it. So maybe you could use the resources you create. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 8 of 10 12 July 2011 at 9:16am | IP Logged |
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I've known people (missionaries) who have done just this. There's a Christian mission which is dedicated to this method, called Wycliff Bible Translators (I think). Obviously their goal is the Bible in the target language.
From what I understood, they use the point and ask method, try to build up a vocabulary of words and phrases, and then begin to try to pick the grammar apart. They also have to devise a script, for which they normally take the script for the nearest related language with a script. EDIT: it's Wycliffe, not Wycliff. Edited by Jeffers on 12 July 2011 at 9:18am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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