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Learning from a spouse | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5256 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 9 of 22 01 December 2012 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learning Mandarin with my wife has, so far, been a great experience. Although, I will say that it is more accurately described as me learning Mandarin on my own and having a conversation partner available whenever I need. As a native speaker, she often gives me the "it just sounds wrong" type of explanations, which are not helpful. I think it's important to not expect your spouse to teach you their language, rather, it is a wonderful gift that you give to your loved one and yourself.
"If you talk to a [spouse] in a language s/he understands, that goes to her/his head. If you talk to her/him in her/his language, that goes to her/his heart." Edited by MixedUpCody on 01 December 2012 at 7:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 10 of 22 01 December 2012 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Someone mentioned acting out dialogues with her boyfriend. It's probably the closest you can, or even SHOULD get to learning with your spouse (unless your spouse is actually a teacher).
It can especially be useful if you live in the country of your target language and are anxious about using the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| HenryMW Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5174 days ago 125 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 11 of 22 01 December 2012 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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My girlfriend speaks Hebrew and I get the "it just sounds right" answer a lot from her. What I've learned is to
ask other questions that get me the answer I want. Instead of asking what the passive voice of a verb is for example, I just ask her to translate a few sentences and figure out what I need from that. She doesn't know the grammar but I can figure out the rule or bit I need from context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4471 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 12 of 22 09 December 2012 at 10:51am | IP Logged | ||
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"Many international relationships will be established in one language from the outset and it can be hard to alter this balance"
I could not agree more with that sentence and I am very pleased to see so many people agreeing with that because I receive lots of criticism for not being able to switch language in my relationship. Of course, most of the people who make those comments do not speak a second language and those who do have never experienced establishing a relationship in one language and then switching to another themselves. So I am glad to now be able to answer them that it is actually quite common. I also found your point about the "indirect" way of how having a native speaker spouse can help your language learning interesting. I had never looked at it that way but it is definitively the case in my relationship : even if I have a hard time speaking French with my boyfriend myself, I do provide him with a lot of French speaking opportunities through my family and friends (although most of them are "France French" speakers and my boyfriend speaks "Quebec French" so it can be confusing at times :P). Another "indirect" advantage is that you can have activities together in your TL and in a way, there is an easier access to TL content. As for the grammatical explanation of why it is like this and not like that, it's the contrary here. In a lot of cases, I would be able to provide a grammatical rule to my boyfriend (since even as a native learner, I still had to learn grammar in school) but he does not have the grammar notions to understand it. However, in grammar classes in France, we often learn some "tricks" that you can only use if you can tell what sounds right and wrong. For example, to know when to write "à" and when to write "a", I just replace it in their head with "avait"; if it sounds right then it's "a", if it sounds wrong then it's "à". I would be able to explain why though. What I am more confronted with are cases where there's absolutely nothing wrong about what he said and yet it's kind of wrong and there's nothing else I can say than "It's perfectly correct but no native speaker would ever phrase it that way and I can't tell you why" - and quite often I can't even tell him what a native speaker would actually say. That's another thing that I am bad with helping : translations and vocabulary. More often than not, when my boyfriend asks me "how do you say..." or even sometimes "what does ... mean ?" I don't have the answer "on the fly". It's very hard for him to understand that it's not that I don't want to but that I am not good at this. I speak 2 languages but in my daily life, I do not translate things from one language to another. I am able to say what I want and understand what is said in the language in which I am conversing but translating seems to be a different skill altogether. Edited by Tsopivo on 09 December 2012 at 10:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4847 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 13 of 22 10 December 2012 at 12:58am | IP Logged | ||
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My wife is short-tempered and will get impatient and ANGRY after a while if I try to use Japanese with her, so it's all English.
My suggestion: Happy Wife > L2 Speaking Practice With Wife 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4701 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 14 of 22 10 December 2012 at 1:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm one of the lucky ones with a girlfriend worse in English and German than them in their target languages- Japanese has always been our language, even when I could barely string a sentence together somehow, and communication was more single words than actual conversations. I never directly learned from her, but I sure picked some things up - and I messed some things up, which led to reactions that made these things stick. Edited by atama warui on 10 December 2012 at 1:00am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 15 of 22 10 December 2012 at 1:04am | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| NMW Newbie Netherlands Joined 4487 days ago 36 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch | Message 16 of 22 10 December 2012 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||
That would most likely be me. I find it really useful as I can hear a native pronunciation in a more natural way than most courses which are slowed down or over pronounced. It also means that I have immediate feedback on my own pronunciation and can correct it before I pick up bad habits. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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