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Epiphanies when learning languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5008 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes  Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 9 of 11 28 March 2011 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||
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For me it was yesterday; when I started using FL words while speaking in my native language without even realising it... The process was automatic and natural... The words just seemed to flow from my mouth... It was very satisfying...
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 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 10 of 11 28 March 2011 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good old thread, but it is still relevant.
It strikes me how different language learners really are when you get down to the details. I think Translator2 hit the nail on the head with this explanation: "Of course, I know that both languages are derived from Latin, but the similarities described below were not immediately obvious to me (for some reason), perhaps because I keep my languages separated in my brain and I studied most of my languages from English grammars". In contrast I have always used one language to learn another, and I got the scientific justification for this procedure when I studied French and other languages in the 70s - finding systematic sound changes is alpha and omega for historical linguistics, and spotting loanwords and other kinds of influences is not only common sense, but also the foundation for the wawe theory of language development. Even inside a language you can use your knowledge of derivational patterns to enlarge your vocabulary. In short, until I found this forum I had never even imagined that you could avoid using those connections to learn new languages. The price is of course that you may be reluctant to choose new languages which are too different from those you already know, and that you may reuse patterns from one language in others in inappropriate situations. The preference for grammars written in your own language is quite natural, but it's slightly more complicated than that. Many grammars focus on problems for native speakers of a certain language, which may not be a problem for people with another background. For instance you have to describe aspect in Slavic languages very thoroughly if you write for Anglo- or Danophones. But speakers of other Slavic language would not need the broad lines, only the details about concrete differences. This phenomenon is even more obvious with grammars written for native speakers of a certain language. For instance I have got a Greek grammar written in French, but written by a Greek - I never use it precisely because it writes a lot about petty details, without giving the broader perspective on anything. Instead I use a Routledge grammar in English, because its focus is more relevant for me. Using dictionaries written in your own language is equally natural, but for those who speak smaller languages the selection may be fairly narrow, and you will be more tempted to use resources in other languages. Of course you have to be fairly well versed in those other languages to avoid confusion or uncertainty, but if it is feasible then you will probably find that you learn more about the target languages when you can study them from more than one linguistic perspective. But even here you have to consider the original target group - take for instance my Danish-Icelandic dictionary: it is clearly written for Icelanders, and therefore there is morphological information about the Danish words, but not about the Icelandic ones. Beside I have even a nagging feeling that the idiomatic examples represent things that are problematic for Icelanders rather than those that are problematic for me. But sometimes you have to make do with what you can get. Edited by Iversen on 28 March 2011 at 1:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5008 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 11 of 11 19 April 2011 at 6:25am | IP Logged | ||
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