|
 |
Tips on getting used to the SOV order | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Mirc Diglot Newbie Romania Joined 6084 days ago 14 posts - 28 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English Studies: German, French | Message 1 of 6 13 November 2009 at 1:31pm | IP Logged |
|
Hello everybody!
I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to get used to the SOV word order, as opposed to the SVO, OVS, VSO and VOS, with which I am quite familiar. I'm mostly having problems with secondary sentences in German. Here's a short introduction in order to make you familiar with my situation: I am a Romanian student who has spent a good deal of time abroad, thus learning English mostly by myself, having been forced to speak it all this time. Now I'm studying in Germany, and thanks to the new requirements of my university, which came into power only a few months ago, I found out that I need a B2 German certificate in order to be allowed to study. So I went and worked like hell, and managed to obtain a B2 certificate after less than 3 months of studying the language. Now I speak German fluently, having lived 2 months in Germany - however my vocabulary is very limited, and I still get the feeling that I'm deciphering a code when I read something in German, instead of feeling this language as a natural means of communication. My native language, Romanian, has very loose rules for word order, meaning that SVO, OVS, VOS, and VSO are all accepted. However the one thing that can never happen, in sentences where an object is present, is the "SOV" order. When I listen to native Germans speak, they use quite commonly huuuuge secondary sentences with all the verbs jammed at the end. My mind seems to be unable to make sense of a sentence where I didn't get the verb at the beginning, or at least very close to the beginning, and therefore I tend to forget what's been said, because I don't have a verb with which to associate the other words! In written German, I seem to have to read every complicated phrase twice, in order to understand it fully - once so that I can get the context, with the verb at the end, and a second time in order to actually place the verb into that context and understand the meaning of it all! How can I fix this? Any exercises I might try? Can you give me any advice about these things? Anyone else had to battle with the SOV order and managed to defeated it? :D Thanks in advance, everyone! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6445 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 6 13 November 2009 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
|
I found Listening-Reading pretty helpful for this.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6774 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 6 14 November 2009 at 8:03am | IP Logged |
|
I suggest lots and lots of reading. The SOV order of Japanese comes naturally to me now, although it was a
challenge at first. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mirc Diglot Newbie Romania Joined 6084 days ago 14 posts - 28 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English Studies: German, French | Message 4 of 6 14 November 2009 at 3:10pm | IP Logged |
|
Is "listening-reading" some special method or is it just, well, listening and reading? :) Just wondering there.
For the record, I don't have a problem with using the SOV order when it's me that does the talking - 'cause I already know what I want to say, and it's not that big of a deal to simply put the verb at the end. My problem is keeping everything in mind without a verb to associate the rest of the sentence with, when other people are speaking, so when I don't already know what they want to say. I am definitely going to start reading a lot again, since that was the fact that helped me most with other languages so far, and others always seem to underestimate its importance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6915 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 6 14 November 2009 at 5:10pm | IP Logged |
|
The mega-thread about L-R can be found here:
Listening-Reading system 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5773 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 6 of 6 15 November 2009 at 5:43pm | IP Logged |
|
I would think it is a matter of doing exercises starting from main clauses and then adapting them to subclauses.
Er ist krank - Ich glaube/ denke/ vermute/ ... dass er krank ist (although you could also say: ........../ ... er sei krank) It might even be good to learn some nice sentences by heart to get the automatism. You'd need a list of simple sentences and then you can get started right away, I think. Or is this too simple ? i'll be pleased to hear about other ways of doing it, but to me reading-listening will hardly help. That will mainly work when there is a firm base and when one hears lots of that. Edited by JanKG on 15 November 2009 at 6:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
