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When did your L2 start sounding normal | ||
Tags: Epiphany | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Thor1987 Groupie Canada Joined 4735 days ago 65 posts - 84 votes  Studies: German | Message 1 of 11 05 February 2012 at 4:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Just watching some German video's on youtube, and notice a weird sensation. I forgot the
language was foreign to my ears. Granted I don't understand most of what I'm hearing but it's strange as a canadian to no longer hear the language as strange or foreign. So what were your benchmarks. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5067 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 2 of 11 05 February 2012 at 6:02am | IP Logged | ||
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One day, I realized that I hadn't realized that my Spanish teacher had switched from English to Spanish and back,
yet I understood everything that she had said. Edited by Kartof on 05 February 2012 at 6:02am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 11 05 February 2012 at 6:45am | IP Logged | ||
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It doesn't really take a lot. After just ten or twenty hours of German classes, a student of mine told me he obviously couldn't understand 99.9% of what he heard, but he had no big problems isolating words in speech, or identifying not overly long compounds. To him it didn't sound as unintelligible gibberish any more, but rather as a stream of unknown words. He wasn't particularly good at languages and he was still struggling with German sounds.
My L2 would be English and I started long ago, but it still sounds as something I have to switch on or off, because many vowels are completely different from Spanish, and that's a particularly outstanding feature of English. I'm not particularly proficient in German, let alone Russian, but somehow they sound much less foreign to me than English. I guess [perceived] similarity between languages goes a long way. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4982 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 4 of 11 05 February 2012 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't remember when Spanish started sounding normal, but when I was in Barcelona the other week listening to
my Spanish family I realised that it's beautiful to understand another language without recourse to effort. It's wonderful - I was picking up the words, analysing the grammar, listening to the flow of the language, but not struggling to do this, just listening, learning and enjoying. German, however, still has some way to go.. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 5 of 11 05 February 2012 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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It depends on what you do with/in the language. Listening-Reading makes languages familiar very quickly.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Thor1987 Groupie Canada Joined 4735 days ago 65 posts - 84 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 11 05 February 2012 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I donno, German for me always sounded very strange, even after hours of learning.
Remember I'm canadian, so french or Spanish, sounds far less foreign, but it's finally clicked. The measure for me, is that I can picture someone speaking German, and for none of its sounds to be strange. Even certain dialects of English sound strange and odd to me, so I think this is a break through. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6784 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 11 05 February 2012 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I thought the question was about when did my L2 start sounding normal, ie. when I
speak/write it? Sadly I have to say that I don't think it does yet, I still get these reactions from people that tell me they're something a little off in how I express myself. Edited by numerodix on 05 February 2012 at 2:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 8 of 11 05 February 2012 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
I think you misunderstood the question. The effect described by Thor1987 comes long after you learn to recognize the sounds. It takes hundreds of hours at least. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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