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When do your TL’s words take on *meaning* | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 10 05 February 2012 at 7:50am | IP Logged |
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Let's discuss the process of words in your TL going from a superficial "I know what that word means" stage to an "it's embedded deep in my brain and I don't even have to think anymore" stage.
For example, say you are a Japanese beginner and you know that: gohan = rice o = object particle tabemasu = eat So you hear the sentence "gohan o tabemasu." Your brain goes "ok, cool, I know all those words. Hold on... gohan... that's rice. I know o, that's object, and tabemasu is... eat! Cool, he said 'eat rice'!" That's like total beginner stage. But eventually you go from just "knowing what the words mean in your language" to having their meanings embedded deep in your brain. So you hear "gohan o tabemasu" and before you even think, you already know what the person has said. They might as well have said it in your native language because they actually mean the same thing to you now. How long does that process normally take for you? Have you encountered any tricks to help speed it up? I can learn new words from books, I can study and memorize them, but I don't have that instant-knowing-what-they-mean for a long time. I go over example sentences with them and even though I can say the sentences correctly and without hesitation, I feel like I'm repeating syllables rather than repeating words that have meaning. The new word has no meaning to me. I know what its translation is, but I don't truly recognize that word as an actual word yet. As much as some people tend to hate Pimsleur, I feel like Pimsleur actually gets the words embedded in my brain. While the vocab covered is small, I feel I really know those words afterward. Not like "oh, yeah I could pass a vocab test" knowledge but "fast recognition and recall" knowledge. I guess another way to phrase it would be the point at which you stop translating from your TL into your native language in your head. So instead of: TL --> NL --> meaning/understanding it's just: TL --> meaning/understanding Is it just time, or have you figured out any cool tricks to get to this "word have meaning" stage faster? One thing I've noticed is that seeing a recently-learned word "in the wild" tends to help. Say I learn the names of 5 fruits in my TL. Ok, I know them, but they don't have any meaning in my brain yet. Say the next day I'm watching a TV show in my TL and someone is walking through a grocery store and they walk through the produce section and there's a sign with one of the words of one of the fruits I just learned printed on it. My brain goes "hey, I know that word! That means... [whatever fruit]!" And then at that point, it begins to actually sink into my brain. Hey, that's a real thing, not just something I read in a textbook. Share your experiences. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5035 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 2 of 10 05 February 2012 at 8:08am | IP Logged |
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I did Japanese with Pimsleur, so this is a example I fully understand.
I would say for me as a learner that there is a bit of "chunking" of information. This is not a technical term, but I will explain. At first, things are learned with small parts. For example, on the word level, a certain set of sounds makes a word. Then a certain set of words makes a sentence, and so on. Certain pieces of information just become easier to take as a unit. Could I say how long each stage takes place? No, not really, but I will say that commonly used phrases are easiest to acquire as a unit. I am sure this is not unique. As for ways to improve things for faster understanding, I think it's exposure and different types of exposure, aka reinforcement. I found it easier for me to remember vocabulary, for example, and make it part of my memory if I put it in meaningful sentences instead of just drilling words in isolation. Drills have their place, but context helped me. Another common trick I have learned is to visualize or use mental mnemonics when learning new words. Often it takes longer to describe a visualization than it does to think of it, but when it works, it really works. Here is a personal example. The Japanese word "ikura" (how much) sounds like the Finnish word "ikkuna" (window), which I already knew. So to remind myself of the Japanese meaning, I built a mental image of someone standing in front of a shop window looking at some merchandise wondering how much it cost. After that, I've never had a problem with that word. I hope that was helpful and got at what you really wanted to discuss. 1 person has 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 10 05 February 2012 at 8:09am | IP Logged |
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I've automated it but I'm not aware how it works exactly. I just associate 'this word' with 'this meaning' regardless of language. I've noticed repetition helps it, and I use NL sometimes but I don't rely exclusively in it. Actually nowadays I do most of my study in English, which isn't my native language, so I go from TL2 -> TL1 -> meaning.
I think the key might be in discussing/analysing how NL words take on meaning. You have no 'NL crutch' to rely on, or a previous 'TL -> NL' phase, yet you somehow memorize them so when you hear 'word' you get to 'meaning'. How does *that* work? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 4 of 10 05 February 2012 at 2:38pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know, it just doesn't happen to me. Every time I learn something it immediately becomes TL --> meaning, I don't experience the TL --> NL --> meaning stage at all. I don't know why it happens to some people and not to others.
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| 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 10 05 February 2012 at 2:59pm | IP Logged |
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What helped me most to stop translating was listening to an audiobook and following the written text.
Also for those who learn several languages, it's a good idea to force yourself to switch between them, even just by using an L3-English dictionary if your native language isn't English. Soon the brain will associate words with their meanings more and more. Nowadays my threshold for being able to understand without translating is very, very low. My favourite example is how early this winter a Dutch footballer who plays in Russia tweeted "sneeuw! #Moskou" or something like this and without any conscious thoughts at all I ran to the window to see if there was snow. I didn't analyze that yeah, this word looks similar to snow and Schnee, it probably means snow, what, do we have snow already??? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 6 of 10 05 February 2012 at 11:26pm | IP Logged |
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There are words which I recognize, but then I have to think hard to remember what they mean - and sometimes this doesn't happen. There are other words which I recognize, and then I know what they mean. But even this isn't really the same thing as having made them active. I don't see a word as "embedded deep in my brain" before it also åpops up in my mind when I need it.
Actually it is difficult to describe precisely how you formulate a thought in words - and the philosophers have done nothing to make this clearer. The best explanation I can come up with is that the meanings of words are like pictures - but abstract. You imagine a situation or something, and the shadow of a complex of references appears, and in the middle of it there is already a word or an expression. Around it there are voids in which with a little luck some word will pop up - and if not, then you follow another lead to another void which may be better connected to a word. And finally you drag the whole thing together, decide which element should come first and how the rest should be organized, and for that you typically reuse some wellknown pattern. It takes some time and effort to get to know a foreign word so well that it will pop up automatically in this process. Sometimes it needs a little nudge, and for me that can be an image or the place I saw the word I'm trying to recall, but it can just as well be its parallel (read translation) in another language -not necessarily my native Danish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5047 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 7 of 10 06 February 2012 at 5:11am | IP Logged |
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This doesn't seem to me like it's an L2 phenomena.
The same WORD-THINK-BLINK-MEANING process happens in L1 when one learns a new concept or word. I'm generalizing from myself here, but I'm fairly certain it's more or less universal. Think about the last time you learned something, really learned something completely new to you, you might have to go back to math class or something in your mental eye. Suppose, you learned say logarithm, the first 10-100-1000 times you brain had all those intermediate stages. But then without noticing it, it suddenly didn't. It seems to me, this is the kind of thing that lessens with exposure. Moreover, when it comes to things that are very situationally and linguistically regular, and occur on a massive scale, like for example "Pleased to meet you", we often get to the point when it's possible to guess the next syllable, word or group of words before they're said, to the point where some people can even hardly recall hearing the words or remember themselves replying appropriately. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Marikki Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5496 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Spanish, Swedish Studies: German | Message 8 of 10 06 February 2012 at 4:20pm | IP Logged |
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Interesting question. To me language learning is not just about cramming vocabulary and learning to understand.
That phase will always come, in which I already "understand" a lot without even trying to translate, but somehow don't emotionally or intellectually connect to what I'm reading. It is a weird feeling, you completly understand and don't understand at the same time. I love to read books and normally begin extensive reading as soon as I know the basics of a language. My natural learning style would be "not to translate at all, just look up any unknown words" but I have noticed that in the beginning some thoughtful and meticulous translating every now and then effectively helps integrating the new language in my brain (scientifically speaking ;) ) and reading becomes much more enjoyable. I would say that to me overcoming this "hollow words and empty sentences" phase takes reading a couple of lengthy novels. This could of course be different for non-indoeuropean languages, I have no learning experiences of them. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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