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Forget semantics and just focus on sound? | ||
Tags: Linguistic relationships | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 1 of 10 24 April 2011 at 7:45pm | IP Logged |
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I feel I have an advantage in reading French because so many words share similarities (at least partially). Unfortunately this doesn't help me with listening comprehension or speaking. Sometimes I feel like I get blocked by my own Eng. pronunciation of French words so much that I have to "unlearn" how to treat these words.
Sometimes I think it's easier to focus on the language phonetically. I guess my question involves all language learning. How advantageous is it to focus on sound rather than the words themselves? (I'm not a linguist so I don't know the lingo, but I think I'd be correct in saying, "acoustic vs. semantic"?) Logically you need a combination of both, but I'm curious to hear when it's advantageous to favor one over the other. I'd like to hear your comments and experiences! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6440 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 2 of 10 24 April 2011 at 9:21pm | IP Logged |
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You have to learn how to pronounce them as well as what they mean. One or the other is pointless. Finer detail, such as nuanced meaning can, of course, be left until you have a better command of the language, as that is the sort of thing that is best picked up in context anyway. Saying that, it's essential to get the pronounciation correct, so I certainly would say that learning the meaning and not the pronounciation is pointless, but learning to recognise the word and pronounce it perfectly buy not knowing nuanced meaning is preferable.
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| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 3 of 10 25 April 2011 at 2:02am | IP Logged |
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I think especially with French it can indeed be helpful to work from audio alone for a while, until you feel your pronunciation is getting solid, and only then move to written sources. This might seem frustrating since written French is so (comparatively) easy for English-speakers to understand, but due to the orthographical differences between French and English, I think it could be really helpful. I wish I'd started learning French this way!
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| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 4 of 10 25 April 2011 at 10:31am | IP Logged |
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Declan 1991, I'm not anywhere near the level of nuance (lol). I think it's a worthwhile experiment to forget reading for a time (maybe a few months). It would certainly hone listening skills. Since pronunciation is more of a problem for Eng./French learners than reading, it makes sense work out this deficit.
hi jinx, Yes. I have to remind myself, suffire and suffice look the same but to hear them spoken you wouldn't think they were. My problem is that there's a lot more reading material for my level than there is audio. I tried Litterature audio.com and couldn't find anything. The best thing I have for now is still my old Assimil book. There the sentences are slow enough that I can single out the words -- Well, come to think of it French has so many liaisons that it's probably better to pick out sections of speech and learn them that way.... Edited by Sunja on 25 April 2011 at 1:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6440 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 5 of 10 26 April 2011 at 12:44am | IP Logged |
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I think I misunderstood what you meant. I do agree, that focus on pronounciation in French is absolutely vital. It's easy to get carried away by all these similar words (that are faux amis as often as not) and forget that you're not going to understand them in speech, nor be able to say them without practice (sense d'humour classic example). That said, I wouldn't encourage totally ignoring spelling, you get used to it after a while, and it's not totally impossible to pronounce French words from sight (but going the other way is next to impossible). You might as well get used to that sooner rather than later.
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 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 26 April 2011 at 1:10am | IP Logged |
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I think there are several possibilities here. If faced with a new language one of the first things you should do is to learn the sound system, and provided that you can find sources where you know which sounds are intended you can gain much from listening specifically for the sounds without caring for the semantics - for instance: knowledge about the precise degree of opening of the vowels (nasalized as well as non-nasalized) only demands that you hear a lot of words exemplifying the French vowels, you don't have to know the meaning of each and every word.
Listening for syllables/words/phrases without caring too much about the meaning is also a valuable activity - but it demands more knowledge about the structure of the language than listening for single sounds. I have used it as a preparation for understanding languages where I have had very little exposure. In the end it is clear that you must be able to combine the sounds and get a meaning (and to produce something that yields a meaning), but the acquisition of words, grammar and pronunciation rules doesn't have to be present in everything you do - often it is more effective to decide precisely what you want to accomplish with a certain activity and then accept that you can't cover everything else too. Edited by Iversen on 26 April 2011 at 9:16am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| soldat Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5067 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Tamil, English* | Message 7 of 10 26 April 2011 at 2:43am | IP Logged |
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Hi everyone. Not sure if this is in the right place but...
If one is fluent in English and Persian, is it easy to learn Urdu? I know that Urdu has a lot of Persian vocabulary but the grammar is different. If I know English and Persian, would I be able to "pick up" Urdu/Hindi simply by watching Bollywood movies, for example? Is it easier to learn Urdu after knowledge of these two languages or is the relationship similar to learning French after just knowing English? Both English and French share a lot of vocab but you can't just "pick up" French by watching French movies. Thanks in advance. EDIT: I tried to make a new topic, but this post, which was supposed to be a new topic, is for some reason in an unrelated thread. Could a moderator please move this to it's own thread? Thanks. Edited by soldat on 26 April 2011 at 2:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Abrown Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4994 days ago 12 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 8 of 10 26 April 2011 at 8:33am | IP Logged |
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When I was first learning Spanish I noticed that when I was talking with a native speaker they had a little difficulty understanding me because I had an accent (or lack thereof - it sounded like English pronunciation of words in Spanish). Luckily, they didn't even have to tell me, I just noticed as they seemed like they were focusing harder or repeating what I was saying to make sense of it. I had the same problem (and still do), I don't recognize words that I know.
What has helped considerably is a) reading aloud with accent and all b) put a lot of emphasis on correct pronunciation c) when thinking in French, think with correct pronunciation. I have noticed that especially with cognates there is a huge tendency to pronounce the word without an accent. Building a habit of pronouncing it correctly will fix this over time. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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