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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 2 24 April 2008 at 10:45am | IP Logged |
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Professor Arguelles,
You have more than once commented on the helpful feature of the 1950's generation of Linguaphone courses. These courses had the same lesson plan for each unit, allowing you to more easily compare the linguistic features of each language that Linguaphone had a course for. In this vein, I have few questions for the advancing polyglot. 1) How useful do you find it to be to use the same audiobook for multiple languages for listen/reading/shadowing while in the intermediate stage? 2) As a takeoff of question one, what do you think about using widely published and recorded work such as the bible for one who has an interest in such a work? 3) Along the same lines, have you ever used multiple translations of the same work in a single language to round out your understanding of a particularly interesting book? For instance, I have two translations of a book that was originally written in English. One of the translations is quite literal - often word for word - of an author who has a tendency to use words in a figurative, rather than literal way. He also has a tendency to use idioms from a bygone era. For instance, the phrase "Let's get down to brass tacks". I have another translation of the same book that was perhaps a response to the extremely literal translation in which the authors - who weren't professional linguists - had a personal interest in the book. As a labor of love, they created another translation which they felt better captured the metaphorical style, meaning, and intent of the original. My current thinking is to start by pursuing the extremely literal translation first, as I'm quite familiar with the English original. I also have a recording of this translation, which is necessary if I'm to shadow the book. The other translation does seem to use a more natural word order and idioms. I have in at least one place noticed, however, that the translators may have made a grammatical error. E.G., they didn't use say, "se" in a sentence where the original English (and the literary translation) make it clear that one being is giving something to others). Edited by luke on 24 April 2008 at 10:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 2 27 April 2008 at 6:55pm | IP Logged |
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I know I have answered your first question, at least obliquely in passing before, but I will try to go into more detail now. I run into problems when using literature as didactic material because I have an insurmountable and deep-seated aversion to rereading the same story repeatedly. True Great Books certainly stand the test of time and yield new insights and depths with each reading, provided those readings are spaced out at intervals of a year or so. When leading Great Books seminars or otherwise studying a text for analysis, I do of course read it at least twice before the session meets so as to be sure of details. However, when it comes to using a literary text to actively study a language by reading it repeatedly in rapid succession, I soon become bored with it to the degree that my ability to focus on it decreases by several percentage points each time, and in short order the demon of distraction grabs hold of me. For some reason—and I suspect that it is because they contain no inherent interest such as a storyline to begin with—it is much easier for me to remain focused upon didactic materials upon repetition and to extract more and deeper linguistic information from them, and thus I admire those old Linguaphone textbooks for the initial learning stages. Thus, at the intermediate stage, I would prefer to have different texts rather than use the same audiobook for multiple languages, although I suppose I could do so efficiently if I did so at spaced intervals rather than simultaneously.
As to your second point, I think that, provided you regard the Bible as a special text that you read for insight each day anyway, yes, using it with multiple languages would be a great tool for increasing your reading speed in various tongues—which would explain why so many pioneering language manuals have been written by missionaries. As for 3)—I have looked at multiple translations of texts for the purposes of analyzing the content, but no, I do not believe I have ever done this for the purposes of language study. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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