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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5534 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes  Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 9 of 31 11 September 2010 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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At first I thought too that this is nonsense topic and that native users are masters extraordinaire
with lightning fast language skills, but then it got me thinking. There probably aren't any difficulties in reading or listening and understanding, but for example in Estonian there are grammatical constructions which can bring the speech of regular native speaker to screeching halt when they actually have to figure out the correct forms for some words. There are several things that make you think, for example stuff like forming short illatives. Sometimes you start uttering the word and then stop in mid sentence, wondering whether there is such a form for that particular word or if there is, then how is it formed. Illative for maja (house) is majasse (generally not used, short form is preferred), short illative is majja, illative for pural is majadesse but short illative for plural is... what? When you ask people on the street they probably don't know, unless they've majored in Estonian. Majisse? Majuisse? Nope. Correct form is majusse, but most native speakers have to look it up model word first and derive from that. Such forms are rarely used but nevertheless, they exist and are basically formed according to same rules as other similar words but certain combinations just are not as intuitive as others. Therefore people tend to avoid them to the point they may claim such forms cannot be formed at all. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 10 of 31 11 September 2010 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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In a native speaker, the language and, if literate, writing has been internalized. This is like anything in life. When
you start studying calculus, you have to think a bit about how to integrate 3x^5-1/x+cos(x). After a while of seeing calculus problems, you can do this in your head straightaway: 0.5x^6-ln(x)+sin(x). Likewise, with languages, the patterns become so engrained that you can freely conjugate and decline and agglutinate and set up syntax just on the basis of it "feeling right." For you to acquire that feeling, you just need to get massive exposure: radio programs and TV programs, movies, novels, short stories, magazine articles, internet blogs, newspapers, and lots of practice conversing with others. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Envinyatar Diglot Senior Member Guatemala Joined 5537 days ago 147 posts - 240 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 11 of 31 11 September 2010 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
Those languages are difficult for you, not for their native speakers. I don't think about tenses, I just speak Spanish and the right tenses and the right sounds always come. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jasoninchina Senior Member China Joined 5232 days ago 221 posts - 306 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Italian | Message 12 of 31 12 September 2010 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I've noticed that my Chinese teacher can just glance at a sentence of Chinese and know exactly what it says, whereas I have to actually read it all the way through word by word. It would seem that the native speakers of any language have such a mastery over it that it really doesn't matter what script or grammar is employed.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lanni Senior Member China Joined 6264 days ago 102 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English | Message 13 of 31 12 September 2010 at 8:16am | IP Logged | ||
It is no mystery. I once watched A Chinese teenager read a martial-art novel page by page, not line by line or paragraph by paragraph. He just flipped the thick paperback,and could tell what happened to the main characters. It is all about the matter of familiarity. However, when I asked him how about reading his schoolbooks, he said he would not read in such a relaxed style, it would take him much more time reading every page and at the same time not sure if he could make out everything in his physics textbook. His honest and innocent tone amused me. I think the latter case might have something to do with psychology. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 14 of 31 13 September 2010 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Early on with German, I used to wonder how they remembered which of the three genders to use. But they internalise it over time.
Mastering genders, Chinese characters etc. is probably a form of pattern recognition. And found in many areas of life, not just languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gosia Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 5321 days ago 6 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Polish*, English | Message 15 of 31 27 October 2010 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
This is a very interesting question, indeed. I am Polish native speaker but while speaking Polish sometimes I do have a problem with declination of nouns (we have 7 cases in Polish) or conjugation of verbs. So it takes some time to figure out how the word should look/sound like. I speak fast and then I stop for a second (or a few seconds ;p) to think the declination over and often correct myself. And I can see that many people around do the same. We are used to asking one another "how it should be said"? I also know that many people accent words in a wrong way but nobody cares about it actually. Wrong accent doesn't change a meaning of a word like it happens in English (for example: desert and dessert). No problem with tenses in Polish, though. Probably because we have only 3 tenses;p 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 16 of 31 27 October 2010 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I read Chinese, I don't read the individual words, one by one. I scan just like English, although not as fast.
Not trying to say I have a native level ability, but just pointing out that this level (in any language) isn't reserved for natives only and is really no big mystery. You'll get there if you work hard enough. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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