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Acquisition of grammar - charlmartell | ||
Tags: Learning Technique/Method | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5867 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 28 04 July 2008 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Charlmartell
I have an interest (in the future) of learning Hungarian. Would it be possible for you to create an MT style course (you must contact Hodder first) If you are interested in the method, go to this website (Michel Thomas forum) TEL 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cage Diglot aka a.ardaschira, Athena, Michael Thomas Senior Member United States Joined 6411 days ago 382 posts - 393 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 10 of 28 04 July 2008 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There is an FSI program in Hungarian with both extensive audio and text. Something lighter weight like MT would probably be wise to use first though.
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| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6031 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 11 of 28 05 July 2008 at 8:42am | IP Logged | |||||
I couldn't possibly do this for several reasons. I'd have to really investigate his own, older courses to see what he really did. But I already know all those languages well, so couldn't evaluate them properly. I downloaded the Mandarin one, his recipe only, but haven't got very far into it yet as thinking how to get this here grammar thread going in a more satisfactory way is taking up so much of my spare time and thought. I'm much better at face to face when feedback is instantaneous. Oops, eyes glazing over, better change my approach. And, while my knowledge of Hungarian grammar is quite good, my vocabulary still leaves much to be desired and I understand far more than I can say. So I'd much rather spend time on reading and improving vocabulary than trying to explain the basics of Hungarian usage to an anonymous, unseen and unheard audience. I shall investigate the Michel Thomas forum though, and try out the Russian course, to see how he, or rather his disciple, tackles verbs. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5867 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 12 of 28 05 July 2008 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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Also I would reccommend buying and reading "Michel Thomas: The learning revolution" which outlines his methods.
TEL 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6031 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 28 05 July 2008 at 10:50am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks, I shall, when I get the time.
That's just it. It was the sheer amount of technical jargon that made me find a different way of coping. It is precisely because of ancient Greek that I had a real breakthrough in language learning. I started ancient Greek with Athenaze, which I thought was great because, instead of loose sentences, most of them totally unmemorably boring, it features a real story. Maybe not wildly exciting nor convincing - the portrayal of the children e.g. is rather feeble. But it's brilliant for getting you to read ancient Greek without having to rely on painstakingly translating it first into English so as to get the meaning. Or not, as the case may be. The real problem with languages in general is not grammar, but vocabulary. A minimum of well understood grammar gets you a long way provided you know plenty of words and expressions. The same goes for Latin and ancient Greek but there is an additional problem here: seemingly arbitrary word-order. Because of all those morphological forms (cases) that always tell us who does what to whom and what belongs with what: if for instance you come across a feminine article plural dative you know that it either stands alone and is therefore a pronoun (to/for these/those/the others) or refers to some later on appearing feminine gender noun. We must therefore learn to read sentences from beginning to end, right from the word go. If we start off, like we're usually told, with analysing the sentence gramatically Find the main clause, its verb, then the subject, then the different objects ...... then we not only never learn to read fluently, but we kill the poor language stone dead into the bargain. There is a reason for that seemingly random order, a stylistic one, adding something special, shade of meaning, rhythm, Greek/Latin flavour. People ooh and aah over "CLASSICAL GREEK, so much better in the original then in translation, only use real Greek for learning the language, never fake, made up Greek." All very nice in theory, but why do they then insist on dissecting and translating the now nicely re-ordered (according to our mediculously pedantic way), castrated Greek into atrociously stilted English thereby robbing both languages of all value. To prove that the grammar has been understood. And what about the essence of the language itself? Greek, when handled properly, is not that difficult at all, despite those weird-assed verbs as someone once called them. He was right, but figuring them out, for passive understanding at least, is not that difficult. It's just a shame there is no decent audio, none that makes real sense anyway. But plenty of bilingual stuff, though here again, the English version reflects the basic meaning of the Greek only, none of its flavour. Edited by charlmartell on 05 July 2008 at 10:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6655 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 14 of 28 05 July 2008 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What's Athenaze? A story, or a course that you used? Ancient/Classical Greek is a language I've wanted to learn for years, and one of the things I considered using was a bilingual text of "Anabasis." Basically, your method is using the text as your main resource, and after you have "extracted" the grammar, check it with a reference grammar?
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| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 5935 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 15 of 28 06 July 2008 at 2:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Another method similar to Athenaze would be Thrasymachus. In fact, I do find it superior (I have both books), since the stories in Thrasymachus are more interesting (designed to entertain British schoolboys) and the grammar is n't as explicit, they do give you the declension tables, but none of the ridiculous "rules".
Thrasymachus could be a bit harder to use though; the vocabulary is all stuck at the back, and some vocab items are in the main glossary at the end rather than in the chapter vocabularies. Have you also tried Lingua Latina? That is an even better example of complete implicit grammatical instruction. What I'd be interested in is learning without the aid of such works though. Please continue your posts, I'd like very much to know how you applied what you found in Athenaze to other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6031 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 16 of 28 06 July 2008 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Athenaze is a text-book in 2 volumes. Volume 1 and part of 2 are the fictional story of a Greek family during the times of Pericles, just before the Peloponnesian war. It's not a bilingual text as the text itself is Greek only, preceded by vocabulary that is deemed necessary to be learnt. Less important words or not yet introduced grammatical items are glossed directly below each paragraph. If one wants to check comprehension of the text one can get the teacher's handbook which gives the translation of the texts (with supplementary notes) and the answers to the exercises. As well as trying to teach us to read Greek each chapter includes a section with background information about all sorts of things Greek. I don't know the Trasymachus course so I can't compare, but of all the Greek "primers" I've come across, to my mind this Athenaze is, despite its flaws, by far the best. Followed by Assimil, but that is available in French only. I personally would not recommend using a bilingual text of the Anabasis as starters. It would be very frustrating I think, listening-reading is difficult for most of us, but reading-reading without the benefit of sound makes it doubly painful. Your blog says you're interested in religion/philosophy, some koine in parallel/interlinear might be more approachable, but even here a foundation of basic Greek would help a lot. I think Learn New Testament Greek by John H. Dobson is an excellent introduction, as long as one doesn't object to too explicit, exclusively Christian bible texts. I am not religious, not anti either, so it didn't bother me at all. What did bother me was the absence of diacritics that help with pronunciation and stress or pitch. To make something sound right or wrong I must be able to read it, but without those written markers I can't. The new edition apparently is using diacritical marks, which makes the book very good indeed. As long as one doesn't want too much theory presented the "proven" old-fashioned way. Grammar is introduced as needed, in easy to understand, digestible and re-usable portions which allow us to develop a feel for the language, provided we use our imagination to ensure words and structures sound like they actually mean whatever they are supposed to mean. His book is not about grammar analysis but about reading for meaning.
Not really. I look at the grammar section for forms or constructions I don't understand, look for more examples, usually given in the exercises and then try to make the rule more 'user-friendly' if it is too abstract for my taste. And when, in a text outside of my course book, I come across a form or structure that seems strange, I try to figure it out as best I can and then check with the experts in a reference grammar. I like grammar, provided it is practical and down-to-earth with good, meaningful examples and not intellectual and abstract. I know all the high-faluting terminology, 7 years of Latin in a very selective secondary school made sure of that. But I find that those terms hinder rather than foster learning. I've already mentioned this before, infinitive yes, epexegetical infinitive no, genitive yes, appositional genitive no etc. Unless you're really into linguistics, keep the superfluous jargon at arm's length and concentrate on the essential, the language as it's used, not as it's described. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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