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Popular misconceptions about languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5901 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes  4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 89 of 100 03 March 2011 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||
These figures are a bit deceptive. 60% of total English vocabulary may be Latin-based, but most of this consists of scientific, legal and scholarly terminology--which, incidentally, is Latin-based in most European languages regardless of origin, due to Latin having been the scholarly language for centuries. However, the vast majority of the most common words are of Germanic origin--all pronouns and articles, all numbers, virtually all everyday prepositions, most basic colors, and considerable portion of your most essential verbs (be, do, have, give, get, take, make, come, go, walk, run, see, hear, eat, drink, cook, sleep, talk, read, write, live, die, feel, tell, think, etc.) most of your external body parts (head, hand, foot, finger, toe, eye, nose, ear, hair, leg, arm, etc.) and various everyday objects (book, shoe, cup, shirt, hat, earth, sky, water, ground, tree, leaf, food, bread, apple, pot, pan, knife, lock, key, house, door, floor, bed, etc.) As far as grammar goes--remember that German and Germanic are not synonymous (in German itself, German=Deutsch while Germanic=Germanisch), and that among Germanic languages, German's grammar is unusually conservative--only Icelandic (and Faroese?) is more so. Honestly, I'd say that as far as grammar goes, English is pretty solidly Germanic. In addition to my native English, I myself have studied German and Danish, and have recently started taking a peek at French, and I really find it quite surprising how different the grammar of this language "feels" from that of the other three. And many of the similarities they do have are often due to French's own not-insubstantial Germanic influence--remember that this languages is, after all, named after the Franks, who themselves spoke a Germanic language. This often has the strange effect that one will get a word in English (or German or Danish, for that matter), which is a loanword from French, but which French itself loaned from an old Germanic word, which in turn has a descendant in modern English (or German or Danish). Case in point: the word "garden" is derived from the French "Jardin". It rather surprised me to discover this, as this is a very old Germanic word, with cognates in all other Germanic languages (German "Garten", Dutch "gaarden", Danish "gård"); however, the Anglo-Saxon derived word is actually "yard" (from "ġeard", g typically manifesting as a y-sound before e and i), "garden" being a loanword from French, and the French word, in turn, being a loanword from Frankish. In short, English is not a Romance language, nor is it a Romance-Germanic mixture, as is often popularly said; it's a Germanic language which, for historical languages, happens to have a lot of Fremch/Latin-derived loanwords. But lots of languages are rich in loanwords, and we don't treat them as though they were anything out of the ordinary simply for that reason. I think the popularity of this idea may in a large part be due to the fact that French and Spanish are very commonly taught languages in English-speaking countries, and it's natural for learners to pick up on similarities between the language they're studying and their native language. Similarly, I've met countless people who've taken a German class or two in high school or at their university, and have remarked that the language is "just like English" (also not really true; they've diverged quite a bit in the last millennium or two). I suppose one's perception of one's own language is very much dependent on what one has to compare it with. Edited by Rameau on 03 March 2011 at 1:24pm 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TheMatthias Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6040 days ago 105 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 90 of 100 03 March 2011 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I could not have put it any better then Rameau did!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4828 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 91 of 100 03 March 2011 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I will admit of myself that I was surprised so many years ago when I learned that Romanian was a Romance language. It does make sense, though, because it's even in the name. To my knowledge, I have never heard the language, so that might be interesting.
And drudging up an old part of the thread (I read this all at one time instead of the many months it took to build it), but I have noticed some anti-American sentiments on this board. As I am one and an educated one, I find the idea that myself and all my countrymen are ignorant and uncouth to be very offensive. It is made more offensive by the fact that I would not have expected it here in a place that celebrates the learning and efforts of all its participants. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TheMatthias Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6040 days ago 105 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 92 of 100 04 March 2011 at 1:18am | IP Logged | ||
I agree with this statement. It seems that when it comes to language learning most people have a slight or sometimes strong anti-american sentiment. But I just learn to ignore it and move on... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5247 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 93 of 100 04 March 2011 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't think there are more anti-American sentiments among the members of this forum than among the general public. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5662 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French | Message 94 of 100 09 April 2011 at 6:25am | IP Logged | ||
Certainly the second language acquisition is one of the biggest challenges for anyone, specially if it's very different from your native tongue. One of the reasons is that it's your first foreign language and you're still not aware of what you need to learn a foreign language and more often than not, you also don't have too much confidence. When you get to your third language, it will also NOT necessarily become easier to assimilate things; that really depends on your "language maturity". Take for example someone being raised bilingual or even trilingual. They learn them by hearing their parents speak to them, so it's all instinctively and they're simply not aware of all the grammatical structures, cases, etc, that's not something that is really digested while you're learning it. Again, when this same trilingual person tries to acquire another language, learning through books and taking classes, they usually have difficulties just the same as everyone. Now a different example: a trilingual person, who was raised monolingual and has studied two other languages from different families on their own, with a lot of self study. This person has already succeeded with learning foreign languages and he/she knows structures, (eventually) cases and he/she has experience with finding diferences, and he/she knows what it takes to learn, as the case may be, another language. So my conclusion is: The second foreign language isn't always easier for everyone, but it can be, that will depend on how ready you are, again, on your "language maturity". In my experience, it was just when I started working on my third foreign language that I started becoming a true polyglot. My first foreign language (English) was learned pretty much instinctively, without digesting too much grammar and structures, and then my second one (German) was so hard for me that I got totally demotivated and gave up on it many times, after some time I got back to studying it seriously and managed to learn it. So, on my third foreign language it was also much easier, because all the difficulties I experienced with German, the cases, the different structures and all the new stuff I ended up managing it, which gave me a lot of confidence. At this stage now, I don't fear any language, as hard as it may be. I feel like I have experience with languages of different groups and I'm mentally prepared for diversity. I know that even if I happen to see something really new and exotic, I will manage to learn it. This is also something to be taken in account, besides language expertise, the confidence also plays a big role here. Edited by koba on 09 April 2011 at 6:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5662 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French | Message 95 of 100 09 April 2011 at 6:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Now two misconceptions I hear a lot:
"English is one of the most unexpressible languages" "Russian is specifically difficult because it uses the Cyrillic Alphabet" (and the same for languages with different scripts) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6173 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 96 of 100 09 April 2011 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||
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One misconception that I come across often is that Mandarin is easy...but I hear it from people on this forum not from laymen. Edited by newyorkeric on 09 April 2011 at 11:35am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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