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Passive knowledge Only | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5856 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 1 of 30 20 May 2010 at 11:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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Are there a lot of people out there who only want to have a passive knowledge of a given language? I realized the other day that it might be waste of time learning how to pronounce a language perfectly if all I'm ever going to do is read books written in it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Smart Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5153 days ago 352 posts - 398 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French Studies: German | Message 2 of 30 20 May 2010 at 11:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah there is definitely people like that. Especially for languages the individual does not have enough interest to actively learn.
I'm not exactly sure which languages i will only choose to obtain passive knowledge of :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6517 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 3 of 30 20 May 2010 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are definitely languages which I like to be able to read, but not intend to learn to write or speak. But they are all related to at least one language I know well - otherwise I would have to invest so much time in learning how to read them that I just as well could learn to write them too. For instance I can to some extent read Sardic and Romantsch, but I have not planned to learn to use them. This also applies to Old French and Occitan, with the difference that I actually have followed courses in them and understand them fairly well. But without Modern French and Catalan to help my memory I would have problems. Latin is a good example of a language which you have to learn properly to understand it, and if you dont' use it and have learnt it only as a passive language then your skills just dissipate before your very eyes if you don't read it on a regular basis. I have been through that, and when I decided to relearn Latin I deliberately set myself the task of making it active, because I figured that this would help me to keep it alive even though I don't have time to read it daily.
Edited by Iversen on 20 May 2010 at 12:22pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5483 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 30 20 May 2010 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are languages where to varying degrees the script is quite independent of the pronunciation. A good example is, of course, Mandarin - where the same script is used quite broadly across china but with very different sounds in different regions. It is entirely possible, then, to become passively fluent in Chinese by pronouncing the script in your own language. In fact, there are even textbooks that teach you the script with English translations without teaching you any chinese pronunciation at all.
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| theallstar Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5616 days ago 81 posts - 85 votes Studies: Japanese, Esperanto | Message 5 of 30 20 May 2010 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Splog, would you be able to point us in the direction of some of these books? I've looked at many Chinese textbooks and I've never seen one like this. Edited by theallstar on 20 May 2010 at 2:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5483 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 30 20 May 2010 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
I was thinking particularly of Heisig's "Remembering the Hanzi" which is almost 400 pages of chinese script with English translations, and any thoughts of pronunciation purposefully relegated to the indices at the back of the book. Heisig says he wants you to affix "english words to chinese characters" since pronunciations in chinese are dialect specific whereas meanings are not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5795 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 7 of 30 20 May 2010 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think you're talking about reading fluency here, so you shouldn't have used the word passive, since a passive knowledge also include listening skills, and thus some kind of phonemic awareness of your target language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6757 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 8 of 30 20 May 2010 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I can imagine acquiring just the reading skills in a language for work needs. I can imagine doing it with a language in which I only wanted to read texts written in the formal register, e.g., works of history, philosophy, religion, science, etc. I will not do it with a modern language if I plan to read fiction in it.
I had been reading for a while in German, but then recently I went through a burst of watching German movies. Then I started on another novel, and what I found is that whenever I ran into an expression I had previously heard in a movie my whole perception of the corresponding part of the dialog was just different. I have no doubt that if you read and listen, you get more out of reading than if you just read. Adding writing and speaking should enhance the reading experience further. Edited by frenkeld on 21 May 2010 at 1:45am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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