18 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3
tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5248 days ago
1349 posts - 2292 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 17 of 18 16 July 2010 at 11:21am | IP Logged |
anamsc wrote:
| To give a personal example, I learned Catalan almost entirely by listening. Even though I knew going into it that there are two different 'o' sounds and two different 'e' sounds, even now I cannot distinguish them. |
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I have the same problem with Catalan.
1 person has voted this message useful
| ibraheem
Groupie
United States
Joined 5160 days ago
84 posts - 106 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Russian, Mandarin
| Message 18 of 18 16 July 2010 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
ibraheem wrote:
One of the first things on a language course are usually generalized Pronunciation lessons.
After spending so much time learning and relearning pronunciations rules for my target languages I don't think it was worth spending as much time on it.
After all when you learn your native language there are no pronunciation lessons. You learn pronunciation by hearing words, using words, making mistakes, learning new words on their own.
I think I will skip the pronunciation lessons for the most part and learn to pronounce words on their own in my target language. |
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The problem with these is that they tell you everything in one go. We aren't expected to read an entire grammar book or an entire dictionary before we start taking lessons, so why are we expected to learn the entire sound-system in one go?
A better strategy would be to introduce the phonetic features chapter-by-chapter, as they arise -- just like they do with vocabulary and grammar.
In fact, some parts of the sound system or the orthography are grammatical in their nature anyway*, so it makes sense to explain them in conjuction with the grammar.
(* For example -- stress marking in Spanish. Stress falls on the final syllable, except when the final syllable ends in a vowel, S or N (or otherwise marked with an acute accent. Why S and N? Because the majority of words ending in S are either plurals or second-person-singular verbs, and the majority of words ending in N are third-person-plural verbs. These endings don't take stress, and the orthography developed to make the most common words easy to write, even if it makes words like "alemán" harder to write.) |
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For the most part I would agree.
1 person has voted this message useful
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Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages
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