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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5896 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes  5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 10 16 December 2010 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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(This could probably go in the forum on learning strategies, but it's more of a general piece of language-learning advice, as opposed to a specific "method".)
I've studied Russian for several years, and although as a learner I have extensive knowledge of the language, I've recently felt as though I've hit a wall on my journey to fluency. I'm already at a very advanced level - I can certainly hold my own in any discussion on just about any topic - but I'm still missing those however many thousand words that would allow me to use the language without dictionaries and requests for repetition. In my eagerness to fill that knowledge gap, I've tried to cram as many words into my head as possible, in as quick a manner as possible. I would, for instance, pull up an article online, go through it with a dictionary, and then copy-paste the new phrases into Anki. I found that I could easily add 50+ new words (contained in phrases) per day to an Anki deck, and upon subsequent reviews, I could even recall and reproduce the words fairly easily. Nonetheless, if I allowed a couple of weeks to pass, or if I came across the word in a new context, I would find myself stumbling and struggling all over again. I decided to rethink my learning method. Granted, many words were sticking, but I never left my lessons feeling as though I really "knew" the new words. And then I came across splog's "Spiral Method" thread. I won't go into the whole method (it was actually more of a general strategy like this, rather than a specific method of study) , but one particular point hit me hardest: Of all the questions I could ask when learning a word - What? When? Where? Why? How? Who? - I have only been asking "What?" I've found that asking "Why?" is just as important as asking "What?" Asking "What?" will tell you, for instance, that испытание means "test" or "trial", and indeed, if you think hard enough about it, you'll probably be able to arrive at its translation when you subsequently review it. The problem, however, is that your understanding of "испытание" relies on a flimsy, lonely link to its English analog. My new strategy involves breaking down each word to its component parts, exploring the origins of each part, and seeing how they come together to hint at (or outright explain) the words actual meaning. Example: -испытать = ис+пытать -"Пытать" actually means "to torture" -If I google "пытать этимология" (" " etymology), I find that the word's ancient Slavic origin is related to words meaning "to ask" and "to request". -The prefix из- here signifies "to a great degree". -Related words with the пыт- root include пытаться (to try; a reflexive verb) and попытка (attempt; a noun with a prefix generally meaning "a little") From here, I can intuitively trace the evolution of the word with very little effort. Thousands of years ago there was an ancient Slavic word meaning "to ask", and that formed the basis of the modern Russian word for "to torture". From there, the root word was modified to express a few different ideas. One route has you turn that into a reflexive verb and you get a word that means "to try", or literally, "to torture oneself". Another route, the one that leads to испытание, has you add a prefix to that root, and you get a verb that literally means "to torture to a great degree". From there, it's a tiny leap to the actual, modern meaning of "to test thoroughly". Lately, I've been crawling through articles one-by-one, word-by-word, stopping at each unknown word and examining it until I understand it. It's a slower moving process than previous methods, but everything sticks. More importantly, "knowing" a word now means much more to me than simply being able to recall its English analog: Knowing a word means understanding why it is the way it is. From a cognitive standpoint, asking "Why?" creates more links between the native and target word. Instead of just having "испытать" <--> "to test" in my mind, I now have something like this: испытать <--> ис + пытать ис <--> to a great degree (the prefix has other meanings, by the way) пытать <--> torture + -пыт- пыт- <--> "to ask" + "to request" + ancient Latin root "putare" Instead of being forced to link two isolated words, I now have an entire network of support for each word's meaning, going right back to the word's origins. Anyways, I hope you'll make of this what you will. As for me, it's been a breakthrough. Edited by chelovek on 16 December 2010 at 9:27pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5896 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 10 16 December 2010 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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By the way, it's not always necessary to trace a word to its original source. The important thing is just to understand the word's root meaning within the target language. Sometimes you'll need to go beyond the target language, and sometimes you won't.
For instance, лавочка (small bench) doesn't really have a meaningful root in Russian. If you trace it back to its Slavic root, however, you get the word "lawa", the constituent parts of which apparently denote something "flat with legs". On the other hand, knowing that пыт- is distally linked to Latin's putare isn't really necessary at all. Fortunately, Google and the large supply of etymological information available on the internet means it's simply a matter of deciding how much of the paragraph to read. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5478 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 10 17 December 2010 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Excellent. I am really pleased to hear you have found something useful in the Spiral
Method. Just like you, I have found that creating many mental connections to a word, by asking more that just "what?" has a tremendous impact on both understanding at a deeper level, and also remembering that word. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| slymie Tetraglot Groupie China Joined 5037 days ago 81 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English, Macedonian Studies: French, Mandarin, Greek Studies: Shanghainese, Uyghur, Russian | Message 4 of 10 17 December 2010 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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For sure its a great way to remember a word, when applicable - unfortunately sometimes asking "why" will just lead you on a wild goose chase. For instance a learner of English trying to find out the meaning and usage of
"here you go". Where am I going? Or "Sandwich" prefix "sand" Other words with this prefix: Sandbar, Sandy, Sandals. must be something made with sand or used on a beach right? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5478 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 10 17 December 2010 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Excellent example, and it is addressed in the book "Metaphors we Live By" - which I highly recommend. Once you understand why people say "here you go", or "I see what you are coming from with that idea", or "things are looking up these days", etc, it gives you much deeper insight into language use.
Another great example. The history of the word "Sandwich" is a very interesting one. It is precisely these kinds of questions that I am curious about. Finding out the answers is almost always fascinating, and helps the words (and their deeper meanings) stick in my brain and feel like a deeper part of me. I should add, though, that the Spiral Method does not suit everybody. It is particularly aimed at people who are very curious, and have nagging questions in their heads about the language. If you are not always wondering why the language works the way it does, and are able to remember things upon first seeing them, without forgetting, and can combine the things you are learned very flexibly, then I the Spiral Method is probably not going to help you very much. For me, at least, it seems to help, and it seems that the OP above has found value in it too. Edited by Splog on 17 December 2010 at 5:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5190 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 6 of 10 17 December 2010 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's not true that the origin of a word actually points to its meaning. Meaning changes over time. Not only that, but when languages borrow words, they very often gain a different meaning. For instance, French déception means disappointment, not deception, even though this was originally a French word. It's common for a word to equate to several words in another language. When I find that drawing from the knowledge of one language to understand another is useful, I tend to see words' meanings as Venn diagrams -- intersecting circles, where only part of the meaning is common to both words. Sometimes one circle is inside the other because one word has a more general meaning than the other. It's not a matter of seeking the origin of words, it's just a question of being aware that when you say one word means X in English, it's restricted to a very specific context. It could mean X only sometimes, or not quite X or not only X. ------ And congratulations to Sprog for creating a video series that has inspired people! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| slymie Tetraglot Groupie China Joined 5037 days ago 81 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English, Macedonian Studies: French, Mandarin, Greek Studies: Shanghainese, Uyghur, Russian | Message 7 of 10 17 December 2010 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I got curious and did some research : apparently Sandwich comes from a Duke named Sandwich who was lazy and would ask waiters to bring him a piece of meat between two slices of bread so he could eat without putting down his hand of cards. I couldn't find anything for "here you go" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5107 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 8 of 10 17 December 2010 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Chelovek was careful and deliberate when he chose "hints at (or...)". This is true, no matter if everybody sees the connection, and nobody said that the meaning of a word is a simple linear function of its components that has to stay constant through the times, everybody knows it does not. Etymology and morphology can hint at the meaning even when the meaning has shifted or changed into the opposite or whatever the usual well known changes are. The fact that most people, natives or learners, don't care about these hints and don't know about them is a completely different matter. Edited by lingoleng on 17 December 2010 at 7:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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