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Advice on Spanish and French/German/Por.. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6813 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 91 08 September 2012 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes on all counts, except that the "hybrid" also contains words from other languages (read more about it here). I consider myself a native speaker, despite having a rather poor vocabulary in Spanish (that's a topic for a whole different thread!). Edited by patuco on 08 September 2012 at 8:04pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6395 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 18 of 91 08 September 2012 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And as far as I understand, you won't even really need to be able to say this sort of things in any new language you may want to start. And passively it's even easier to understand this sort of texts. Actually, the vocab of YOUR field is supposed to be one of the easiest spheres. The basic words from other fields, now that is where the fun starts :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| justonelanguage Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4260 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 19 of 91 09 September 2012 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The vocab of my field (medicine) is supposed to be one of the easiest spheres? What is a "sphere"? I don't understand the sentence. Regardless, it is NOT easy remembering the vocab in medicine, there are a LOT of words and terms to know. Head and neck for anatomy was killer...are you a physician/medical student?
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6395 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 20 of 91 09 September 2012 at 3:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Nope, just interested. I love using the "_______ for doctors" kind of textbooks.
The vocab related to one's own field of work is considered to be something relatively easy, according to Gunnemark for example. This supposedly requires a smaller vocabulary than reading fiction. A Finnish example from google to show you how lucky you are with Spanish: Useimmiten eturistisiteen repeämä pyritään hoitamaan leikkaamalla, mutta ei aina. ...look at it. try to understand ANYTHING:) *fanfares* translation: In most cases, it is endeavoured to treat a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament by performing an operation, but not always. Finnish uses the native terms for words like anterior ("front"), rupture/tear etc. The only loan word here is risti, from the Slavic krest 'cross'. Not a single word from Latin here. Compared to that, Spanish is crystal clear, especially when it comes to understanding. My main point was that the vocabulary is not difficult... there's just a lot of it. But note that your examples use quite simple grammar - basically just participles and the word 'to be', the rest are just nounsnounsnouns. How are you currently learning the vocabulary? Try something like Anki, this will make it easier to revise it systematically. Sounds like your tools aren't efficient enough. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| justonelanguage Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4260 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 21 of 91 09 September 2012 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Um, I actually don't spend much time with Spanish anymore. Like 30 minutes a day reading/speaking, etc. However, languages are MUCH easier for me than medicine.
Trust me, I'm good at memorizing. For the little amount of time I spend on Spanish, I know a LOT and have maintained a LOT of vocab. Yeah, what you said about "the vocab related to one's own field of work is considered to be something relatively easy" is NOT true for medicine. It is HARD. If you think it's so easy, look at First Aid for Step One (the first medical board exam that I'm studying for). The test is 8 hours long and the main review book (there are several books to study but this is the main one) is over 500 pages. Here is just one bug. Pseudomonas aeruginosa: associated with wound and burn infections. Pneumonia, Sepsis, External Otitis, UTI, Drug use, and Diabetic osteomylitis characterize it. Produces a blue-green pigment and has a grapelike odor. Treatment includes Aminoglycoside + extended-spectrum penicillin. It's an aerobic bug. Lyme disease: Caused by borrelia burgdorferi, transmitted by ticks. There are 3 stages of lyme disease: Stage 1: erythema migrans. Stage 2: neurologic (Bell's palsy) and cardiac (AV nodal block) manifestations. Stage 3: Chronic monoarthritis, and migratory polyarthritis. Tx: Doxycycline, ceftriaxone. There are literally HUNDREDS of diseases that I have to know and each disease has a bunch of symptoms, treatment modalities, etc. The vaunted MCAT (test we need to take to get into med school) is like 4 hours long and is CHILDS PLAY compared to the medical licensing boards. The MCAT is more critical thinking (easier) than knowing vast sums of information. And doing well on the MCAT is very tough; only about 44% of applicants to MD schools are accepted each year. That means that if 100 peeps apply in a cycle...only 44 get accepted! Since the average person applies to about 12 schools, there is under a 4% change of being accepted by an individual school. And finishing med school is much harder than getting accepted. It's going to hurt people's feelings, but medicine is harder than probably every other career out there. The only thing harder is probably the MD/PhD programs that exist or some JD/MD programs. Finally, I don't need help learning Spanish. This thread was just to see how much people improved when living abroad from 1,5, and 10 years.
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| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4348 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 22 of 91 09 September 2012 at 6:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
So I guess your tiresome lists of Spanish medical terms and reiterations of how complicated it all is were just for the purpose of self-aggrandizement. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6701 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 23 of 91 09 September 2012 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Let's not confuse two things: learning about your field of work (I don't think no one would ever argue medicine is not difficult!) and learning foreign language vocab when you already know the field (hence, you know vocab in your mother tongue, and in the case of medicine usually in Latin, too).
For sure it is very difficult to memorize hundreds of diseases with symptoms, treatment modalities etc. However, if you've learned it, it shouldn't be all that difficult to learn the vocabulary in your target language, especially if it's e.g. Spanish as compared to e.g. Finnish. I have no medical background whatsoever, and in the text quoted above there aren't actually that many vocabulary items that are new to me: Pseudomonas aeruginosa, External Otitis, UTI, Diabetic osteomylitis, Aminoglycoside. If I knew these terms in my native language and Latin, I could learn them easily in English (or I would actually know them already, at least passively - e.g. aminoglikozyd is the Polish term for aminoglycoside). Edited by Julie on 09 September 2012 at 10:22am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6813 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 91 09 September 2012 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I know how you've attained the figure of <4% but I don't think that it's strictly accurate as there are too many variables.
This is a statement that I've come to expect, since I've yet to meet a doctor who doesn't think that his or her profession is the hardest in the world. I have great respect for (most!) doctors and I'm sure that most study a great deal and undergo rigorous testing to both enter and succeed in medical school, but I think that it depends on how you define "hard" (conceptually difficult, memorisation of lots of facts, etc). Not having gone to medical school myself, I obviously cannot comment on how hard it was to enter or successfully qualify, but, conversely, I assume that most doctors have not also enrolled in, say, postgraduate programs in physics, which, if memory serves me correctly, was rather tricky.
Whilst most might agree with Gala's post above, it could be that people might have misunderstood this given the title of the thread and the first sentence of the opening post. To answer your question directly, it would probably be safe to assume that the longer one spends in a country, the greater the improvement seen in one's language, given that the learner is actively trying to improve, rather than simply trying to get by in English (or whatever other language). I suppose that you want concrete examples, so I will defer to other members of the forum who might have spent some time living abroad and can answer your question from personal experience. Edited by patuco on 09 September 2012 at 1:11pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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