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Help me to have a real “native language" | ||
Tags: Heritage Language | Native Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5642 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 18 14 October 2012 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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As mentioned in my previous in my previous threads, I only have a vocabulary of 9200
for English, as indicated in this thread almost one year ago: any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=29732&PN=1">link. To make matters worse orthography is always a pain for me. Chinese which is my mother tongue is also, unfortunately, having a low vocabulary. Although I have not official tested my Chinese vocabulary, but there are some indicators: 1. I did Chinese vocabulary exercises from a book from China targeted at secondary school children. I only can recognise 70 percent of the words and set phrases in the book and get only 40 percent correct for the exercises, which is a very poor result for an educated “native speaker”. 2. I cannot read technical books (science, technology, banking, economics etc.) in Chinese without frequently referring to a dictionary. My co-workers from China, on the other hand, have no problem with them, despite the fact that they now use more English than Chinese in their daily work. 3. It is difficult for me to enjoy literature works in Chinese whether they are classical or modern. There are often new words which I don’t know or I interpret the meaning incorrectly. The reason why I am bringing up this issue of mine nearly one year later and started a new thread is that I have hit a brick wall for my advance French studies. I have decided to make progress in French after a break of 6 months and hope to obtain a DELF certificate (B2/C1) next year. Hence, I have started to listen to French radio, read French articles( both factual and literature) and try to translate some random articles to French. However, my small vocabulary in my “native languages” has caused unexpected hindrance to my progress. When I am doing L-R or reading a bilingual book (French or other languages with English), I realised that very often, I can make no sense of some words in none of the language! I will then look up in a French/English or French/Chinese dictionary for more information and I do not know neither the English nor the Chinese equivalent. In the end I search the equivalent in a monolingual English or Chinese dictionary to explain what the word or phrase actually means. Translating a text to L2 is definitely a big problem, since I sometimes have no idea or unsure what an uncommonly used word in my L1 (English/Chinese) actually means. These problems I am facing now has indicated one important thing: I need a true native language which have a vocabulary of at least 20000 words, with the ability to understand and produce various forms of register and discuss various topics from science to music. It is only then, I can read, write and understand every topic produced in the language without not being seen as uneducated. It is a shame that I have no native language despite my love for languages! I have identified the languages which I considered to become my proper native language. Each language is characterised by the advantages, disadvantages, my opinions and my reasons of the opinions. English: I have to use it everyday in my work and life. Furthermore, I am comfortable with the vocabulary in many different topics (science, engineering, banking, economics, sociology, mathematics etc.) already. So it seems to be an obvious choice to be L1. However, I hate English literature, no thanks to the teachers, who called my homework a pile of sh’it and offered no help to improve my English. Furthermore, the girl who rejected me in my university days is also a English literature graduate. The relations ended so bad that I considered myself to lose to these jerks if I ever started to study English literature. Another point that make English unattractive to me is the music. I never like any English songs even though I can hear them everyday. Chinese: I can already understand conversations, write pretty well, speak fluently and it is my heritage language. However, to expand my vocabulary in various topics and match up the commonly used vocabulary known to an educated person in China requires immersion in China for quite some time. This is something I have not intended to do, as it does not fit very well with my life plans. Furthermore, I need to learn classical Chinese in order to appreciate ancient poetry, works and novels fluently. This adds more work to the already difficult task. French/German/ Spanish: these are my first foreign languages and I was guided very well by my professors and the advices from this forum. The specific vocabularies are not difficult as they are similar to their English counterparts. The literature is enjoyable as my French/German professor introduced them in an interactive and fun way that I still feel like picking up French/German literature if time permits. This a stark contrast from the experience with English literature teachers. On the other hand, my listening has also improved significantly, and I can understand 70-80% of French radio and 50-60% of German radio. For Spanish, I have studied for a short period of time, quitting it as it interfered with my French. Now that, I am now comfortable with French, I have started to gather Spanish materials and do passive reading. The transfer is easy and I need to focus on the oral aspects. Materials in the advance level for these three languages are plentiful and cover a lot of aspects from literature to computer science. Russian: It is the language that attracted me the most. For unexplained reason, I always loved any Russian things since 5 years old, even though I only got to visit the country 3 years ago. Despite all the difficulties of the language, I enjoy the entire learning progress. I am definitely thinking of working, living and even migrating to Russia in my life plans. Unfortunately, I still have a long way to go: I need to improve my accent, expand my vocabulary and improve my listening which requires some form of immersion. However, the literature fascinates me: my interest in literature, which is killed by English literature teachers, is resurrected in Russian. For this reason, I am willing to spent time on the rare vocabulary used in literature and still stay focus. It is also why I enjoyed Russian songs even though I have problems in understanding them. Like French, Russian advance level materials are plentiful and cover wide aspects. With these in places, Russian is an attractive choice to me to become my native language. Japanese: While it is simpler for me (as I know Chinese), I really do not have much motivation to study except for meeting girls. There are some aspects of Japanese culture which I do not like and they actually hinder my progress, even though like French, materials are plentiful in various subjects. But I might considered it to become my native language, if I can stay in a relation with a Japanese girl long enough. After all the description and explanations on the various languages, I would like to hear the opinion from the forum members. Which language should become my true native language and how I shall proceed on? Please keep in mind that I have a big learning involving the Slavic languages and I might add more languages in the future due to work (Hebrew and Thai especially). Thank you! Edited by QiuJP on 14 October 2012 at 6:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5747 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 18 14 October 2012 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
If I were you, I would feel like the teachers and the girl who dumped me were winning and still wiping my face in the dirt if they were spoiling one of the great literatures of the world for me and negatively influencing my language skills. I'm reminded of something the German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki once said about how the Nazis took away so much from him, but he wasn't going to let them take German literature away from him too. ETA: spelling Edited by lichtrausch on 15 October 2012 at 1:53am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6384 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 3 of 18 14 October 2012 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think it's very realistic to develop anything but Mandarin or English into your true native language...
You do realize that you don't have to *study* English literature to gain more vocab? You can simply read books in English. They can be American or even translated. You also don't need songs for improving your skills. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6696 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 18 14 October 2012 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I made that link clickable:
Disappointed about English vocab test 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4804 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch | Message 5 of 18 15 October 2012 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I stop reading your post half-way (long week-end makes me tired) - sorry.
If you want to master language in areas like biology, astronomy, economy or what else - you should learn these specific areas - not only learn their language. For example you could understand the words black and hole - but this will not tell you what a black hole is in astronomy. You could understand the words price, earnings and ratio - but you will not know exactly what a price earnings ratio is. - 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5642 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 6 of 18 15 October 2012 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
While I can understand what you are coming from, I just will not have the will to read things in English unless I need the information quickly or I cannot find any quality equivalent in other languages. I can always find a copy of Leo Trotsky's Anna Karenina in English, but I always feel that the time that will be spend can be of better use. On the other hand, I can spend hours, even days to read the constitution of Russian Federation in the Russian language, even though I am not a lawyer and the language used in the document is really tough. My desire to read almost anything in French or Russian is way stronger than my will to start reading things in English or Chinese. Of course, the way I am doing things is not very effective. Many vocabulary terms are not retained properly, except for those that are repeated frequently. However, I do admit that I remember the grammar rules very well, as the patterns are replied all over again in the documents. Given this, you will understand my struggle: to improve things that I am pretty good at but unmotivated/discouraged or to spend lots of time on things that are difficult, but motivate me or satisfies me a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5642 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 18 15 October 2012 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
Frankly speaking, I spent more time reading more non-friction on various topics and I have not even scratch the surface of the vocabulary used in my specialization! The main issue is that I have learn the vocabulary of different areas in two different languages. As a result, I do not have a "full" vocabulary in any language that can express freely on what I know in mind. This has made me unable to produce a proper conversation without constant code switching which irritates my listener and me look uneducated. I want to get out of this situation as soon as possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4444 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 18 15 October 2012 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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The only way to acquire a "full vocabulary" is to learn again what you already know.
For practical purposes, I would go with English. It is usually easier to find materials in English than in any other language. What is needed: - every new subject should be learned in English (or your would-be native language) - read one tabloid and one serious newspaper in English - listen to news in English - read English textbooks, self-help books or articles in subject you know in the "other" language - find encyclopedias, travel books etc. in English - watch sports with English commentary - ideally, watch politic debates in English - find native speakers and interact with them. It may be in a pub, in a club, wherever... Even sitting there and listening helps. But best is to find simply new friends speaking only English. You will still miss a whole lot. Native speakers have learned certain nursery rhymes, fairy tales, children and teen stories, are watching certain films and shows. You are missing this and it isn't usually worth to take time to "study". The problem is that you can function without true native language, but it is disadvantage in a long run. You need to commit and put your other languages on hold. Decide if you really want to make such commitment and then stick with it. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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