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How to learn grammar without translations | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 17 of 27 21 March 2013 at 4:27pm | IP Logged |
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My point was is that "inner logic" of a system is the only one I ever meant. The rest is
semantics or outside my scope of interest. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4511 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 18 of 27 21 March 2013 at 5:06pm | IP Logged |
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Belive what you want, but languages are not engineering problems, they don't work that way.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 19 of 27 22 March 2013 at 12:45pm | IP Logged |
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Please explain to me why you would make such a general statement without backup. Or
back up the statement. Language *is* an engineering problem because it is a practical thing. When I think about speaking French I am thinking about the following things: - How do I get that barman to give me a beer or two? - What does that newspaper say about public transport strikes in Southern France? - How do I get that girl to flirt with me? - I don't think this steak is cooked. I want them to grill it properly. - My bathroom is leaking and I need to get the landlord to fix it (something I actually encountered). - My girlfriend broke up with me and I am sad, I am living with other people who don't see me leave my room and ask me what is going on. How do I tell them about this? - I'm introducing myself at a meeting and people want to know my background. How do I explain my job description to them? - How do I explain the workings of a nuclear reactor to someone who doesn't understand science in French? What I care about isn't how the grammar functions a priori universally or whatever. My problem is engineering my French such that I can answer and ask questions on such things in French without problems for the second party. That is an engineering problem because there is no way of doing that perfectly, just one with 95% accuracy and it might fail every now and then. Copy and paste to every other language I am learning to speak. For some languages such as Latin my goals may be different, or for rarer languages I might have more emphasis on reading and not speaking, but I am trying to satisfy THESE GOALS. I am not learning French for the sake of learning French. I have specific goals I need to attain (in my mind - want to attain). If my goal is to be able to work professionally in French, it is important that I tailor my skills such that I fit in perfectly. I apply this to everything by the way. Not just languages. I apply this mentality just as easily to playing an instrument. Edited by tarvos on 22 March 2013 at 12:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 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 20 of 27 22 March 2013 at 2:32pm | IP Logged |
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Like Tarvos I believe that languages are engineering problems, and that they work that way. But we don't use the notion 'logic' in quite the same way because we use different perspectives.
I have so to say a production plant for French sentences in my head. I get it some input (and let's not start discussing what that is), and some output leaves the brain and escape into the world through my mouth or fingers. For Tarvos the logic seems to be that everything that makes that production plant run by definition is logical, otherwise nothing would come out of it. And as an engineer he doesn't care about ways an ideal factory should be built - let the theory builders do that, he just wants something that works. For me French Grammar INC. is basically a chaotic jumble of things which partly make sense, but sometimes not. And logic is something YOU search for in the system. It may be there already, but your task is not to invent the French grammar - it is to find clever ways to learn how it is built so that you can start using it. Some features of any language are the result of two competing rules or patterns which somehow got into a cat fight. One could be the traditional way of saying things, the other could be a simplifying error - like using weak inflection of a strong verb in a Germanic language. Or you can have two competing verbs which somehow divide the terrority and coalesce into on heterogenous verb (which must be the reason that as different forms as "suis", "est"/"était" and "fut" coexist in the morphology of the French verb 'être'). Maybe there is a logic in that can describe the conflict situation and its resolution, but I don't know what it is - for me it looks like a truce based on random front lines. What I need is to learn the facts and then try to find some rules of thumb which makes it easier to learn them and to use the language machine for my own purposes. And one such rule is that é(s)t... apparently won the game in the imparfait, but lost half of the présent indicative to another verb which starts with an so- (or su- in one case). And in the meantime a f***-word eloped with the passé simple and the subjonctif passé. And this epic battle was fought already in early Roman times or earlier, because the scars in the landscape can be seen in all the Romance languages plus Latin. Luckily most verbs follow a simpler and therefore more logical rule, namely that the same root is used in all forms. Logic is an elusive quality found where something can be formulated or done in a simpler way. The warring factions may each have had their own logical strategy, but only the kind of logic I can see in the final result will help me to learn the language. Edited by Iversen on 22 March 2013 at 2:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 21 of 27 22 March 2013 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
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I should mention, Iversen, that for me a historical reason that explains the strange
conjugation of être, is logical enough. I take the fact that French says that you should conjugate verb such and such in this and that way as a base axiom and work my way from there. Where verbs are regular I use regular conjugation logic, where it is not, I modify my assumptions as such that I can still build an efficient base system. If the verbs are so irregular that I cannot count on ANY logical rule such as: -add suffix/prefix/infix to inflect verb for any one of the following: mood/aspect/tense/person/number/gender (and some other things but I haven't encountered them) -use pronoun to indicate person separately then I will have to remember those verb forms by heart, or remember that the root form in tense x is different (the imparfait endings for être are perfectly regular but the base is ét- which you need to know). Then this is an added axiom I need to thunk into my system. It burdens my system a bit because I have to store more raw data but since you're working in a certain context anyway, sometimes you have to accept as an engineer that this is not an ideal solution. I might simply store the imparfait verb forms as single words, and later find out the logic of the imparfait. No problem, I rearrange my programming to use ét+ imparfait endings. You're an engineer, you're going to come across these things as you develop the building of your French language machine. To give you an example of a regular French verb such as regarder, here is what I do, in slow motion (because I've debugged this particular algorithm regularly I can perform this task in a split second and it won't require long run periods. Good engineers fix their algorithms often!) I decide I need the verb "regarder" in a sentence (context: I want to look at the television). I determine what I want to express needs the verb regarder --> step two is "choose tense". Because I am programming through French, this means I can choose from a list of possible tenses (present, imparfait, passé composé etc.) Let's say (for humor's sake) that I need a futur proche (I'm going to look at the television in a minute, context says this). So I decide that it's a futur proche. Ok, rule for futur proche is infinitive (good lord, I don't have to conjugate regarder now!). preceded by present tense conjugation of aller. Oh shit, aller is irregular. Fortunately, because aller is irregular, I have made sure to store this base information as base information (because shit, it's aller and you use it all the time so you BETTER have this data handy). Fortunately, because this is a verb I use all the time, it takes no time to find out that a present tense form of aller in the 1st person (because *I* myself am going to look at the television) is vais. This is French, so I must include any pronouns because French programming language dictates that. Je vais regarder la télé (I add the object which is a known thing from the context - I wanted to watch television, remember?). If I want to say soon, I add "tout [de] suite" or something to add more context. But my basic machine works, right? The utterance functions. Now I have to remember when I have to push this utterance button, and so on and so forth. The trick is to know to input what through which filter at what time. The trick is that you move through all these mental steps in a relatively quick order and then your machine functions = you produce an utterance that is understood grammatically. Of course you still have to filter it through your phonetics. The problem with grammar and input/output machines (which is eventually what grammar describes in a certain context) is that you need at least some form of input. You can know the grammar by heart, but you can't make sugar if you don't have beetroots. So the first thing I would do is to find chunks of useful information that I need to know something about. In this case, I am developing a routine that simply allows me to say "I'm gonna watch the telly". But because you can extend the French machine functionality, it's equally possible to produce a literary sentence of the quality of Proust, if only you add all the tinkerbells, nuances, whistles and whatnot that lead you to produce something representing literary French. This is just equivalent to installing fancy software in your brain to produce lit French. For example, if I'm speaking, then I allow the "negation function" in my brain to switch off and not utter "ne" - "j'sais pas". So on and so forth. But anything that functions and will do the job for its intended purpose is good enough. And that purpose is decided by the context, my goals, and to what extent I have modified that program and in what way. And yes, I wire wrongly and all that, I'm human. There are many things you have to take into account and I'm not the world's best engineer. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4511 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 22 of 27 22 March 2013 at 4:48pm | IP Logged |
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I can't imagine going through all those steps and converting the result from spelling to pronunciation every time I want to say something. It must be exhausting. Why don't you just remember that future plans = je vais + infinitive? Using it requires no thinking at all and it even requires much less memorizing, especially when we consider that you have to memorize aller anyway.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 23 of 27 22 March 2013 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
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Because I account for the whole process. The basic grammar rule you sketch is the one I
use, of course, but implicitly you filter this through a whole lot of other rules. I am talking about future plans because I am indicating I want to use the television. Je vais + inf is the basic rule to express a future proche, but I need a CONTEXT. The infinitive verb, and added other words like just now, in the kitchen, etc, have to be accounted for. Furthermore, being able to write je vais regarder doesn't equate to being able to pronounce it, so I have to know that this sounds like zhe vè regardé, and if the following word starts with a vowel then I have to produce a liaison (zhe vèzatteñdr.)The basic rule is the basic rule, but my machine needs to be able to be reflect context because I am not putting it in an isolated system. And yes, this is a slow process in the beginning, that is why I talk more slowly at the beginning because I do have to convert through a whole lot of steps. Fortunately, if you use something often, it oils up and in French I could produce this sentence on the fly at more or less the speed of a native speaker. Eventually you can just shortcut around a lot of things, but you need to build them properly, or you'll be left with a lot of bugs. You have to debug the system often. And most of these steps I do in my subconscious, I don't actively think the whole process through. One of the nice elements about being human is that you can practically automatise all these little things by using them often and providing lots of context and input, and then your basic phonetic rules, some useful grammar tricks, and a whole lot of input mean you can express a whole lot of things. Edited by tarvos on 22 March 2013 at 5:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4511 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 24 of 27 22 March 2013 at 5:23pm | IP Logged |
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I meant je vais by pronunciation, not by spelling. Memorizing words by spelling doesn't make any sense.
Liaison is not necessary in this case. zhvèataNdr is perfectly fine. The whole complicated process is the reason why you end up with many bugs. There are much fewer opportunities for bugs to creep in if you keep it simple. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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