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mike245
Triglot
Senior Member
Hong Kong
Joined 6785 days ago
303 posts - 408 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese
Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer

 
 Message 65 of 142
22 August 2013 at 8:25pm | IP Logged 
casamata wrote:
Yes, but those are all words that natives will know. And they aren't "weird" erudite words that nobody knows. I have never used a sledgehammer and have only used a wheelbarrow on a few occasions in my life. But I know what people are talking about when they tell me about them. I like learning that stuff because I feel like a dummy not knowing them and because I find learning the intricacies of a language fun.


I respect this position, and agree that everyone has their own preferences for language learning. Personally, I feel like a dummy when I'm in a foreign country and I can't communicate at all with the locals. I travel a lot to different places, so the best solution for me is to get to an intermediate level in a bunch of different languages. I'd rather be able to have a conversation with someone where I occasionally have to ask them what a word like sawdust or buckwheat flour or meander means, rather than just know one language really well but then feel lost in a place where no one speaks it.
3 persons have voted this message useful



casamata
Senior Member
Joined 4075 days ago
237 posts - 377 votes 
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 66 of 142
22 August 2013 at 8:33pm | IP Logged 
mike245 wrote:
casamata wrote:
Yes, but those are all words that natives will know. And they aren't "weird" erudite words that nobody knows. I have never used a sledgehammer and have only used a wheelbarrow on a few occasions in my life. But I know what people are talking about when they tell me about them. I like learning that stuff because I feel like a dummy not knowing them and because I find learning the intricacies of a language fun.


I respect this position, and agree that everyone has their own preferences for language learning. Personally, I feel like a dummy when I'm in a foreign country and I can't communicate at all with the locals. I travel a lot to different places, so the best solution for me is to get to an intermediate level in a bunch of different languages. I'd rather be able to have a conversation with someone where I occasionally have to ask them what a word like sawdust or buckwheat flour or meander means, rather than just know one language really well but then feel lost in a place where no one speaks it.


Dude, straight up honesty here. Sawdust, buckwheat flour, and the like are a lot more advanced than "wheelbarrow, shoelace, beaver, and butterly." Though meander I would consider something that most educated natives would know.

I don't agree with the position that it is *acceptable* aspire to just know the very general idea of what somebody is saying. I hope that Tarvos wasn't implying that. If somebody goes up to me and says, "I went camping and we saw some cool beavers chilling out." Well, wouldn't you want to know what a beaver is? Just knowing that they saw an animal is VERY vague. Is a beaver like a beer? Is it dangerous? Innocuous? An endangered species? Or if somebody says that they ate a "cuccumber". Is it enough to know that it is a food? Or do you want to know if it is a vegetable, meat, or whatnot?

Edit: I respect your position on breadth vs depth since you travel a lot. Since I'm still in the States, I rarely encounter such multilingual populations of people so it doesn't matter to me much to have a basic or intermediate knowledge in a lot of languages. Heck, in my neck of the words I've never a lot of need for Spanish. But in the border states I have gotten to make use of it. If I were living in Europe, my stance would probably be different since I could actually get to another country in an hour and a half of driving!

Edited by casamata on 22 August 2013 at 8:35pm
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4520 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 67 of 142
22 August 2013 at 8:35pm | IP Logged 
casamata wrote:
tarvos wrote:
I don't use wheelbarrows or sledgehammers often, I
don't own any sprinklers, and I rarely
encounter beavers. These are all words I could infer from context as "oh, it's an
animal"
or "oh, it's that object" when someone uses it. I don't know the word in French for
"shoelace" off the top of my head, but it's not a word I use daily.

Butterfly is the only word out of those I'd use regularly, sleep aid I can see some
context for.


Yes, but those are all words that natives will know. And they aren't "weird" erudite
words that nobody knows. I have never used a sledgehammer and have only used a
wheelbarrow on a few occasions in my life. But I know what people are talking about
when they tell me about them. I like learning that stuff because I feel like a dummy
not knowing them and because I find learning the intricacies of a language fun.

Beavers, FYI, suck because they are carriers for Giardia, and people that go hiking and
drink the water from the stream get massive watery diarrhea.

Edit: shoelaces is a bad example for word knowledge in the first world because
everybody uses them and knows what they are. That is a word that most people, I
presume, would expect any intermediate or advanced learner to know.


I seriously have never encountered this word in any other language but Dutch/English.

And I know some pretty rare words...

Also, the language police will hunt you down if you don't know a word. True story!

Edited by tarvos on 22 August 2013 at 8:35pm
4 persons have voted this message useful



casamata
Senior Member
Joined 4075 days ago
237 posts - 377 votes 
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 68 of 142
22 August 2013 at 8:38pm | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
casamata wrote:
tarvos wrote:
I don't use wheelbarrows or sledgehammers often, I
don't own any sprinklers, and I rarely
encounter beavers. These are all words I could infer from context as "oh, it's an
animal"
or "oh, it's that object" when someone uses it. I don't know the word in French for
"shoelace" off the top of my head, but it's not a word I use daily.

Butterfly is the only word out of those I'd use regularly, sleep aid I can see some
context for.


Yes, but those are all words that natives will know. And they aren't "weird" erudite
words that nobody knows. I have never used a sledgehammer and have only used a
wheelbarrow on a few occasions in my life. But I know what people are talking about
when they tell me about them. I like learning that stuff because I feel like a dummy
not knowing them and because I find learning the intricacies of a language fun.

Beavers, FYI, suck because they are carriers for Giardia, and people that go hiking and
drink the water from the stream get massive watery diarrhea.

Edit: shoelaces is a bad example for word knowledge in the first world because
everybody uses them and knows what they are. That is a word that most people, I
presume, would expect any intermediate or advanced learner to know.


I seriously have never encountered this word in any other language but Dutch/English.

And I know some pretty rare words...

Also, the language police will hunt you down if you don't know a word. True story!


Shoelace? Srsly? Well, the language police will only do so in Quebec. :)
Personally, I don't care if somebody is good or bad at languages, only if they sell a product and misrepresent their level or if they give wrong information to others.

Edit: Lacet in French. So if somebody said "lacet" you wouldn't know what they were talking about? "Do you guys sell lacets here?" (In French)

Edited by casamata on 22 August 2013 at 8:40pm
1 person has voted this message useful



mike245
Triglot
Senior Member
Hong Kong
Joined 6785 days ago
303 posts - 408 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese
Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer

 
 Message 69 of 142
22 August 2013 at 8:42pm | IP Logged 
casamata wrote:
mike245 wrote:
casamata wrote:
Yes, but those are all words that natives will know. And they aren't "weird" erudite words that nobody knows. I have never used a sledgehammer and have only used a wheelbarrow on a few occasions in my life. But I know what people are talking about when they tell me about them. I like learning that stuff because I feel like a dummy not knowing them and because I find learning the intricacies of a language fun.


I respect this position, and agree that everyone has their own preferences for language learning. Personally, I feel like a dummy when I'm in a foreign country and I can't communicate at all with the locals. I travel a lot to different places, so the best solution for me is to get to an intermediate level in a bunch of different languages. I'd rather be able to have a conversation with someone where I occasionally have to ask them what a word like sawdust or buckwheat flour or meander means, rather than just know one language really well but then feel lost in a place where no one speaks it.


Dude, straight up honesty here. Sawdust, buckwheat flour, and the like are a lot more advanced than "wheelbarrow, shoelace, beaver, and butterly." Though meander I would consider something that most educated natives would know.

I don't agree with the position that it is *acceptable* aspire to just know the very general idea of what somebody is saying. I hope that Tarvos wasn't implying that. If somebody goes up to me and says, "I went camping and we saw some cool beavers chilling out." Well, wouldn't you want to know what a beaver is? Just knowing that they saw an animal is VERY vague. Is a beaver like a beer? Is it dangerous? Innocuous? An endangered species? Or if somebody says that they ate a "cuccumber". Is it enough to know that it is a food? Or do you want to know if it is a vegetable, meat, or whatnot?



My three examples of unknown vocabulary were taken from personal experiences of words that I had to ask people to explain to me in other languages. I don't consider "butterfly" to be advanced vocabulary, and I have never had to use the words for "beaver," "wheelbarrow" or "sledgehammer" in a foreign language, aside from Spanish, which I don't consider to be an intermediate level language for me.

As for your beaver/cucumber example, I imagine that you can follow up with the person to get more information. That's, of course, assuming that you even knew enough of the person's language to communicate that much. Once, I went camping in eastern Germany and met some Czech tourists who didn't speak any English, German or any of the other languages I knew at the time. We tried chatting but gave up because we didn't share any languages in common. They could've been trying to tell me about all sorts of animals that they saw during their camping trip, but I couldn't even begin to try to understand any of it. At that time, I would've happily taken 80% comprehension.
4 persons have voted this message useful



JC_Identity
Triglot
Groupie
Sweden
thelawofidentity.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3934 days ago
53 posts - 108 votes 
Speaks: Swedish, Serbo-Croatian*, English

 
 Message 70 of 142
22 August 2013 at 8:46pm | IP Logged 
As I have been reading the posts here from both "camps" I have noticed the reason why we clash on this topic. I think that the reason is because we hold different premises when it comes to the issue of "getting tired or bored" of learning a particular language on a daily basis, after one has spent a certain amount of time with it. The "camp" that tends to be for learning a lot of different languages simultaneously holds some version of the premise that one cannot study one language for more than a certain amount of hours. So to be able to continue being productive with their study they believe that it helps to change the language. I am so far not passing any judgements but just interpreting objectively what I have read in an attempt to understand. I think that if a person held that premise it would be perfectly understandable why he comes to the conclusion that studying more than one language simultaneously is the right and more efficient way to go. However I am, from my own experience, convinced that the premise itself doesn't hold up. So those who care to understand where I am coming from, would find the key in that I do not hold this premise. I have no difficulty with focusing on the same language throughout the day for whatever time I set off to my language endeavor. I have been able to spend everywhere from 10 minutes to ten hours on learning the language on a daily basis.

I think that it is proper to bring some attention first to one evident implication of what has been often stated by people who disagree with me. The mere fact here that you can begin to study another language right after you just studied one indicates that your reason has nothing to do with physical or mental exhaustion but rather with boredom. Had you been physically or mentally exhausted, you would have not been able to study anything. Now if boredom is the issue, I think it helps to ask yourself about your approach.

Now without imposing my way to language learning on anyone, I would like to say that if you want to remove that boredom, one key area is to ask yourself, why you use the word "study" to describe what you do, when it comes to learning languages. I mean it in the sense that oftentimes what people refer to as "study" they marry with "self-discipline". I think it is a bad sign if you need discipline to do something. You should want to do it i.e. not force yourself so that you can check off something like 2 hours of verb conjugation studies and 1 hour of flash card studies of language X. For me personally, everything that requires self-discipline is unnatural and tends to fail in to long run, you can only force yourself for so long.

I will have to repeat here what I think I said before, but I will try to clarify here so more people get where I am coming from. I think languages are beautiful, but they are nothing more than tools for communication. The tool is meaningless by itself. It is that which the tool, in this case, communicates that ultimately gives it meaning and value. It is the content that should be the focus in natural language learning. Now everyone has different values in life, so different people would enjoy different types of content. It is up to everyone to find the material that he or she likes. One good advice here is to find material that you already tend to consume in your native language. Of course here you just have to ensure that you get comprehensive input, without which no learning is possible.

Now many people might complain that they of course want to consume the content of their interest but that it is impossible and so instead they delay this consumption to after they have "studied" enough to reach that proper level to attack that content. A level which they oftentimes fail to reach. Instead I urge people start out by focusing on what they like and keep focus on it.

Here I would say that it is far from impossible to start out by consuming this type of content. It just takes a bit of preparation. For example the way I do it is to make sure that I get a text in the target language together with a translation I understand (ensuring comprehensive input) and I am also big on getting the audio in the target language, since I focus very much on listening comprehension. But of course I recently noticed that this way or variations of it have already been discussed on this forum, under the name LR. But this is not the only way, I know people who have learned a lot from using comic books (which allow for good comprehensive input), while being natural. Subtitles on videos can also help to some extent if one uses them correctly. Listening to music and translating song lyrics is another way.

For example I am now solely learning French right now from reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. I picked this book for learning French since I have already wanted to read it in Swedish for some time. It took some time getting hold of all the material that I needed but it is worth it. Now when reading it my main focus is the content, the story. It is a complete joy I must say, a joy which ensures comprehensive input (I have the French and Swedish books as well as the French audio book).

Again I am not trying to impose this approach on anyone but I had to elaborate how you can in more detail ensure that you not get bored and tired of ONE language on a daily basis. Should it happen that I get bored, which can be likened with getting bored of a fiction book that you read in your own native language. What you do is just change the book for a more interesting one. Your language is still the same and you keep using it. So to conclude this before it turns into a book I would like to say:

If that which is communicated is boring then of course you will be bored. Getting bored is not the fault of the language, but of the content.
3 persons have voted this message useful



casamata
Senior Member
Joined 4075 days ago
237 posts - 377 votes 
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 71 of 142
22 August 2013 at 8:50pm | IP Logged 
mike245 wrote:
casamata wrote:
mike245 wrote:
casamata wrote:
Yes, but those are all words that natives will know. And they aren't "weird" erudite words that nobody knows. I have never used a sledgehammer and have only used a wheelbarrow on a few occasions in my life. But I know what people are talking about when they tell me about them. I like learning that stuff because I feel like a dummy not knowing them and because I find learning the intricacies of a language fun.


I respect this position, and agree that everyone has their own preferences for language learning. Personally, I feel like a dummy when I'm in a foreign country and I can't communicate at all with the locals. I travel a lot to different places, so the best solution for me is to get to an intermediate level in a bunch of different languages. I'd rather be able to have a conversation with someone where I occasionally have to ask them what a word like sawdust or buckwheat flour or meander means, rather than just know one language really well but then feel lost in a place where no one speaks it.


Dude, straight up honesty here. Sawdust, buckwheat flour, and the like are a lot more advanced than "wheelbarrow, shoelace, beaver, and butterly." Though meander I would consider something that most educated natives would know.

I don't agree with the position that it is *acceptable* aspire to just know the very general idea of what somebody is saying. I hope that Tarvos wasn't implying that. If somebody goes up to me and says, "I went camping and we saw some cool beavers chilling out." Well, wouldn't you want to know what a beaver is? Just knowing that they saw an animal is VERY vague. Is a beaver like a beer? Is it dangerous? Innocuous? An endangered species? Or if somebody says that they ate a "cuccumber". Is it enough to know that it is a food? Or do you want to know if it is a vegetable, meat, or whatnot?



My three examples of unknown vocabulary were taken from personal experiences of words that I had to ask people to explain to me in other languages. I don't consider "butterfly" to be advanced vocabulary, and I have never had to use the words for "beaver," "wheelbarrow" or "sledgehammer" in a foreign language, aside from Spanish, which I don't consider to be an intermediate level language for me.

As for your beaver/cucumber example, I imagine that you can follow up with the person to get more information. That's, of course, assuming that you even knew enough of the person's language to communicate that much. Once, I went camping in eastern Germany and met some Czech tourists who didn't speak any English, German or any of the other languages I knew at the time. We tried chatting but gave up because we didn't share any languages in common. They could've been trying to tell me about all sorts of animals that they saw during their camping trip, but I couldn't even begin to try to understand any of it. At that time, I would've happily taken 80% comprehension.


True, mariposa is a word that HS students learn, I think. I'm impressed that you know "beaver." Your Spanish must be pretty good. :)

With the beaver/cucumber example, if you follow up then you will learn the words. So I'm saying that if one practices enough, then they will learn a lot of the language but if they are practicing 5 or 10 languages, they may not get the chances to learn more advanced vocabulary. (though cucumber isn't probably an advanced word) Maybe something like eggplant? But those are just the denotations. Knowing about the connotations of words and the *appropriate* words that are actually used is very important to. For instance, this last year I learned that to say "scalpel" in Spanish the word "escalpelo" is not used. Bisturí, rather, is the "common" term. And yes, knowing something like scalpel is really important to some people, especially in the hospital. If I say escalpelo, people would look at me and think, "where this guy from? He ain't from round these parts, is he?"

Just making yourself understood and sounding good are too different things, as well. I think of the asian actors in movies that say things like "me love you long time" in very accented English. The message is conveyed, but it sounds like crap.
1 person has voted this message useful



mike245
Triglot
Senior Member
Hong Kong
Joined 6785 days ago
303 posts - 408 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese
Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer

 
 Message 72 of 142
22 August 2013 at 9:05pm | IP Logged 
casamata wrote:
True, mariposa is a word that HS students learn, I think. I'm impressed that you know "beaver." Your Spanish must be pretty good. :)

With the beaver/cucumber example, if you follow up then you will learn the words. So I'm saying that if one practices enough, then they will learn a lot of the language but if they are practicing 5 or 10 languages, they may not get the chances to learn more advanced vocabulary. (though cucumber isn't probably an advanced word) Maybe something like eggplant? But those are just the denotations. Knowing about the connotations of words and the *appropriate* words that are actually used is very important to. For instance, this last year I learned that to say "scalpel" in Spanish the word "escalpelo" is not used. Bisturí, rather, is the "common" term. And yes, knowing something like scalpel is really important to some people, especially in the hospital. If I say escalpelo, people would look at me and think, "where this guy from? He ain't from round these parts, is he?"

Just making yourself understood and sounding good are too different things, as well. I think of the asian actors in movies that say things like "me love you long time" in very accented English. The message is conveyed, but it sounds like crap.


I'm from California, so I actually have to use Spanish for more than casual tourist interactions. Words like "castor" and even "bisturí" are things that I learned a long time ago, hear on television, and use occasionally.

I think the rest of one's vocabulary can be circumstances driven. For instance, I love food and spend a lot of time exploring restaurants in different countries. So knowing words like eggplant or buckwheat flour in different languages is useful and important, at least in languages for countries where those foods/ingredients are used. I also need to know words like hand baggage, train platform, discounted admission tickets, etc. But other words like wheelbarrow or beaver have little use for me in foreign languages.

I do think that if you are still at the "me love you long time" stage, that's beginner level and not intermediate. Nevertheless, if I can reach even that level in a few languages (like Japanese) before traveling, I would probably be super happy.


1 person has voted this message useful



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