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Can we ever fill in all the gaps?

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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
39 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 35  Next >>
montmorency
Diglot
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United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 25 of 39
30 October 2013 at 6:21pm | IP Logged 
Einarr wrote:



Speaking of English, I still get puzzled by the Doric sometimes. The most staggering
occasion was when I was at a store, buying a jacket. The girl behind the till first
asked me: "U ne a ba fo da" which after several repetitions came out as "Do you need a
bag for that". I didn't get any luckier than this with her second question, which was:
"Du u ne d haar" which turned out to be "Do you need the hanger". And this wasn't an
isolated case, just the other way around.



If it's any consolation, plenty of English people might have been puzzled as well.

It's often just a question of "getting your ear in", and knowing in advance what to
expect, but if your concentration goes, or you forget where you are for a moment, you
can be lost momentarily.

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schoenewaelder
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
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Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

 
 Message 26 of 39
30 October 2013 at 6:31pm | IP Logged 
Now I'm going to have to get married and have children so I can conduct my own experimnts
and settle this once and for all. Unless anyone's got a spare one they don't need?

I think I've forgotten what the original question was now, but getting a little nearer on
topic, I got copies of "No country for old men" in English and German a while back, and
while I was collecting vocabulary, I realised there was a dozen or so words in the first
Chapter that I didn't know in the English version. They were mostly mexicanish-sounding
geographical features, which my brain just whizzed over and sort of interpreted from
context, but it was still a bit confusing working out exactly what the geography was.
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Henkkles
Triglot
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Finland
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 Message 27 of 39
30 October 2013 at 6:54pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
captious - bibulous - malapropism - tricorn - tenebrous - braggadocio - bruit - embonpoint - pabulum - parlay - pother - valetudinarian - cenacle - hypermnesia - legerdemain - vibrissae - cantle - estivation - myrmidon - regnant - terpsichorean - clerisy - deracinate - fuliginous - oneiromancy - tatterdemalion - williwaw - caitiff - funambulist - hypnopompic - opsimath - pule - sparge - uxoricide

For an adult with some knowledge about Latin and French plus a minimum of Greek at least half of these words will be known. But I doubt that the average native kid will know them. And I could probably have thousands of hours of conversations without hearing them, so I don't blame the kid for missing out on that part of the English vocabulary.

Time to whip out the good ol' saurus...


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beano
Diglot
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian

 
 Message 28 of 39
30 October 2013 at 11:29pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
captious - bibulous - malapropism - tricorn - tenebrous - braggadocio - bruit -
embonpoint - pabulum - parlay - pother - valetudinarian - cenacle - hypermnesia - legerdemain -
vibrissae - cantle - estivation - myrmidon - regnant - terpsichorean - clerisy - deracinate - fuliginous
- oneiromancy - tatterdemalion - williwaw - caitiff - funambulist - hypnopompic - opsimath - pule -
sparge - uxoricide

For an adult with some knowledge about Latin and French plus a minimum of Greek at least half of these
words will be known. But I doubt that the average native kid will know them.


Average kid? I've been speaking English natively for 42 years but I only know malapropism. I've heard of a
funambulist but I'm not sure what he does (tightrope walker come to mind). Braggadocio I've seen in print but
I don't know the meaning.

I missed started high school just as Latin was being withdrawn.
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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
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United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
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 Message 29 of 39
31 October 2013 at 1:24am | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
Iversen wrote:
captious - bibulous - malapropism - tricorn -
tenebrous - braggadocio - bruit -
embonpoint - pabulum - parlay - pother - valetudinarian - cenacle -
hypermnesia - legerdemain -
vibrissae - cantle - estivation - myrmidon - regnant - terpsichorean -
clerisy - deracinate - fuliginous
- oneiromancy - tatterdemalion - williwaw - caitiff - funambulist -
hypnopompic - opsimath - pule -
sparge - uxoricide

For an adult with some knowledge about Latin and French plus a minimum of Greek at
least half of these
words will be known. But I doubt that the average native kid will know them.


Average kid? I've been speaking English natively for 42 years but I only know
malapropism. I've heard of a
funambulist but I'm not sure what he does (tightrope walker come to mind).


You must have come across "parlay" ... think of that recent Pirate film (you know,
"disinclined to acquiesce ...").

legerdemain too, although I've not heard it much since magic shows stopped cropping up
on the telly (or maybe it's because I stopped watching telly ...)

I think most of the others (except maybe bruit, tricorn, tenebrous, terpsichorean and
regnant) are unlikely to crop up in everyday conversation, regardless of whether the
speakers are adults or children.

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Lorren
Senior Member
United States
brookelorren.com/blo
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286 posts - 324 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 30 of 39
31 October 2013 at 5:20am | IP Logged 
I continue to learn a lot of words in English myself. As I'm learning my Spanish, much through reading National Geographic articles, I'm running across words that I look up, and realize that I don't understand the English translation to the words... so I have to look it up.

In many cases, there are alternate ways to say something. While everybody has their own standards, if I can get my point across and understand what someone has to say back to me, I'd say that I would be pretty happy with my level... although that doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to improve, which is something that is likely to happen for an entire lifetime, as it does with your native language.
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luke
Diglot
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United States
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Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 31 of 39
31 October 2013 at 8:47am | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
No one knows everything, so speaking imperfectly is a given. The question is how intelligble it is and if it is intelligible and mistake-free enough, who cares. "spirits" is a good word to use in UK company, but "strong alcoholic drinks" would've gotten the message across just as well.


If the speaker had requestsd "booze" would that be more universally known? I would think most stewardesses would have heard that request before from someone who wants to drink "hard stuff". Are these colloquialisms more common? Another way the speaker could have narrowed the request would be to ask for a more specific type of liquor like "whiskey" or "vodka", depending on what they were looking for.

Whether one perceives "gaps" may depend a lot on how much one pushes themselves into new situations, new topics, and new regionalisms. It goes the other way too. Certain words and grammatical constructions were more popular of old. A mundane example is how the word "effective" has largely supplanted "efficacious" in the spoken word, at least where I live. I've heard Professor Arguelles say it and his talks don't strike me as being too stuffy, although he is quite formal in his presentation.
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Iversen
Super Polyglot
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Denmark
berejst.dk
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 Message 32 of 39
31 October 2013 at 9:31am | IP Logged 
For some reason most of the words are af Latin origin (and so is the French language, which is the source of another large group of words) so the crux of the matter is not your age, but whether you have learnt Latin or not. You could in principle construct a list of rare words of purely Anglosaxon origin, and then the Latinists wouldn't have that advantage.

One thing I have noticed when I have assessed my passive vocabulary is that I tend to know all the loanwords in languages like Romanian and Russian, but a far lower percentage of the 'native' words (or loanwords from languages I don't know). I do try to change that, but it is much harder to memorize words you don't already know.

Edited by Iversen on 31 October 2013 at 9:32am



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