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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5102 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 17 of 31 04 May 2014 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's funny that you're mentioning this, because I've heard exactly the same thing from Americans about Germans. Nevertheless both German and Russian have their fair share of idioms. IMHO, the level of directness perceived by the native speakers themselves and others has absolutely no effect on the prevalence of idioms.
I don't think so, because Esperanto has already started to develop its own idioms. The most well-known of which is krokodili, which doesn't make much sense to non-Esperanto speakers (and Esperanto speakers who aren't familiar with the origin story).
But even the most politically correct minded linguists will have to accept the fact that not all languages were created equal. While it is possible to express the same thoughts in all languages, some languages require roundabout constructions that non-native speakers might consider somewhat inelegant. Also some languages require you to divulge information that others can hide. For example, Israeli linguist Guy Deutscher mentioned in his book Through the Language Glas that a native English speaker generally doesn't have to divulge the sex of a neighbor when mentioning that he spent an evening with him or her, but a German speaker doesn't have this liberty, because there are separate words for male and female neighbors in German (Nachbar vs. Nachbarin). And, as you well know, if you use a third person person reference with a possessive pronoun in Russian, you'll have to indicate whether the possessive pronoun refers to the same or another person (свой vs. его), while speakers of other languages have to depend on the context to figure out who was referred to. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6379 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 31 04 May 2014 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The level of directness has a lot to do with whether you say things "literally" or use euphemisms or just speak of mundane things in a poetic way or jokingly or whatever. And of course Americans learning German or Spanish will be surprised how hard this language learning thing is. But Russian is different enough that Europeans who've learned English and/or another big Western language are still going to find it very alien.
And yeah I'm aware of krokodili and of the fact that some Esperanto speakers use idioms from their native language. That's why I said "the closest" to what the OP's looking for. As far as I can tell, for a first-time language learner one of the biggest challenges in Esperanto is saying things more literally, without translating expressions like "as long as" directly from their native language. Sure, on a micro-level some things are eloquent and others awkward. But again, this perception also depends on one's native language. On a macro-level, one thing makes up for another, and the global differences between languages are nothing significant. Most concepts are present universally in nearly all languages, they just differ in how exactly they are conveyed and whether it's compulsory to make the distinction. For example my Ukrainian friend found the English articles difficult and was delighted that Finnish doesn't have them, only to find out later that there's a partitive/accusative case distinction that goes along similar lines. English native speakers complain about the Russian verb aspects and we complain about the numerous tenses, etc etc etc. I hate translating between Russian and English, for example (in either direction). Reminds me on this picture. Edited by Serpent on 04 May 2014 at 3:57pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5548 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 19 of 31 04 May 2014 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Serpent, you are completely right.
However, what I find fascinating is how in some culture - or different subcultures of many cultures, using idiomatic expressions or using a certain kind of idiomatic expression is seen as a sign of your level of education, while in other cultures doing exactly that is seen as a sign of your lack of inventiveness. That some people may think they're doing learners a favour when leaving out idioms, and others think they're doing them a favour when teaching them. Edited by Bao on 04 May 2014 at 6:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5102 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 20 of 31 04 May 2014 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Then don't do it. :-) Alternatively, read a good book on translation for inspiration. I really liked Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos. In it, Bellows describes, for example, in chapter 12, "Custom Cuts: Making Forms Fit," 12 different ways of translating a Chinese shunkouliu (scroll down for the English original). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6379 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 21 of 31 04 May 2014 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't do it unless someone asks me. Unfortunately my uni also thinks that the only plausible reason someone might study at the applied linguistics department is that we wanted to be translators but couldn't enter the translation department. Grrrrr. I want to be a linguist, not a translator.
@Bao, yes, that's fascinating :-) But in terms of idioms all natural languages are relatively similar. OP, you may also find toki pona interesting. It's very literal and very poetic at the same time, sort of. Edited by Serpent on 04 May 2014 at 6:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5102 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 22 of 31 05 May 2014 at 9:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
IMHO, this is a no-brainer. If a language makes frequent use of idioms, the most frequent idioms should, of course, be taught, because this'll help language learners to sound more natural and understand the more subtle nuances of a language. The problems with idioms is that many of them become quickly outdated. For example, I had to learn idioms such as "To have bats in one's belfry" or "As cool as a cucumber," which even language snobs aren't using anymore. Instead, they should have taught me idioms such as "x short of a y" (e.g. One sandwich short of a picnic), because that's what (some) people actually use. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6379 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 23 of 31 05 May 2014 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Oh yeah, I remember having to find out the meaning and usage of some idioms or proverbs. Google found me a pdf of the textbook we were using (and not much else). Oops.
Another question is "when", though. There's the temptation to get the most out of the words you know, by learning idioms and phrasal verbs, but I think this should mostly start at the intermediate level or so. When you're still a beginner, it can be difficult enough to remember the basic words, so only the most common, obvious and "vibrant" idioms should be learned at first. Unless you really love idioms and they motivate you :) BTW I definitely wasn't saying that it's a useless topic and we shouldn't discuss it. Just that the OP's original question was a bit problematic. Edited by Serpent on 05 May 2014 at 12:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5548 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 24 of 31 05 May 2014 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
What if, just maybe, people do think of the idioms they actually use as something a learner doesn't need to know at their current stage, or shouldn't attempt to use? I may not have made myself clear, I do not really care about what somebody thinks others should do, I care about what people are actually doing, and how they try to explain why they are doing it. Something I noticed with two of my Japanese friends was that, at a comparable level, one of them had an uncanny knack for using newly learnt expressions in a quite native sounding way, while the other tends to "fall in love" with expressions when he thinks he understands them, and often used them in very strange ways even when I tried to give him many examples and extra context to show him how the expression is used. Talking to the first one I often ended up talking fast and using words he didn't understand, while with the second one I still notice how I clean up my speech and only rarely use low frequency or new idiomatic expressions, because I don't think I'd be doing him a favour if I did. If this is a good way of dealing with the situation - I have no idea. It just seems to be the least stressful for both of us for the time being. Most learners I've talked to were somewhere in-between those two guys, and I think once you've reached a certain level the ones who take to idioms more slowly catch up. (I certainly remember the days when I tried to use words I'd learnt from metal songs in normal conversation. Uhm. Black metal songs.) Edited by Bao on 05 May 2014 at 9:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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