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Speaking L1 using L2 Grammar? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Masone Newbie United States Joined 3676 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Studies: French | Message 1 of 8 15 September 2014 at 8:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Do you believe this is a good method to get acclimated to a language and its grammar?
I hate having to speak English while I'm actively learning French, but it's absolutely necessary in my everyday life. I'm wondering if it would benefit my language learning to start rearranging my spoken English grammar to fit French grammar? So instead of saying a "black car", I'd say a "car black". Or instead of saying "I don't know", I'd say "I not know not". Those are very basic examples, but hopefully you get the gist of what I'm saying. I would essentially rearrange my spoken English so that, in time, it'd be easier to absorb the French language. Do you think it'd be worth it to try this? Edited by Masone on 15 September 2014 at 9:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5562 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 8 15 September 2014 at 9:07am | IP Logged | ||
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No.
6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3895 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 3 of 8 15 September 2014 at 9:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Honestly? No, not even a teeny tiny bit.
The way I see it, all you would be doing would be getting used to a different mode of speaking English while annoying nearly every single person you encounter. Saying "I not know not" is not equivalent to saying "je ne sais pas". Not only does French not take the same two words for a negative, your mind knows the difference. You're training yourself to think that "I ..." could be continue as "I not" and then "I not know" which could continue as "I not know not", while you should be training yourself in ways to follow up on the word "je". You might learn the grammar rules better by doing a few exercises like that, in a language you understand with words you know well, but going around doing it in your "everyday life" is probably not going to help you internalise any French at all, not even the grammar. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Masone Newbie United States Joined 3676 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Studies: French | Message 4 of 8 15 September 2014 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||
Hmmm, interesting. The reason I thought of this is because I keep reading about how knowing one romance language would make picking up another easier because of similar grammar and structure. Since communication is often different in English/French, I figured by altering my English to match(as closely as possible) the French communication structure, I could replicate that same effect, e.g. knowing Spanish and having an easier time learning French(as I have read). So when I pick up French phrases, the sentence structure wont completely blow my mind. Right now I'm doing a translation method with songs where I listen and sing along to a french song while transcribing the french song and then writing the English under it. I have been picking up vocab at an amazing pace, and the best part of it all, I'm not losing any of it. I think it's because as the song sticks in my head, so does the vocab. This also helps my pronunciation immensely. But I've been noticing a lot of distracting structural differences with the two languages using this method. Thought that If I started speaking my own language using these structures that I'm noticing, maybe by the time I'm done with all the songs(there are 132 of them, it will take quite some time), I could have the vocab and the communication structure of the language at a good level. But if you say it's not worth it, then I wont try it. Not really worried about the people I speak to, I figure it's better than me speaking French and having them ask me what it means. What matters is if it's worth my time. Edited by Masone on 15 September 2014 at 10:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5562 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 8 15 September 2014 at 10:52am | IP Logged | ||
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What eyðimörk said. If you want to practice French grammar, do it in French. If you try to use French grammar in English, you'll only teach yourself that there is no real difference between those two languages and that you can mix them up as it pleases you.
Also, if you do that there's no way you can get feedback on the mistakes you will - inevitably - make, because people would have to do a word by word translation of what you are trying to say from English to French, and then decide whether it is correct or not. And it's probably not going to be correct. If you want to practice but lack a conversation partner, talk to yourself or imagine conversations in French. Switch your internal monologue to French. You might not be worried about the people you speak to (I refrain from commenting on that because profanitiy isn't welcome here), but you forget that you wouldn't only have to deal with rearranging your English expressions to fit a French sentence pattern, but also with being understood on a hit and miss basis, having to repeat yourself (and when you don't repeat it in plain English you probably won't be understood the next time either), being corrected, being asked what the hell is wrong with you etc - it creates a lot of overhead. It would be easier to first say it in French and then in English. I don't think the advantage knowing one Romance language gives you when learning another comes from similarity in syntax, but rather in vocabulary, especially gender in cognates and conjugation paragims of verbs. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Masone Newbie United States Joined 3676 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Studies: French | Message 6 of 8 15 September 2014 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | ||
You should give the people in America a bit more credit. Just being around some very illiterate people and seeing them interact with literate folks, I will no doubt be understood when I tell someone that "I have too much eaten". It most certainly would not be easier to go L2 and then translate to L1 when I am inevitably asked, I've been doing just that for quite awhile now and not only is it frustrating for me, but I've been told to just speak English multiple times so I know it's frustrating for them. But more importantly, and the only thing that really matters, it's frustrating to me. Perhaps this would be used more wisely as a crutch to get used to just some grammar points(the adjective/noun order, for example) than to completely rewrite everything for months on end. Thinking over it more, it can be used as follows - when a particular troublesome grammar point is come upon, transfer it over to English until it comes natural in French. That way it's laser targeted and only given to other people in small doses. Come to think about it, I've already been doing this sorta. In one of the songs that I'm using for my studies, there's a phrase that goes "me voici". I kept having trouble when I got to this particular line, with the word order, kept stumbling, so for about a week I kept announcing myself with "me here is". Now "me voici" comes natural in reading and in speech. Not entirely the same thing, but kinda works on the same principle. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 7 of 8 15 September 2014 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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No, no, no. No!
Really, it is just as harmful as some publishers making app where you put an L2 word into an L1 sentence. Why would you want to do that? I think your exemple shows more of a specific aid for one situation but it won't work in general. Sure, such aids can be helpful (it's one of the common ways to make mnemonics for words or phrases, exemple of which can be found in the memrise courses) but what you suggest seems more like mutilation of two languages at once, in my opinion, while you learn totally wrong patterns you'll struggle to get rid of later. If you keep having trouble adjusting to French grammar, I'd recommend focusing on it directly instead and immersing in the language. Study grammar from monolingual sources with plenty of exemples, read in French (there are many graded readers you can start with), listen in French, think in French. I dare say vast majority of people who can speak a foreign language have strived to get rid of their native language based crutches since the moment we stopped needing them. You seem to be going exactly the oppositve way. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6499 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 8 of 8 15 September 2014 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I do get the gist of what you write, and I think it is a useful trick - which I have used myself when I make hyperliteral translations at an early stage with a new language. For instance writing "I not know not" instead of "I don't know" could help you to internalize the use of double negations in Afrikaans (rather than French double negations, which is harder to mimic in English). However I would not use it outside that context, and I would never use it in speech - whatever the language.
Making translations is an activity that lies midway between passive and active activities: you follow a text provided by others closely, even though you formulate a new text on the basis of it. So there is a clear back to the original text in your L2. But if you walk around speaking English with double negations and no do's then you are just performing a cirkus trick which won't help you to internalize anything in French. It would be much better to walk around speaking French with double negations and no do's, and if you THEN suddenly noticed that you had used English patterns in French then you could use the hyperliteral formulations in English to kill off those sinister influences and get you back on track. Edited by Iversen on 15 September 2014 at 2:52pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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