Re: Learning a language
From: LEE Sau Dan (danlee_at_informatik.uni-freiburg.de)
Date: 06/14/04
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Date: 14 Jun 2004 12:08:40 +0200
>>>>> "Patrick" == Patrick Powers <frisbieinstein@yahoo.com> writes:
Patrick> The only non-Western sound is the glottal stop.
Really? I don't think so. It is just not represented in the writing.
But it does exist.
How do you say "he eats" or "I ate"? Do you insert a glottal stop?
You've learnt German, right? Then, how does one pronounce "beeilen"?
"geeignet"? What's that in between the "ee", if not a glottal stop?
What about "be_inhalten"? "be_einflussen"? "Ver_ein"? "Er_eignis"?
How do you say "Mittag_essen"?
And I'm wondering whether the "ng" sound at the beginning of a
syllable could be considered a "non-Western" sound feature.
Patrick> I am renting a room in a homestay where a three-year-old
Patrick> girl lives and am learning the language much faster than
Patrick> her.
Not surprising. Some people (Esperantists included) even say that
Malay-Indonesian is even easier than Esperanto. (Esperanto is indeed
quite complicated.)
Patrick> I got nowhere for two months until I realized I could not
Patrick> memorize sounds and did much better with written words.
I'm the same kind of person. Written languages are much easier to me
than spoken languages. My German teachers and friends are pretty
impressed and surprised by my writing and scores at grammar tests,
given that my spoken German is so broken. (The same is true for my
English. I can converse easily in English without big problems. But
my writing is even better -- can often be mistaken for a native
"speaker" [I mean writer].)
Patrick> Even back when I was seven one of the best tools for
Patrick> learning was comic books. I had to sit down and brute
Patrick> force memorize using flash cards. Now that I have a good
Patrick> start memorizing words by sounds is much easier.
I did something similar: read books for children and beginners. Just
insist on it. After the first 10 pages, you'll be touching the
dictionary much less frequent. I even skip the flash card approach,
as I don't have them.
Patrick> Perhaps the brain rejects something quite unfamiliar as
Patrick> "not a word".
Maybe, that explains why foreigners (in the West) are so afraid of
superlongwords in German or Dutch. But once I've learnt enough basic
(short) German words, those longlonglongwords are no longer a problem
for me, because I don't process them in terms of sounds/syllables
anymore, but in terms of basic words/morphemes.
Patrick> It is much easier to learn words similar to what is
Patrick> known.
Of course. That makes memorization easier. It's always easier to
association a new thing with ONE known thing, than to memorize the new
thing as a new concept composed from MANY other things.
Patrick> I also teach English here. Many people learn English in
Patrick> school starting with middle school. The emphasis is on
Patrick> reading and writing, so while many can do that quite well
Patrick> often they cannot speak a single sentence without the aid
Patrick> of paper.
The sounds (actually phonological system) of English are too
unfamiliar to them. Think about it. The stress-timed rhythm is
actually very very difficult to someone accustomed to syllable-timing.
The reduction of un-stressed vowels to a schwa is another thing very
very hard to master (even for people form Romance languages).
Patrick> Europeans often can speak English almost as well as a
Patrick> native speaker.
Due to the similiarities.
Patrick> When I asked why I was told that English language shows
Patrick> were on television with subtitles so they had heard the
Patrick> language all their lives.
Patrick> One of the best English speakers I have met had never
Patrick> studied the subject in school. He did not know the
Patrick> grammar and simply read a good deal and practiced
Patrick> conversation whenever possible. I think it is quite
Patrick> possible that knowledge of grammar is an impediment to
Patrick> learning. There is no question that the most important
Patrick> thing in learning to speak is practice.
It's much more efficient (for an adult learner of a very different
language) to do some grammar, rather than just inducing the grammar by
examples. I guess it had taken your informant a lot of time to master
the tense system of English, right? Learning from examples is not
easy for learning the tense system.
Patrick> I've been told that Indonesian has "no grammar", that it
Patrick> is monotone, and that syllables are not accented, none of
Patrick> which is true.
English sounds like that too to anyone who don't understand it. The
fact is: to anyone who doesn't understand language X, X sounds
monotone, dull, barbaric, impossible to learn, etc.
Patrick> All these shows is that cultural conditioning can render
Patrick> one partially deaf.
True. Those are just "unintelligible sounds" or "noise". How can it
be melodic, rhythm-full, or even meaningful? :)
Patrick> Or perhaps having studied music all my life improved my
Patrick> ear.
It does help.
Patrick> I also do better than most with the accent, but this is
Patrick> purely mechanical.
"Accent" has so many meanings that I don't know what you mean here.
Patrick> Most adult westerners do not realize they should move the
Patrick> tongue back in the mouth about half an inch.
What? Do you mean you move your tongue back half an inch WHENEVER you
speak Indonesian? Or are you just talking about particular sounds?
Patrick> Another odd thing is the difficulty everyone has with
Patrick> ending a word with 's' for plural. It is such a simple
Patrick> rule,
Simple != easy. This rule is as difficult as gender for those who
don't have (compulsory) plural marking in their languages. It can
take a whole life to learn, and still not master this single rule.
Patrick> and plenty of Indonesian words end with 's'.
I don't think it's a problem with the pronunciation. It's a problem
of learning the *concept* of (compulsorily marked) plural. This is
VERY VERY difficult.
Patrick> More complicated rules such as the tenses of "to be" are
Patrick> learned more easily.
Really? Can they use the tense system as easily as a native speaker?
Do they use many different tenses? Correctly?
Patrick> In other words, language is built by imitation,
Patrick> memorization and building on what one knows, not by using
Patrick> rules to define the space of possible sentences then
Patrick> choosing the best sentence from that space.
The rules are important for reducing the amount of things that need to
be memorized. E.g. memorizing "present perfect tense => "have"
(inflected accordingly) + past participle" is much easier than
memorizing that the perfect tense form of "to do" is "I haVE done",
"he haS done", "they haVE done", etc. Yes, with enough exposure, a
person with normal intelligence can infer those rules. But it's just
more efficient to learn the rule and then apply it.
Patrick> Such a space is far too large. I've also realized how
Patrick> repetitions everyday life tends to be and how little one
Patrick> needs to be quite fluent.
True. That's why many immigrants just learn enough of the local
language to "survive". That can mean just knowing the words and
expressions for a supermarket visit and reading the road signs.
Patrick> Reading the newspaper is a whole 'nother matter.
That involves a much wider context.
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm- ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
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