Re: Learning a language

From: Patrick Powers (frisbieinstein_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/04/04 

Date: 4 Jul 2004 08:10:13 -0700

LEE Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message news:<m37jua78pj.fsf@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de>...
> >>>>> "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?
>
No.
> 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"?
>

Without a glottal stop. BUT you are right, the glottal stop is not
completely foreign to the West. The best example is "uh-oh". It also
appears in football cheers and slang. But it does not occur in more
formal English.

>
> And I'm wondering whether the "ng" sound at the beginning of a
> syllable could be considered a "non-Western" sound feature.
>
Yes, that takes a bit of practice. But the SOUND is Western, as
opposed to the order in which it occurs, so it is not that hard.

Balinese has a non-Western vowel, uh, which takes a bit of getting
used to. It is pronounced by relaxing the tounge and lips so that
they do nothing actively. Part of the trouble is that in the West "uh"
has a strong association with stupidity and laziness! This silly
prejudice can get in the way.

>
>
> 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.)

I don't know Esperanto, but Indonesian is so regular that it is hard
to see how anything else could be any simpler. There is an
irreducible minimum of difficulty for languages in general.

>
>
> 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.
>
There are really no children's books. Balinese people do not read for
fun. Most books are abstract religious texts. The best I could find
were 2nd grade Indonesian texts, but they are amazingly hard. I shall
never forget the first two sentences (here translated to English.)
"Once again we enter the school. The activities of vacation are soon
forgotten."

>
> 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.
Actually Indonesian sounds stress-timed to me, though others seem to
feel differently. My students seem to have no trouble with getting
the proper stress.
> The reduction of un-stressed vowels to a schwa is another thing very
> very hard to master (even for people form Romance languages).
Indonesian has this feature too, so this is also not a problem.

However, experts do not agree with me. The Indonesian-English
dictionary, which is the definitive reference, states that the stress
is always on the penultimate syllable, which is not the case here in
Bali.

>
>
> 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.
>
It is hard to say. He was about the best with tenses that I have met
here.

Of course I teach some of the tenses. My complaint with tenses is the
amount of memorization involved. There is simply no getting around
it. Sitting there and memorizing lists of verbs is awfully boring.
So I think that learning from examples is in some sense unavoidable.

>
>
> 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.
>
Just the overall sound of the language. If you Indonesian in a
Western manner it tends to sound like mush. It should be somewhat
nasal. Malaysian is very nasal.

>
> 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?
>
Both.

There is a sort of average or neutral or default position for the
tongue. In English (for me anyway) the toungue lightly touches the
lower teeth. In Indonesian it is back about a half an inch from the
teeth and lightly touching the palate. The result is a slightly nasal
tone that is necessary as the language tends to sound mushy and murky
without it. Malaysians move the tongue back even further and talk
through the nose.

Having the tounge in the "Indonesian position" makes it possible to
trill the r. But this is not crucial. The main thing is to get the
proper tone.

    
>
>
> 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.
>
Yes. The question is, why? I think that there is some fundamental
reason for this. I'm not talking about the exceptions and
complications of the rule. I mean very simple cases, like "I have
three dog." It IS a simple rule. Why is it so hard for them to
learn. I don't know. There are other simple rules that no one has
any trouble with whatsoever.
>
> 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?
>

No. But these things really are complicated and involve a
considerable amount of memorization and subtle, irregular
distinctions. So you would expect this to be difficult.

>
> 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.
>
Sure, I teach those rules. It can't hurt. But if they want to master
the language then massive practice is essential.

>
> 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.

No, not really. A much bigger vocabulary. If I am actually talking
to someone he can explain the same issues in a simpler and more
verbose
way that I can understand.

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