Re: History of French

From: Herman Rubin (hrubin_at_odds.stat.purdue.edu)
Date: 09/16/04 

Date: 16 Sep 2004 16:50:54 -0500

In article <0rpek0tqs9j0pcmir7qg4e5pplnb6ikmhv@4ax.com>,
Ruud Harmsen <realemailseesite01@rudhar.com> wrote:
>14 Sep 2004 14:40:02 -0500: hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman
>Rubin): in sci.lang:

>>What does it mean to learn a language "properly"?

>>Does learning English properly mean that one should be
>>able to understand Shakespeare, or to understand gutter
>>dialect? The current approach seems to prefer the latter.

>Both can be useful and interesting.

>>>Both exist, next to each other. If you haven't already learnt a
>>>language as a child, teaching it a "correct" standard language is
>>>wasted effort.

>>Nonsense. An adult can learn a correct language much
>>more easily, [...]

>So why do grown-ups always have an accent? Even those who started
>early, and made a serious effort to perfectionate their accent in a
>foreign language?

There are adults who do not have a "foreign accent". And
there are thousands of different accents in American English,
not all mutually understandable.

>>not having to unlearn the confusion which
>>a child encounters.

>There is hardly any confusion. There is training and patterns. And
>discovering what doesn't conform to them.

There is lots of confusion. This even happens in simpler
situations; learning computation with decimal digits seems
to make getting an understanding of mathematics MUCH harder,
and the teachers seem unable to do so. The situation is
even worse with statistical methods. One can understand
patterns VERY early, but it is much harder to repattern
what has been learned ad hoc.

>>What is not realized is that the
>>child spends far more time learning the language than
>>the adult does.

>You are right there. 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for several years.
>Every single activity a child is involved is also language-learning.
>Any adult spending that much time on language learning would make
>great progress too.

>>As to "any native" knowing and applying it automatically,
>>my encounters with native Americans who are college students
>>indicate that neither is the case.

>It is. In one sense it is, in the other it is not. And do distinguish
>between language variants, if they learnt some other variant than the
>standard at home, that's two different variants, each with its own
>rules.

>>Grammar is the structure of a language. Vocabulary and
>>usage fit into the structure, and a good presentation of
>>this makes learning much easier.

>Children learn grammar and vocabulary at the same time, before ever
>having thought of the difference. That is the best method, even for
>adult.

Children may have to learn that way. The clumsiness is
perpetuated by those in education who cannot themselves
understand that an abstract idea is NOT an abstraction,
but an entity in itself. Grammar is not merely a list
of what is done, but even in completely oral languages
became formative.

>>There is a book by Gould, _Russian for the Mathematician_.
>>He claims that if one learns the grammar, the alphabet,
>>the connectives, and 40 Russian roots, one could read
>>mathematical Russian.

>I know the grammar, alfabet, spelling, pronuounciation of Portuguese
>very well. Yet I still have great difficulty understanding, speaking
>and writing it. Reading is easier, especially technical texts about
>subjects I'm already familiar with.
>I guess I could read a Russian article about some Windows user's
>skills without even knowing Russian.

Not that easily.

                That not the point. If I hear a
>news item about Iraq in Dutch of English first, and then hear the same
>thing in Russian, I can understand a lot of 'Russian'. Does that mean
>I have a working knowledge of that language? I don't think so.

>>Even back when English grammar was taught in grammar
>>school, learning the grammar of a foreign language
>>pointed out parts of English grammar which the school
>>classes did not cover.

>English grammar is very complicated, especially if you use books that
>don't think it works the same as Latin.

It doesn't, which is one reason the full extent of it
was not realized until recently. But large parts of
it are there, and realizing this helps. 

-- 
This address is for information only.  I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu         Phone: (765)494-6054   FAX: (765)494-0558

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