Re: Is there an optimal sequence for language acquisition?

In article <87mzjebkxy.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Lee Sau Dan <danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >>>>> "Nathan" == Nathan Sanders <nsanders.DIE.SPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> Nathan> Really? "Panda bear" is a pretty common term for the
> Nathan> giant panda in English, no matter how forcefully
> Nathan> zookeepers try to force people to change. It seems
> Nathan> unlikely that you have never encountered it.
>
> I don't know this name.

Now you do, so you have no excuse to plead ignorance in the future.

> Nathan> What is it called in Chinese?
>
> "Cat-bear" or "bear-cat", depending on dialect.

So it shouldn't have been that difficult to figure out what "panda
bear" referred to, since you admitted you knew what "panda" meant, and
your native term for panda contains the word for bear. And come on,
it *looks* like a bear and is in the bear family!

I imagine any reasonably intelligent Chinese speaker who hears "panda
bear" would think "Ahh, you call it a type of bear, too! That makes
sense" (probably in Chinese, of course).

> Names are names. Names in different languages do not need to be
> related to each other.

If I'm not a native speaker of the language I'm having a conversation
in, and a native speaker used an expression translating to "tiger cat"
in a context in which tigers are salient, I might briefly comment on
how I'd never heard that term before (then again, as a non-native
speaker, I'd expect to see lots of native terminology that I was
unfamiliar with, so in many cases, I'd just let it pass, especially if
it's not relevant to the current topic), but I certainly wouldn't
derail the conversation by claiming not even to know what he's talking
about, because he'll either assume I'm truly dumb or just being
intentionally rude, when it's pretty clear what "tiger cat" must refer
to.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: English is Such a Wacky Language, by Peter Heinlein
    ... ENGLISH IS SUCH A WACKY LANGUAGE ... The panda definitely is a bear, ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: News: Giant panda had pygmy ancestor.
    ... CHICAGO - Paleontologists have discovered the skull of the giant ... measures about half the size of a modern panda bear skull, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Laz in Poland?
    ... of Canada be the brown one who is black? ... panda bear the brown one who is black and white? ... The speakers of PIE and its early descendents almost certainly didn't live in Canada, nor in the Arctic, nor in western China. ... So how would they have known, if they did happen to stumble across one, that the giant panda was really a bear, rather than a big raccoon? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • News: Giant panda had pygmy ancestor.
    ... Giant panda had pygmy ancestor ... CHICAGO - Paleontologists have discovered the skull of the giant ... measures about half the size of a modern panda bear skull, ...
    (talk.origins)