You are what you speak

[valiha]

"New Scientist" ran an article on languages, the concept of a universal grammar and why it's possible that there is no such thing.

This is a very interesting subject for me, since teaching a language (English) is my bread and butter, but also an interest I had ever since I was a child. I find it fascinating that some languages have words for certain concepts, while others don't, or use a descriptive phrase instead.

For example, in my language, there are separate words for maternal and paternal uncles and their wives, and in some dialects for maternal and paternal aunts. Gender and number of nouns is important to us, adjectives agree with nouns in gender and number, and we have no articles. Verbs have past, present and future tense suffixes, and we have seven cases. Are all the people on my flist native English speakers, or is some other language your maternal one? Those of you who are native English speakers, do you know any other language and how difficult or easy was it to learn that language? Was it very different? Inquiring minds want to know!

Comments

[nesmith.livejournal.com]

Primary English-speaker here; I took French and Spanish in junior high and high school, and learning the masculine and feminine forms was always very difficult, along with remembering the correct article, like la silla for "the chair." I also struggled with and never did master direct and indirect objects; they exist in English but not in the same form, so trying to wrap my brain around a form so different was a challenge. I managed to get by enough to pass my classes, and I still remember a tiny bit of Spanish (and could probably pick it up quicker if I found myself immersed with Spanish speakers), but I'm nowhere near fluent in anything other than the King's.

I have heard from people that have learned English that one of the biggest stumbling blocks for them is our spelling that doesn't always look like how it's pronounced and our grammar rules that have all these exceptions and usually the only way to figure it out is to memorize them.

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

Articles just about killed me dead, until me and a colleague stumbled across a way to explain them in a way that makes sense to Slavic speakers: indefinite always goes with singular count nouns, never with plural, (this is something I always have to reinforce with my students because they don't realize that "a" is basically "one" and you can't have "one students"), and is used for anything unknown - first time you mention something, one of several; definite for You know which one I mean or I will tell you in the rest of the sentence (that's why I can say, "The exams students take at the end of the year are difficult." even though this is the first time I mention "exams") - familiarity through context ("Where's Ezra?" "He's in the saloon.") or because it was mentioned before ("I saw a man. The man was wearing a red coat."); and zero for general plural or abstract concepts/non-count nouns.

I don't think spelling is all that difficult, and there are actually rules to spelling, it's just that no one took the time to do the analysis - a colleague of mine is currently working on such a project; she's also working on organizing irregular verbs into groups based on vowel and ending changes (so far, the data points that they can all be organized into 10 groups; I'll have to dig up the table and share it with you).

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

I had four years of French in high school, and could probably still fumble my way through a conversation if the other person was veeeerrrry patient.

I play around with learning Japanese every so often. It's a frustrating one. It seems pretty straightforward at first - very not like English, of course, but consistent enough in its own way. But then the next step beyond the basics always kills me dead. :)

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

My sister took French in high school, and while I like the sound of it, I wasn't very interested in learning it. I wanted to speak the language of cowboys since I was obsessed with them ever since I was a little girl (my dad's fault - we watched westerns together from the moment I could read the subtitles!).

A colleague of mine knows a good deal of Japanese, as well as Swahili, Danish, French and German, and several others. The only Japanese expression I know is "oyasumi nasai", which I picked up during sleepovers at her house. :)

[grachonok.livejournal.com]

Russian here:). If I'm guessing correctly, Russian and your maternal language are from one group... Gender here, yes (three genders, actually) - and adgectives and verbs in past tense should agree with nouns (lots of problems here with translating from English:)), no strict word order but 6 cases instead (were seven, but one dissappeared at the beginning of 20th century). Verbs suffixes, yes, for tenses and prefixes for aspects. No articles, and grammar in general is a lot more flexible, but spelling is really diffucult.
And English sentense, translated in Russian, is usually three times longer, then the original and vies versa:). I remember I was shocked when I saw English edition of 'War and Peace' - it was in one tome you could actually lift!:)
As for words, one thing I was paying attention recently, when writing fic:) - we have special words for in-laws - for all of them, and they differs when we talk about husband's or wife's family. We don't have special words for cousins and their children, though - we use brother/sister/nephew/uncle etc. with appropriate adjective.

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

Serbo-Croatian while I was growing up, now Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. I'll leave the debate over whether they're separate languages or dialects to linguists and politicians, because the decision of whether something is a language or not sometimes depends on politics (I remember reading in school that there were two Nordic languages that are so similar they are practically one language, but politics state they're separate languages).

Yes, genders would be feminine, masculine and neuter, and locals get a kick out of foreigners trying and failing to use gender properly. :) God, word order, sentence length and digression in writing are some of the most pervasive things we have to struggle with - you can tell by my posts how much trouble I have with ending my sentences, because we're always going off on a tangent because we're reminded of something else, and then we end up with kilometer long sentences with a bunch of commas, and it's easy to get lost and it's a nightmare to try and translate them and still have them make sense (while I worked as a translator I hated those with a passion, but it doesn't stop me from committing the same crime!) :looks back at her last sentence: See? :)

And I just noticed you're missing some articles - my students can't get their heads around definite, indefinite, zero, and it took me years to train myself to notice and use them properly. I still make mistakes occasionally.

Yes, special words for in-laws here too! E.g. there's a term for your husband's mother and father, as well as for your wife's mother and father. Then special words for your wife's sister and brother, husband's sister and brother, but also for your sister's children and your brother's children, your paternal and maternal uncle's children (I think that's it as far as terminology is concerned). It's easier when you get to cousins because it's just cousin+gender ending.

All this makes it very clear how important family is in our society. It's especially evident in the part of the country my mother comes from, where I wouldn't call my maternal uncle's son a cousin, but "brother via uncle" (approximate translation; I couldn't come up with a better phrase). My eldest paternal aunt is always baffled by that, and can't understand how I can call him brother when he's not actually my brother. Confusing, isn't it? :)

[grachonok.livejournal.com]

Fellow Slavic ones, if I'm correct:). Oh, languages are tied to politics far more often then they should be - and in former Empires like USSR espesially.

Guilty of kilometer long sentences, too:). And lots of commas, since I continue use Russian grammar rules for them - and we need a lot more commas then in English:).

Articles *sigh* Well, I'm able to use them properly... if I'm focused and I'm rereading my own text a day after it was written:). Prepositions and past tenses in indirect speech are always a challenge, too:).

Agree about family importance. Here we use something like 'second-relative brother/nephew/etc' instead of cousins, and that 'second-relative' is often omitted unless we need to clarify whom we're talking about:). I slammed into that difference while writing 'A Matter of Family' - it was only natural for me to make Ezra refer to his cousin and her daughter as sister and niece, but several people asked me if it was a mistake or something:).

[solosundance.livejournal.com]

I got my school French up to pseudo-fluent after 3 years living in France and French-speaking Belgium ... but when I don't use it I lose it, especially the cool, slangy stuff :) Tried learning Spanish for my job and that went OK. German never took although I tried that too. I love to go places and lay down at least the basic phrase-book stuff for a week or two ... but it does seem to be true that the older you get the harder it is to absorb new languages. I taught a 9 year-old English when I was in Paris and she was like a sponge. The 50+ class could never get past a certain point ... or maybe that was because I was a crap teacher LOL.

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

but it does seem to be true that the older you get the harder it is to absorb new languages.

See, the thing is that children and adults learn differently. Like you saw for yourself, kids are like sponges and soak everything up; once you get past a certain age, you have to work at it and acquire the language consciously.

Most people instead just assume that they will pick up a language naturally the way they did when they were kids, and get frustrated when that doesn't happen. Repetition is the key, and doing it in short, 20 minute sessions; concentrating on such an intensive activity more than that becomes counterproductive. One of my colleagues is into researching adult foreign language acquisition; she's in her mid-60 and has learned (to a varying degree) 12 languages over the years, including some exotic ones like Swahili, Japanese and Arabic.

And I highly doubt that you were a crap teacher!

[jennytork.livejournal.com]

Primary English here. Started learning Spanish at age 7, thanks to a show called "Casa Caliente" and my father's subsequent buying several Spanish language records so I could teach myself.

Took 3 semesters of Latin in college.

Became interested in Japanese when I started learning about martial arts. I'm currently trying to find resources to teach myself Japanese.

I have primarily taught myself what Spanish, French, German and Italian I know -- with the result that I can read these languages much, much better than I can speak them aloud. The case endings throw me. The tenses throw me. Nouns are less problems than verbs are.

I would love to learn how to read Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hebrew and Greek.

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

"Hot house"?? :)

I went to a secondary medical school, and Latin was one of the major subjects. I hated it with a passion. Looking back, that probably had more to do with the instructor who taught it than the language itself.

I'd love to be able to take more language courses; unfortunately, being so pressed for time right now, it's not going to happen at least until after I'm done with my postgrad.

I love writing systems that are different than Latin! When we were kids, we had to learn both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets; I can still read Cyrillic though I have to stop and think about certain letters when I want to write something. Years ago I taught myself the Tengwar from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings; I can write that a lot faster than I can read it - so it's a complete opposite from Cyrillic, lol!

[jennytork.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was a kids' show that took place in a treehouse in the summer and was so much fun!

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

my primary language is american english. i learned my vocabulary mostly through reading, which is really a good way to re-inforce knowledge of spelling and that sort of thing.

i can speak/ read German on a two-yr-old level, and i have problems remembering verbs and that kind of thing because of lack of practice, but if i'm trying to parse written German, i usually can make out a basic idea. if i remember the words, i rarely have problems spelling them or pronouncing them or stringing basic sentences together, because to me, German is very similar to English. but i do have problems remembering gender, because English doesn't have gendered nouns anymore.

more than that, though, very early on, i learned to start categorizing english words based on the root words they came from, and in fact etamology - the history of words - is a fascinating subject for me. i'm not sure how i started recognizing and matching words to latinate, german, and french bases, but i found that it really helps in figuring out the nuances of the definitions of the words themselves.

or maybe i'm just strange, who knows?

-bs

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

I loved what little we were taught of etymology at the university I attended, but was never able to find an etymological dictionary in any of the bookstores I live in visit occasionally.

My German is also at a very basic level. I would like to continue studying it, but time is a major problem for me - with work and school I have very little time for extra language courses. We have gender too, but my problem is more fitting gendered articles and nouns together; I'll just have to find the time and learn which noun endings can signify m, f or n nouns: I'm told the rules aren't hard and fast but it's better then try and memorize them on a case by case basis.

We can be strange together, then. :)

[winks7985.livejournal.com]

primary american english speaker, but my nana is english so i have a lot of formal english-isms in there too.

i took french for 5 years, and russian for three.

like someone else was saying, i can probably pick my way through french if i had to. i can still read cyrillic, but i don't know what i am saying 85% of the time.

verb cases and tenses were the problem with me. especially when i started taking both languages at once. one time i phoenetically spelled out my answers to my russian test, but the words were french.

too much for one brain sometimes.

:)

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

can still read cyrillic, but i don't know what i am saying 85% of the time.

Is it possible you were reading something written in Bulgarian, Macedonian or Serbian? Those languages use the Cyrillic alphabet too.

Yep, verb cases and tenses are definitely what people have trouble with if their languages don't have them. With us it's the articles.

LOL at the test! Was the instructor understanding about your predicament?

[gemspegasus.livejournal.com]

Hi sweetie,

Spanish was the first language I learned because my abuela who lived with us didn't speak English. Abuela lived with us and helped raise us. I didn't learn English until I went to kindergarten about the age of 4. So today, I speak both English and Spanish.

I also am giving you feedback on the Rikers youtube vid in the other post. I'd definitely watch that show. I truly loved Will and Deanna. Think Jonathan and Marina were lovely in that vid. Finishing each others sentences and Jonathan's two wives. LOL

Thank you for posting it.

take care
hugs
Angela

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

What little I know of Spanish comes mostly from various telenovelas which were - and still largely are - very popular in this part of the world. I think that I'd be able to easily learn it with some instruction, if only I had the time!

And yes, aren't those two just great? My Zimbabwe cracks me up every time - I want to use it to refer to my friends with affection, but no one would get the reference! :D

[gemspegasus.livejournal.com]

Hi Sweetie,

Oh telenovelas, my abuela loved them. She even used to listen to a novela on the radio. Anyway, I am sure that if you had the time, you could easily learn it. :)

Yes they are great. :) My Zimbabwe cracks me up too and know what you mean about no one getting the reference. :D

take care
hugs and positive energy to you and your family
Angela