tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post1755899796980557558..comments2023-12-20T08:35:04.633+00:00Comments on Lingua Frankly: Guardians of GrammarTitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03003350618976942468noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-52703129685165052132013-02-02T11:04:31.911+00:002013-02-02T11:04:31.911+00:00Back to the Spanish, cos I started remembering thi...Back to the Spanish, cos I started remembering things during the week.<br /><br />My process of reasoning was as follows:<br /><br /><i>Es irlandes.</i> (He's Irish.)<br /><i>Es alto.</i> (He's tall.)<br /><br />These are adjectives, right? So what about this:<br /><i>Es profesor.</i> (He's [a] teacher.)<br /><br />It uses the exact same structure, and if you think about it, we're describing a fundamental defining property of the person in question. (Whereas in the Celtic languages, interestingly enough, your profession is not considered fundamental, but I digress....)<br /><br />So for a while I accepted it as a semi-sort-of adjective... until I noticed the use of "es muy amigo" for "he's a very good friend" and I decided it was definitely an adjective, because "muy" is an adverb.<br /><br />And why not? The boundary between adjectives and nouns in Spanish is pretty thin -- you use adjectives pronominally all the time where in English we would normally add in one (Quiero un verde -- I want a green one).<br /><br />It's a bit more complicated in other Romance languages, right enough -- I don't recall having heard anything like the "muy amigo" thing in others (but that may be down to the fact that I've spent more time in Spanish than any of the others....)Titchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03003350618976942468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-88743417601288495762013-01-26T09:56:00.936+00:002013-01-26T09:56:00.936+00:00I can delete your post and all references to it if...I can delete your post and all references to it if you want. My comments below will probably be expanded on into a full blog post soon anyway.<br /><br />If you want to contact me directly in future, you can drop an email to info@after-words.co.uk .<br /><br />Don't worry about sounding harsh. What the guy did is above average for someone who doesn't normally learn languages, but he could clearly have done a lot better -- I could follow a fair bit of the conversation, and I even noticed a glaring error: mistranslation of "will" as "will" instead of "werde" (or rather "wird", as it was a third person singular).<br /><br />Now, when I finished my first long-distance challenge ride on my bike (80+ miles through the Scottish Highlands), I was very proud of myself. I took about three times as long as the first finishers, so I was by no means a "good cyclist", but I still had every reason to be proud of myself.<br /><br />But I wasn't qualified to set myself up as a personal trainer on a website called "80milesin100days.com", because I wasn't an expert, and I wasn't very good.<br /><br />Brian has conquered a personal obstacle and reached an admirable goal, and has every reason to be proud of himself. But he is now trying to claim his personal success as a public success, and use it to market a piece of software.<br /><br />As Brian's making a commercial product, he has no right to expect <i>not</i> to be criticised for his results.<br /><br />Also, given that he's all he's selling is an SRS system and he essentially claims that they don't exist on iOS, he's left himself right open for this.Titchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03003350618976942468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-6115461841789075022013-01-25T23:06:06.940+00:002013-01-25T23:06:06.940+00:00Oh dear, I know I'll regret it and it does mak...Oh dear, I know I'll regret it and it does make me look like a bit of a p***k, but it's so current I have to say this. I wish I had a way to PM you but since you left HTLAL I don't. Benny recently completed a 3 month mission learning Egyptian Arabic in Brazil (to prove you don't need to be in the country). It was extremely impressive. At roughly the same time, a guest blogger, Brian Kwong, completed a 3 month mission to learn the much easier language of German, with the considerable advantage of living in Austria, and using a method mostly inspired by what Benny says he does. You can find it here: http://www.fluentin3months.com/papa-chat/. There is a video of the final result. It is billed as a great success. I have to be careful what I say here, so let me put it this way: having seen that video, I personally would never, ever recommend to anyone I know who wanted to learn German that they follow this method. That's putting it as politely as I can. I only discovered Keith's blog this summer (when looking for stuff on ALG), which explains how I missed your post. He seems a really nice guy and is quite openly going back to studying with Assimil. He believes that in the long term that 2000 hours of nothing but input will help his Chinese. That remains to be seen, but the general consensus is that it has helped his accent.random reviewnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-53816393495867538772013-01-25T14:28:04.471+00:002013-01-25T14:28:04.471+00:00Aha... this must be the post I was talking about.Aha... <a href="http://linguafrankly.blogspot.fr/2011/02/take-nobodys-word-for-it-case-study-so.html" rel="nofollow">this must be the post I was talking about</a>.Titchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03003350618976942468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-42273139915340438332013-01-25T13:54:36.693+00:002013-01-25T13:54:36.693+00:00" people who successfully learn through input..." <i>people who successfully learn through input are doing more than they realize they're doing and if they actually did only what they think they were doing they wouldn't be successful</i> "<br /><br />Exactly -- which is exactly why I've never liked he-who-will-not-be-named. He was never willing to get into a discussion about what he actually did, and any attempt to start a discussion was taken as an insult, as though I was ignoring his great truth.<br /><br />Moving on...<br />I remember when I first read about Keith's blog, and I'm sure I've got a post somewhere where I talked about how the oversimplistic blurb of most language courses is harming the independent learner's approach to learning, but I can't find it (maybe it was on a forum rather than here...)<br /><br />I can't say I'd followed the blog since, though... I'll have a nose and see what he's got to say for himself.Titchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03003350618976942468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-28223776265539574922013-01-24T13:03:53.444+00:002013-01-24T13:03:53.444+00:00I don't think you're being too hard line. ...I don't think you're being too hard line. You are right that input, even comprehensible input (even all this i+1 stuff) as it is described does not work. I think that what is happening (if you don't mind me sticking my two cents worth in) is that people who successfully learn through input are doing more than they realize they're doing and if they actually did only what they think they were doing they wouldn't be successful. It's quite valuable that you point out flaws in their stated methods (as opposed to their actual methods). That's speaking as someone who thinks there's something important to be learned from what these people are doing. An interesting blog in that respect is "Keith's voice on extreme language learning" by an extremely likeable and honest young man who used the TV method and documented his progress. The results (he wasn't trying to impress anyone) showed exactly where the strengths (his pronunciation) and weaknesses (pretty much everything else- even comprehension!) of trying to learn with comprehensible input lie. To be fair to him, his experiment is not over and more interesting than I have described. 2000 hours of TV was actually only phase one of his method, but it does document what would happen if you did follow that school of thought rigorously.random reviewnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-12970605736815078532013-01-24T10:30:01.185+00:002013-01-24T10:30:01.185+00:00As for your Spanish example, I hadn't given mu...As for your Spanish example, I hadn't given much thought to the "ser" example, and I wasn't even aware that you could do that with "tener"...<br /><br />But the "ser" I always took as literal vs figurative. But of course using the literal form figuratively makes it a stronger metaphor... which means that "eres una bruja" isn't actually a metaphor at all because it doesn't claim to be literally true, but it's not really a simile either. Interesting....<br /><br />But the tener one's really caught my attention, cos a quick Google shows me examples that prove that I knew some this without ever having consciously studying it, meaning I'm partly wrong.<br /><br />I saw the example "no tengo coche", and I know I've said that myself, but I'm sure I at least "noticed" the form written somewhere before starting to use it, so there was some conscious process behind it.<br /><br />But it still makes me stop and think that maybe I've been a bit too hard-line up till now....Titchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03003350618976942468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-80369013594041593592013-01-24T10:20:38.661+00:002013-01-24T10:20:38.661+00:00You're right, of course. You can only get so ...You're right, of course. You can only get so far with rules, but I reckon they take you pretty damn far, and I hear too many people dismissing rules because they're imperfect.<br /><br />But I do fall into the trap of not being clear on that, and it is important not to make people believe that the rules do everything.Titchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03003350618976942468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30114385.post-28754152967428029122013-01-24T00:05:59.608+00:002013-01-24T00:05:59.608+00:00Interesting post and I certainly don't disagre...Interesting post and I certainly don't disagree with your general thrust, but there are some aspects of language where (if we're honest) we simply don't understand the rules well enough to explain them accurately. The example of articles falls into this category (as I know from great frustration trying and to find a good rule for the omission of the Spanish indefinite article.*). Of course we can explain what we do know and some rough and ready rules that work most of the time, but do you not think that ultimately these things can only be learned by THE RIGHT KIND OF MEANINGFUL EXPOSURE supplemented by these rules? I write "the right kind" because of course you are right that, "There's no magic tipping point where the Spanish speaker has had enough exposure to English to tell the difference between "a car" and "one car", or where a Polish speaker suddenly can distinguish between "cars" and "the cars"." and because I wouldn't know how to define what that would be more precisely. Of course, there's more to grammar instruction than explicit rules.<br />Your most recent post on headwords was fascinating b.t.w.<br /><br />* I know you speak Spanish, so I'll just quickly explain what I mean: the textbooks give some seemingly good rules, then you get more exposure and realise that it is simply not true that you can't say "tengo un coche" or "soy un profesor" but that these (rarer) structures have a subtly different meaning though equivalent English translation (I'm not including examples where un/una mean "one", which are easy to explain). It is sometimes awe-inspiring to see native speakers (to take two real examples from TV) switching back and forth between (forms of) "tener móbil" "tener un móbil" or "ser bruja" and "ser una bruja" in the same conversation, but meaningfully and definitely not at random. I've never seen a good rule that captures this 100% (though I've seen a few that are fairly decent rules of thumb).random reviewnoreply@blogger.com