Languages Thread: I like words.

[Bobalay]

It's a little like some Whole Languages lunatic put German in a blender, sprinkled in some French, blended it for a few seconds and still had chunks left.

And also the Whole Languages nutter was a sloppy drunk who couldn't get anything right, so there's more exceptions than rules.

"I'd love to make a sensible language, but I can't do anything with these lobster hands!"

[cyclopeantrash]

So is English the bitcoin of language?

[Runic]

No, because people actually use English. Bam! Sick Bitcoin burn!

[A Whirring Bone-White Gleech]

No, because people actually use English. Bam! Sick Bitcoin burn!

Oh Runic, people use Bitcoins!  They're great for laundering money, and if you'd like to buy something completely illegal over the internet from the comfort of your home, there's nothing better!  So English could be the bitcoin of languages if it was the official language of buying heroin and child pornography over the internet!

[Sherlockian]

I can curse in Japanese and understand about every third word if someone's speaking to me.

I can greet people, thank them, and count to ten in French and about the same in Spanish.

And I can thank people and tell them to go to hell and/or call them the son of a prostitute in Hebrew. Also, I can read Hebrew, but that doesn't mean I have any idea what I'm reading most of the time.

[nigeline]

I am always jealous of people who can read/write/speak/understand non-romance languages! I can speak Spanish and read very basic French, Italian, and Portuguese, but anything beyond that would take a bit of work. I learned the Hebrew alphabet in one of my Biblical exegesis classes (cooler than it sounds, I promise), but that was almost ten years ago...

I have a linguist friend who chose to take two years of Finnish in college - turns out Minnesota is a great place for Finns, who knew? I always wish I had the guts she did. I'm just lazy, so I stuck with Spanish, the easiest of languages! Luckily it comes in handy when you work in restaurants.

[A Meat]

And I can thank people and tell them to go to hell and/or call them the son of a prostitute in Hebrew. Also, I can read Hebrew, but that doesn't mean I have any idea what I'm reading most of the time.

Is that with or without the diacritic marks? Hebrew is generally written without "nikkud" which are the diacritic marks that tell you how to pronounce the word. So if you aren't a native speaker and you're trying to read something that isn't the bible or written for little kids, good fucking luck.

Also, good luck reading someone's Hebrew handwriting.

You know what? Here, have a comparison between print and non-print forms in my shitty handwriting.

http://i.imgur.com/qsU7dfz.jpg (ignore the asterisk looking mark in the bottom half)
vs.
http://i.imgur.com/80d7Imn.jpg

The pangram translates into something along the lines of "In a blink of an eye we'll clone you a bloodthirsty midget, hold on tight!" (It's worth noting that I fucked it up, there are two 'Vav's instead of one, one is superfluous)

[Adept]

I have a BA in German and Applied Linguistics, and am studying Second Language Acquisition for my MA (the study of how adults acquire non-native languages).

I'd be interested to hear the most successful methods for teaching languages to people who are out of those early learn-languages-easily years.

I want to give this a proper response, but it's going to require digging into some of my class notes for last semester. I'll see if I can dig up some key citations to illustrate my points, too. The gist of it is going to be that the best teaching methodologies are going to include the explicit teaching of grammar, but mostly be focused on the ability to fill communicative needs.

[chai tea latte]

In order of capacity: English, French, Malay, Mandarin. My characters suck because I don't write enough though. I also run a casual biweekly 'let's learn Latin and drink' gathering so I guess I know some Latin as well? Well enough to be able to tell a few jokes, not well enough to actually talk to someone.

[Sherlockian]

And I can thank people and tell them to go to hell and/or call them the son of a prostitute in Hebrew. Also, I can read Hebrew, but that doesn't mean I have any idea what I'm reading most of the time.

Is that with or without the diacritic marks? Hebrew is generally written without "nikkud" which are the diacritic marks that tell you how to pronounce the word. So if you aren't a native speaker and you're trying to read something that isn't the bible or written for little kids, good fucking luck.

Also, good luck reading someone's Hebrew handwriting.

You know what? Here, have a comparison between print and non-print forms in my shitty handwriting.

http://i.imgur.com/qsU7dfz.jpg (ignore the asterisk looking mark in the bottom half)
vs.
http://i.imgur.com/80d7Imn.jpg

Your script is clearer, though I'm worse at reading Hebrew script than print. And I pretty much suck at reading without the nikkud, because I don't know enough Hebrew to be able to fill in the sounds from context.  I learned it at a shitty Sunday morning temple class, mostly for reading prayer, so, yeah, my Hebrew sucks for everything except occasionally thanking people or telling someone the numerical code for the restroom at work in Hebrew.

(I learned my small vocabulary of swear words on Birthright, because what's the point of Birthright if you don't get to learn how to curse people out?)

On the up side of language acquisition, I learned today that enough high school French has stuck with me that I can actually understand terrible French puns!

Comment s'appelle un chien qui vend des medicaments?
Un pharmachien.

[Adept]

I have a BA in German and Applied Linguistics, and am studying Second Language Acquisition for my MA (the study of how adults acquire non-native languages).

I'd be interested to hear the most successful methods for teaching languages to people who are out of those early learn-languages-easily years.

The short answer to your question is that an effective language teaching program will make heavy use of what is known as communicative practice - types of exercises that mirror real-life communication in one form or another - interspersed with periods of explicit information about how the grammar of a given language functions, feedback on what you're doing right and what you need to change, and the presentation of conversational models, vocabulary, and phrases that are or could potentially be of use or interest to the students. It seems to be a finding in the field of SLA that skills learned in activities that more closely resemble real-life scenarios translate better to real-world use of the language than do skills acquired in grammar drills. Simultaneously, it seems that feedback and knowledge of rules can help one to make stronger gains from this practice than would simply happen 'through osmosis' otherwise.

It is also worth noting that at the end of the day, the most effective form of teaching is the one that best meets your needs as a learner. The above suggestion assumes you just want general communicative competence - however, if you specifically need English so you can meet with business clients and hash out a business agreement, then job-specific training that focuses on situations and communicative contexts that you will run into in a business environment will be more beneficial than general-communication courses. Similarly, the type of language training that certain members of the armed forces will receive is necessarily much more focused on immediate communicative needs, and necessarily must be more focused than general classes to be more efficient (this was particularly the case in WWII, I am told, where the need for lots of people to understand very basic sentences in a variety of languages was the order of the day. Today, the DoD is slanted in the opposite direction - they need extremely talented individuals who can speak some difficult and very obscure languages at an extraordinarily high level of proficiency, for intelligence purposes.)

I kind of went overboard with my response and did a small essay on the reasons why a mixed communicative-and-rules classroom is more effective than either grammar drill or pure-communicative (no grammar) models. It delves into a bit of cognitive psychology and the nature of knowledge. Looking at what came out, it seemed a bit spammy for this thread, so I decided I should finally step up to the plate and make a Shared Expertise thread. If you want to see a much more elaborate breakdown of what I just said, feel free to check it out. My full, wall-of-text response is on the second post of the thread:

Adept: Second Language Acquisition (Applied Linguistics)

[RedMinjo]

I got partway through a semester of Arabic before my sadbrains kicked in and I had to drop the remainder of the semester, so I can usually pronounce words written in the script, but I can't really speak much of it.  The worst of my problems seem to be over though, so I'd like to eventually start that up again. 

Since I noticed somebody in this thread/Adept's thread mention ASL, I don't use it or have any real plans to learn it, but I do have a link to what seems like a pretty good website on it.  It uses frames, so it's not mobile-friendly.
http://lifeprint.com/index.htm

[zugunruhe]

I'm a huge language geek, too! I speak English natively, then German at an advanced level (been studying for like 6-7 years), Spanish at a roughly conversational level (I work in restaurants and so my Spanish has improved a ridiculous amount in the last couple years) and ASL at an advanced level (I'm studying to be an interpreter as we speak!) I'm also a heritage speaker of Yiddish and because it's a language on the German dialect continuum I can speak it pretty well. I used to speak semi-decent Hebrew but I don't really have anywhere to use it these days so it's kind of fallen into disrepair.

[crow]

I have to learn Greek because I want to study the Balkans in modern history for grad school.  Is Modern Greek hard?  How does it compare to Ancient Greek?  My other option is to become a Byzantinist and that required two years of hard Ancient Greek and Latin study, which would take up most of my time over the next two years.  Do any of you have any experience with Greek?

[Goose Goose Honk At Me Now]

I have now learned enough kitchen and conversational Spanish to tell my co-workers (who have been pestering me about not having a boyfriend for going on four months non-stop) that I'm gay. Given, the word I learned for it has connotations much closer to "dyke", but it got the point across.

Progress!