Reply by Jeroen Belleman●December 27, 20212021-12-27
On 2021-12-27 15:01, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
> On 12/27/2021 12:28, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
>> On 2021-12-26 12:52, Martin Brown wrote:
>>> On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
>>>> On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
>>>>> Arie de Muijnck <noreply@ademu.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>>>>>> Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in
>>>>>>> kindergarten. Maybe that is why I have few problems with the
>>>>>>> language when in France. They did not start with German and
>>>>>>> English until highschool.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at
>>>>>> 12, German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Papa fume une pipe. Maman coupe le pain. Le soldat sur la mur.
>>>>>> etc...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Arie
>>>>>
>>>>> I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz,
>>>>> France. Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he
>>>>> could speak fluent French and English. He knew which was which,
>>>>> and never got them confused.
>>>>>
>>>>> It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up
>>>>> languages.[...]
>>>>
>>>> A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
>>>> much less time, provided they are motivated and completely
>>>> immersed. It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become
>>>> fluent in French.
>>>
>>> I'm not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels
>>> and at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30's.
>>>
>>> It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
>>> one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That
>>> was my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter
>>> with having teachers who were younger than me and that was a
>>> struggle.
>> [...]
>>
>> You can't compare a classroom course of a few hours per week
>> with the total immersion undergone by a young child. Believe
>> me, when you are completely immersed in a foreign environment,
>> you'll pick it up in no time at all.
>>
>> Jeroen Belleman
>
> I had taken plenty of German lessons as a child but it took me
> getting there (Cologne, 1988) where I was all day with Germans, then
> once I got a TV things got even faster. Immersion is what it takes
> indeed.
[...]
>
> I wonder how it goes with you when you think in the target language.
> Do you think numbers in it (I always resort to my native Bulgarian
> when it comes to numbers and I talk to myself)? I tend to think
> while working in a mixture of languages, if I were to talk like
> that it would sound quite moronic I suppose. When I have an imaginary
> conversation with people I do it in the language I would use
> with them in an actual conversation, along with the occasional
> stumbling at some word I might miss...
>
> Dimiter
Yes, that matches roughly what I do. Simple numbers, measures and
quantities are in the target language, or in the language I've
been using most recently, but _operations_ are mostly in my mother
tongue. Probably a left-over of how multiplication tables were
drilled into us in primary school, by chanting them aloud over
and over. I too tend to mutter and mix under my breath when busy.
Occasionally, I'll switch language in mid-conversation without
noticing, drawing blank stares from my listeners. It then takes a
second or two to realize what's wrong.
Jeroen Belleman
Reply by Don Y●December 27, 20212021-12-27
On 12/27/2021 7:01 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
>> You can't compare a classroom course of a few hours per week
>> with the total immersion undergone by a young child. Believe
>> me, when you are completely immersed in a foreign environment,
>> you'll pick it up in no time at all.
>
> I had taken plenty of German lessons as a child but it took me
> getting there (Cologne, 1988) where I was all day with Germans, then
> once I got a TV things got even faster. Immersion is what it takes
> indeed.
It's not just the "sink or swim" aspect (i.e., if you can't say it,
you can't convey it).
You are constantly reminded of idioms, tenses, pronoun genders,
etc. when you are listening to others speak (assuming they are
proficient speakers).
I suspect it is akin to different types/degrees of deafness
affecting *you* speech as you lose feedback from hearing
those around you as well as hearing your own speech (and
being able to continually readjust it).
I've not been able to sort out how folks can be *tone* deaf,
though. It seems like one should always be able to perceive
differences in their own utterances when heard alongside
other folks, concurrently (don't they hear the beat frequency?)
> Back then my English was pretty decent - I could read and write
> not much worse than I can today, but I my spoken English was much
> worse, I had had virtually no immersion. (I never had a complete
> one really, never lived in an English speaking country). I used
> to speak English with a friend in Cologne whose mum was English,
> this did a lot. Then came all the media etc., nowadays I only
> have problems understanding say Alex Ferguson or Kenny Dalglish
> on TV, not unlike many native English speakers... :).
>
> I wonder how it goes with you when you think in the target language.
> Do you think numbers in it (I always resort to my native Bulgarian
> when it comes to numbers and I talk to myself)? I tend to think
> while working in a mixture of languages, if I were to talk like
> that it would sound quite moronic I suppose. When I have an imaginary
> conversation with people I do it in the language I would use
> with them in an actual conversation, along with the occasional
> stumbling at some word I might miss...
I know many foreign language speakers who obviously think in their
native tongue and actively translate to english. This evidenced
by their failure to adjust word order properly, etc.
(This is one of the efforts that causes me to pause when speaking
a foreign language as I have to "see" where the words belong, once
translated and consciously shift them into their proper places
before uttering)
What I find most amusing is how fluent speakers of a language will
so readily drop *out* of that language to speak something that
isn't easily expressed (or remembered) in it. When I find myself
in that situation, I noticeably *stop* as I search for the correct
term and only fumble after having spent a noticeable amount of time
trying to recall the word. By contrast, these folks seem to have
"thought ahead" to the words they'll not recall and just slipped
their (english) equivalents in without skipping a beat! *Listening*
to them speak is thus made more difficult as you're focused on
that (nonenglish) language and suddenly encounter a word that
*doesn't* need translation...
Reply by Dimiter_Popoff●December 27, 20212021-12-27
On 12/27/2021 12:28, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
> On 2021-12-26 12:52, Martin Brown wrote:
>> On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
>>> On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
>>>> Arie de Muijnck <noreply@ademu.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>>>>> Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in
>>>>>> kindergarten. Maybe that is why I have few problems with the
>>>>>> language when in France. They did not start with German and
>>>>>> English until highschool.
>>>>>
>>>>> Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at
>>>>> 12, German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.
>>>>>
>>>>> Papa fume une pipe. Maman coupe le pain. Le soldat sur la mur.
>>>>> etc...
>>>>>
>>>>> But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}
>>>>>
>>>>> Arie
>>>>
>>>> I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz,
>>>> France. Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he
>>>> could speak fluent French and English. He knew which was which,
>>>> and never got them confused.
>>>>
>>>> It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up
>>>> languages.[...]
>>>
>>> A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
>>> much less time, provided they are motivated and completely
>>> immersed. It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become
>>> fluent in French.
>>
>> I'm not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels
>> and at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30's.
>>
>> It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
>> one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That
>> was my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter
>> with having teachers who were younger than me and that was a
>> struggle.
> [...]
>
> You can't compare a classroom course of a few hours per week
> with the total immersion undergone by a young child. Believe
> me, when you are completely immersed in a foreign environment,
> you'll pick it up in no time at all.
>
> Jeroen Belleman
I had taken plenty of German lessons as a child but it took me
getting there (Cologne, 1988) where I was all day with Germans, then
once I got a TV things got even faster. Immersion is what it takes
indeed.
Back then my English was pretty decent - I could read and write
not much worse than I can today, but I my spoken English was much
worse, I had had virtually no immersion. (I never had a complete
one really, never lived in an English speaking country). I used
to speak English with a friend in Cologne whose mum was English,
this did a lot. Then came all the media etc., nowadays I only
have problems understanding say Alex Ferguson or Kenny Dalglish
on TV, not unlike many native English speakers... :).
I wonder how it goes with you when you think in the target language.
Do you think numbers in it (I always resort to my native Bulgarian
when it comes to numbers and I talk to myself)? I tend to think
while working in a mixture of languages, if I were to talk like
that it would sound quite moronic I suppose. When I have an imaginary
conversation with people I do it in the language I would use
with them in an actual conversation, along with the occasional
stumbling at some word I might miss...
Dimiter
Reply by Jeroen Belleman●December 27, 20212021-12-27
On 2021-12-26 12:52, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
>> On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
>>> Arie de Muijnck <noreply@ademu.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>>>> Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in
>>>>> kindergarten. Maybe that is why I have few problems with the
>>>>> language when in France. They did not start with German and
>>>>> English until highschool.
>>>>
>>>> Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at
>>>> 12, German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.
>>>>
>>>> Papa fume une pipe. Maman coupe le pain. Le soldat sur la mur.
>>>> etc...
>>>>
>>>> But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}
>>>>
>>>> Arie
>>>
>>> I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz,
>>> France. Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he
>>> could speak fluent French and English. He knew which was which,
>>> and never got them confused.
>>>
>>> It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up
>>> languages.[...]
>>
>> A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
>> much less time, provided they are motivated and completely
>> immersed. It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become
>> fluent in French.
>
> I'm not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels
> and at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30's.
>
> It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
> one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That
> was my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter
> with having teachers who were younger than me and that was a
> struggle.
[...]
You can't compare a classroom course of a few hours per week
with the total immersion undergone by a young child. Believe
me, when you are completely immersed in a foreign environment,
you'll pick it up in no time at all.
Jeroen Belleman
Reply by Jan Panteltje●December 26, 20212021-12-26
On a sunny day (Sun, 26 Dec 2021 06:41:11 -0800 (PST)) it happened Lasse
Langwadt Christensen <langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote in
<026c7129-9a74-4161-8d48-b646326fa258n@googlegroups.com>:
>not sure about Netherlands, but here TV and movies have closed captions instead
>of dubbed speech ,
>I think that makes a big difference
Netherlands has mostly subtitles.
On satellite from here in the Netherlands on ASTRA 1 satellite I see all foreign movies in the German channels have German voice over.
It would take little for them to also send the original sound (English for example), but no.
Probably done to keep the Germans deliberately dumb?
It does get boring and kills some good movies to always hear the same few German voices for
famous English actors. I have no problem with German myself,
On the other Astra 2 satellite almost all is in English, even Russia has an English channel (rt).
Russian's German channel was recently started and then killed (license on Eutelsat revoked )by forces afraid of the truth being told I think.
OTOH satellite, having a satellite dish, is a a great way to see other countries / civilizations/ views.
I have close to 1000 channels free to air on my cheap Chinese DVB-S2 box from ebay, think it is full.
And I have a movable dish so it will point automatically to sats.
On the PC connected to the dish some more.
For that I wrote the dish controller and some...
http://www.panteltje.com/pub/xdipo_recording_transponder.gif
used for dish pointing to QO100 ham satellite too.
But for normal watching a cheap Chinese box is fine.
Sort of funny, can even see Cuba live, Spanish, just a number press away.
xdipo has voice control
show bbc2
worked, but using the remote is more quiet.
I hardly watch Dutch channels, only news and sometimes art.
Netherlands as well as Germany still has videotext / teletext / ceefax.
No idea why UK dropped it, a big loss.
All I can say is : Get a satellite dish, local cable is very limited / censored in many ways.
And having no cable saves money big time too.
Reply by Lasse Langwadt Christensen●December 26, 20212021-12-26
søndag den 26. december 2021 kl. 12.53.36 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
> On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
> > On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
> >> Arie de Muijnck <nor...@ademu.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> >>>> Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in kindergarten.
> >>>> Maybe that is why I have few problems with the language when in France.
> >>>> They did not start with German and English until highschool.
> >>>
> >>> Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at 12,
> >>> German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.
> >>>
> >>> Papa fume une pipe.
> >>> Maman coupe le pain.
> >>> Le soldat sur la mur.
> >>> etc...
> >>>
> >>> But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}
> >>>
> >>> Arie
> >>
> >> I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz, France.
> >> Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he could speak
> >> fluent
> >> French and English. He knew which was which, and never got them confused.
> >>
> >> It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up languages.[...]
> >
> > A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
> > much less time, provided they are motivated and completely immersed.
> > It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become fluent in French.
> I'm not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels and
> at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30's.
>
> It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
> one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That was
> my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter with
> having teachers who were younger than me and that was a struggle.
>
> The sheer amount of rote learning to reach even a basic adult literacy
> of 2000 kanji is a big problem - especially when you are supposed to be
> working as well. Snag is that to look them up in a kanji dictionary you
> need to know exactly how many brush strokes it takes to draw them!
>
> Due to a cost saving measure we learned to speak Japanese with a rural
> Ibaraki accent through being based in Tsukuba science city. They also
> taught us more useful phrases than standard courses at the time. This
> caused amusement in Tokyo especially with Japanese senior executives.
>
> I was always impressed with how fluent my Netherlands Twente university
> exchange students were at English. Even the thickest ones were fluent to
> near native level and the smart ones could do three or even four!
> (ie. Dutch, English and one or both of French and German)
not sure about Netherlands, but here TV and movies have closed captions instead of dubbed speech ,
I think that makes a big difference
Reply by Martin Brown●December 26, 20212021-12-26
On 24/12/2021 21:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
> On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
>> Arie de Muijnck <noreply@ademu.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>>> Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in kindergarten.
>>>> Maybe that is why I have few problems with the language when in France.
>>>> They did not start with German and English until highschool.
>>>
>>> Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at 12,
>>> German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.
>>>
>>> Papa fume une pipe.
>>> Maman coupe le pain.
>>> Le soldat sur la mur.
>>> etc...
>>>
>>> But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}
>>>
>>> Arie
>>
>> I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz, France.
>> Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he could speak
>> fluent
>> French and English. He knew which was which, and never got them confused.
>>
>> It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up languages.[...]
>
> A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
> much less time, provided they are motivated and completely immersed.
> It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become fluent in French.
I'm not so sure having learnt various languages to different levels and
at various stages from secondary school through to my late 30's.
It is almost certainly easier to learn to think directly in more than
one language when you are introduced to them as a young child. That was
my experience anyway. Learning Japanese was my first encounter with
having teachers who were younger than me and that was a struggle.
The sheer amount of rote learning to reach even a basic adult literacy
of 2000 kanji is a big problem - especially when you are supposed to be
working as well. Snag is that to look them up in a kanji dictionary you
need to know exactly how many brush strokes it takes to draw them!
Due to a cost saving measure we learned to speak Japanese with a rural
Ibaraki accent through being based in Tsukuba science city. They also
taught us more useful phrases than standard courses at the time. This
caused amusement in Tokyo especially with Japanese senior executives.
I was always impressed with how fluent my Netherlands Twente university
exchange students were at English. Even the thickest ones were fluent to
near native level and the smart ones could do three or even four!
(ie. Dutch, English and one or both of French and German)
--
Regards,
Martin Brown
Reply by Lasse Langwadt Christensen●December 25, 20212021-12-25
fredag den 24. december 2021 kl. 18.25.06 UTC+1 skrev Arie de Muijnck:
> On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> > Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in kindergarten.
> > Maybe that is why I have few problems with the language when in France.
> > They did not start with German and English until highschool.
> Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at 12,
> German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.
>
> Papa fume une pipe.
> Maman coupe le pain.
> Le soldat sur la mur.
> etc...
>
> But it still really helps on holydays in France :-}
>
Reply by Anthony William Sloman●December 25, 20212021-12-25
On Thursday, December 23, 2021 at 10:23:16 PM UTC+11, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
> On 2021-12-23 10:39, Martin Brown wrote:
> [...]
> > Cholmondeley (Chumlee) catch out most
> > non-native English speakers in fact most non-locals. [...]
>
> English is well known for its complete disconnect between
> pronunciation and spelling, but this is ridiculous.
There's not a complete disconnect, but there are at least six different phoneme-to-grapheme schemes embedded in modern English, and picking which one has been used isn't easy.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply by David Brown●December 25, 20212021-12-25
On 24/12/2021 22:56, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
> On 2021-12-24 20:24, Jan Frank wrote:
>> Arie de Muijnck <noreply@ademu.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2021-12-24 16:24, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>>> Here in the Netherlands they started teaching French in kindergarten.
>>>> Maybe that is why I have few problems with the language when in France.
>>>> They did not start with German and English until highschool.
>>>
>>> Oh, these memories... French started when I was 11, English at 12,
>>> German at 13. Had exams in all 4 languages.
>>>
>>> ����� Papa fume une pipe.
>>> ����� Maman coupe le pain.
>>> ����� Le soldat sur la mur.
>>> ���������� etc...
>>>
>>> But it still really helps on holydays in France� :-}
>>>
>>> Arie
>>
>> I am Canadian and married my wife while I was with NATO in Metz, France.
>> Our first child was a boy, and by the time he was 4, he could speak
>> fluent
>> French and English. He knew which was which, and never got them confused.
>>
>> It never ceased to amaze me how quickly children pick up languages.[...]
>
> A myth, incessantly repeated. Adults can pick up a new language in
> much less time, provided they are motivated and completely immersed.
> It took me, as an adult, less than a year to become fluent in French.
>
It depends on many factors. Immersion and dedication is certainly very
important to learning any language. There's no doubt that most adults
/could/ learn another language fairly fluently if they are motivated,
spend the time and effort required, have suitable learning facilities,
and practice sufficiently outside of the learning environment. (I
consider my mother-in-law's refusal to speak English to me, and
incredible patience, as significant to my learning Norwegian.)
However, there are many factors that differentiate learning a language
as an adult, and learning it as a child.
To start with, in the first two years of life (and especially the first
six months), a baby's ears and immediate auditory processing is
extremely malleable. The system is trained and tuned to hear and
distinguish the phoneme of the language the baby hears around it. There
are hundreds of phonemes used in languages around the world, but each
language only uses a subset. Added to that, languages vary
significantly in how they handle tones, variations in volume, and other
factors. Your hearing system is tuned and trained during this part of
your life, and while it can learn more throughout your life its
flexibility drops off sharply with age.
When you learn another language as an adult, but find that certain
sounds in the language are particularly difficult and you get them wrong
both when speaking and listening, it is because you simply cannot hear
the difference.
The effect of this is stronger the greater the difference between the
languages. Being born and brought up in the Netherlands, you'll
probably have had early contact with several other languages in addition
to Dutch. If you had heard enough French or English, you'd have some
familiarity with the few phonemes that you would otherwise be missing
when you learned French as an adult. But if you had decided to learn,
say, Chinese or Thai as an adult, you'd have had a bigger challenge.
Another big effect is language learning at school. Very few of us keep
much of the French, German or whatever that we "learned" at school. But
like many subjects at school, the point is not to learn the subject but
to learn to learn. I remember almost nothing of my French or German
from school, despite having got quite solid grades - but I have no doubt
that they made it far easier to learn Norwegian as an adult.