Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:17 pm Post subject: understanding difficulties
After many years of English language learning I still have difficulties with pronunciation and understanding of certain vocabulary mainly slang. I've always done my best to pick new slang words up from time to time which I didn't know before. But it seems to me everlasting. A weird thing is that I haven't had these difficulties neither in German nor in Swedish learning. I wonder are there other non native speakers who would have had the same experience with it ?
Non tu n'es pas seul dans ce cas. L'anglais est sans doute une des "grandes" langues Européennes les plus difficiles à prononcer.
En ce qui concerne le vocabulaire j'ai toujours eu pas mal de difficultés avec le parler "de tous les jours" ou les "slangs" - paradoxalement il est plus facile pour un francophone de comprendre une discussion intellectuelle qu'un dialogue usuel que l'on peut entendre dans la rue.
Je crois que la plupart des Français ont vraiment du mal de ce point de vue avec l'Anglais.
paradoxalement il est plus facile pour un francophone de comprendre une discussion intellectuelle qu'un dialogue usuel que l'on peut entendre dans la rue.
Yes — and the reverse is also the case. I can read complex academic texts in French without really having any difficulty at all, but learning to understand casual conversation in French requires much more effort.
On the contrary, I find that it's the opposite for me in German. Overall, my French is a lot better than my German, but I find everyday conservation in German very easy to follow (often easier than in French) — even though I'm not usually very capable of making much of a contribution myself. I actually find that sort of situation quite frustrating — I was in a pub in Inverness about a month ago with my Swedish friend who speaks fluent German, and we met two men from Germany there — she ended up talking to them in German, but I felt a bit useless because even though I could follow what was going on, I wasn't really able to say much myself.
It's probably just hard all the way around to get the gist of everything in a foreign language. I was watching a movie with Spanish subtitles just to see how it would translate, and some of the dialogue was just completely different -- statements changed to questions to make them make better sense, idioms that just don't translate, nuances that got lost completely, and you can of course forget translating any puns or plays on words. So whoever had to read their way through that movie kind of got a much blander version of it. Which is also probably the case when I read my way through Pan's Labyrinth -- I lost a lot by not being able to follow it by ear. _________________ An apple a day....
Oui, Fab bien sûr je partage ton opinion. Moi aussi j'arrive à mieux comprendre un texte en anglais avec des termes de langage plus intellectuel. Je crois que ça vient sans doute du fait que ces mots ont la plupart une racine latine ou grec et sont employés dans plusieurs langues européennes.
Uriel I also noticed these differences between subtitles and original speech. Even I think sometimes it can sound strange.
As you Benjamin, I find conversational German easy to understand. I can also easily follow conversations on tv even when they speak quickly. May be it's because articulation in German is so clear. I think it helps me much to understand. _________________ Jag tänker alltså finns jag
jag är en svensktalande fransman och älskar svenska språket
paradoxalement il est plus facile pour un francophone de comprendre une discussion intellectuelle qu'un dialogue usuel que l'on peut entendre dans la rue.
Yes — and the reverse is also the case. I can read complex academic texts in French without really having any difficulty at all, but learning to understand casual conversation in French requires much more effort.
On the contrary, I find that it's the opposite for me in German. Overall, my French is a lot better than my German, but I find everyday conservation in German very easy to follow (often easier than in French) — even though I'm not usually very capable of making much of a contribution myself. I actually find that sort of situation quite frustrating — I was in a pub in Inverness about a month ago with my Swedish friend who speaks fluent German, and we met two men from Germany there — she ended up talking to them in German, but I felt a bit useless because even though I could follow what was going on, I wasn't really able to say much myself.
I have to say that I get the same impression from French and German myself; that everyday spoken French is practically quite far from the literary language, whereas everyday spoken central Middle German is relatively close to literary Standard German. I can easily link most spoken German that I have heard with literary German, whereas to me even spoken Standard French is just a whole mess of syllables whose relationship to literary French seems rather tenuous superficially. Of course, I am probably biased with respect to such considering I know far more German than French...
At the same time, though, many High German dialects are still very different from Standard German, and may not necessarily be crossintelligible with it; particularly, Upper German dialects could effectively be called separate languages from Middle German dialects, like with French and other Oïl languages, if it were not for they sharing a single literary language. Of course, this is completely ignoring Low German (incl. Low Saxon, Low Franconian, and East Low German) dialects, whose relationship with High German is akin to that of Occitan dialects with French and the other Oïl languages (and likewise with Rhenish dialects and Francoprovençal dialects respectively).
Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject: Re: understanding difficulties
Didier69 wrote:
After many years of English language learning I still have difficulties with pronunciation and understanding of certain vocabulary mainly slang. I've always done my best to pick new slang words up from time to time which I didn't know before. But it seems to me everlasting. A weird thing is that I haven't had these difficulties neither in German nor in Swedish learning. I wonder are there other non native speakers who would have had the same experience with it ?
To compare with the previous examples of French and German, I would have to say that at least the everyday spoken English amongst younger people here is more akin to spoken French than spoken German in its relationship to the literary language. Even though it can be phonemically analyzed so that it is very close to conservative General American, it is subject to a whole laundry list of phonological rules, including large amounts of elision and assimilation, such that it is phonetically quite far from conservative GA. Furthermore, cliticization and sandhi between adjacent words are extremely frequent in it, in a way far more reminiscent of spoken French than spoken German. Also, it has many cases of what could almost be called reverse liaison - word-final consonants that are normally pronounced unless the following word starts with a vowel or semivowel, where then they are generally lost (and in cases there are also analogous changes with word-initial consonants as well). Furthermore, many phonological properties such as vowel nasalization, vowel and consonant length, preglottalization, and palatalization have become potentially distinctive due to the phonological rules present in such, even if they would still be generally analyzed as non-phonemic, whereas in GA they are non-distinctive in nature, such that non-native speakers who only knew GA would be unlikely to pick up on them and thus would miss distinctions in practice. As a result, what is actually spoken is likely to be of limited intelligibility to individuals only familiar with literary or formal English, just like individuals primarily familiar with literary French are likely to have a hard time with spoken French.
L'anglais est sans doute une des "grandes" langues Européennes les plus difficiles à prononcer.
En ce qui concerne le vocabulaire j'ai toujours eu pas mal de difficultés avec le parler "de tous les jours" ou les "slangs" - paradoxalement il est plus facile pour un francophone de comprendre une discussion intellectuelle qu'un dialogue usuel que l'on peut entendre dans la rue.
Benjamin wrote:
Yes — and the reverse is also the case. I can read complex academic texts in French without really having any difficulty at all, but learning to understand casual conversation in French requires much more effort.
À partir du moment où tu maîtrises les règles cachées de l'écriture "surveillée" dans ta propre langue maternelle, la compréhension de ce même type de règles dans une langue étrangère est d'autant facilitée que les fonds lexical et thématique des deux langues présentent de grandes similarités qui sont autant de précieux indices dont les orolangues sont dépourvues :
1] la lecture silencieuse d'un écrit en langue étrangère t'émancipe des contingences de la phonologie propre au lecteur maternel qui te ferait lecture à voix haute ;
2] quand une incompréhension survient, tu peux relire sans solliciter l'intervention d'un interlocuteur de toute façon absent ;
3] il existe un fonds lexical interlangues croissant (un ensemble de signifiants graphiques en expansion) dont les avatars visuels varient assez peu, ou assez régulièrement, aux faux-amis près.
En résumé, les signifiants graphiques sont clairs (encre noire sur papier blanc vs positionnement et activation des organes phonatoires) et permaments (relecture à volonté vs demande de répétition). De plus, ces signifiants clairs et permanents accusent relativement peu de variation graphique (vocabulaire politique, médical etc). Enfin, ce signifiants clairs, permanents et assez transparents sont souvent attachés à des champs sémantiques très spécialisés et peu susceptibles d'interférences genre faux-amis.
I just liked your convo in two different languages, so I thought I could add up that Babelic confusion. What I wrote means "let's increase the Babelic confusion". _________________ Az alvástól megéhezem. Az evéstől elálmosodom. Az élet szép.
Thank you for translation Liz. I find Hungarian language sounds beautiful. I just know few sentences in this language. I would like to know more. Hungarian grammar sounds really interesting. Csak egy kicsit magyarul beszélek. Szeretném jobban magyar nyelvet ismerni.
_________________ Jag tänker alltså finns jag
jag är en svensktalande fransman och älskar svenska språket
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