UPSB v4
Serious Discussion / Some Linguistical and Anthropological Theories/Hypothesis/Thoughts
-
Date: Wed, Apr 18 2012 17:02:36
I've been pondering over some scenarios and the possible outcomes, each possible factor taken into consideration, and I would like to know what you guys think. 1) If one wants to be fluent in a language, but have no means to attend a class, he is therefore self taught and the best way is to speak it. Say there are no one in the vicinity speaking that language, and all he has as references and resources are audio lessons and Youtube. He will most likely be conversing to himself in the language all the time. Is it possible to endure say, 6 months of speaking that language all the time to himself? And will he retain his sanity? 2) If a babysitter were to care for a baby during the day, and the babysitter and the parents speak different languages, the baby will most likely pick up words and phrases in the babysitter's native tongue. How will this affect the baby's relationship with the parents, if the baby spends 3 quarters of a day with the babysitter? Is it possible that a language barrier will exist, assuming bilingualism cannot be achieved? 3) How many languages can a regular person learn at the same time assuming that he is a novice in all of them except his mother tongue? Assuming it is in his tertiary education (age is a factor here, younger students are able to absorb better), (can students take many languages in colleges anyway?) Is pronounciation and vocabulary mixup and confusion going to be a risk? I might have more but that's all I can think of. Thanks for your time.
-
Date: Wed, Apr 18 2012 21:13:24
1) It depends on the person and the situation he creates for himself. If the person for example doesn't imagine talking to himself, but the person in a video(Dora stuff like) it's very unlikely that he will go insane. Here however I assume that the person also goes outside and communicates with other people. There's also people like Tolien who create an entire language. They also managed to keep sanity and probably had few people to discuss their thoughts. After all there aren't many people who want to learn a completely new language just for the fun. 2) I think that depends very much on the age of the child. If the child has already learned a lot of their parents' language the babysitter's language will not affect the child as much. It will probably still pick up some words and some different sentence structures. If the child still hasn't learned a language it is very likely that the child will learn the babysitters language rather than the language of their own parents. It could however still be able to understand the parents, because the parents spend time with the child before the babysitter did (this is the case most of the time I think) so the child still has knowledge of the language that the parents speak, but cannot speak the language, because it lacks the knowledge about proper sentence sturctures and word usage. 3) This depends on the languages a lot. If the languages are similar to each other (eg all romanian or germanic languages) a person could be able to learn about 3~4 languages at the same time. However while learning those the person would more often confuse the languages with each other, because they are so similar. If the languages are completely different (like Hebrew, German and Chinese) the person would have difficulties learning all those at the same time. The progress would be very slow. However because the languages are so different, the person wouldn't confuse the languages as much so the person would be able to talk all the languages more fluently. But learning languages that differ a lot from each other would of course be harder to learn and the person has to be content with either very slow progress or a lower number of languages (more like 1~2 languages) for faster learning. That's all just my opinion though.
-
Date: Wed, Apr 18 2012 21:54:58
Regarding 3, similar languages can easily be learned at the same time. I know German + English and then picked up Latin/Spanish/French/a little Portuguese. Only thing I mess up is oui vs si in Spanish and French. Unless you have a solid foundation in other (similar) languages, I'd go with one at a time. Spanish/Italian/French/Portuguese/Latin all have parts from the others
-
Date: Thu, Apr 19 2012 03:12:36
My cousin has a babysitter who's native language isnt English. After about a month of babysitting she picked up the language (basic conversation that is) and after a couple of months she became fluent in it. I just guess that its up to the devotion of the person towards learning the language. Sanity will most probably be maintained if other human interaction is continued/
-
Date: Tue, May 8 2012 08:15:21
I wonder how people seem to love the idea of being united but the very fact that we exist and have different languages and currency are barriers to achieving that goal. I mean, it would be nice to be one and see how things are to work that way but that would not be as easy as how some people think it would. Ever consider stopping and actually think of what that would entitle some people to be?