Agnostic.com
1 0

You may learn too many different languages and it enterance to the new worlds but your brain has been shaped based on the first language. Forget about common exceptionals, your fortune influenced by mother tongue language.

Sadik 2 Sep 10
Share
You must be a member of this group before commenting. Join Group

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

1 comment

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

2

It's a lot of work learning new rules just to do things that you can already do in one language, so there's a strong temptation just to be lazy and apply some of the rules of your native language to a new language that you're learning, but if you use that language a lot, you will gradually learn how to speak it more and more correctly the more you use it.

It's very hard to do that for more than a few languages though, and for most people there are lots of other things they want to do with their lives that should be of higher priority, so it's best to set a low, realistic ambition rather than a high one that will waste too much of your life on learning lots of languages to a level of perfection that you don't need. I concentrate mainly on trying to understand languages without worrying about speaking them. There are only a few that I hope to learn to speak well.

I find languages like Japanese particularly hard when it comes to word order - the relative clauses are the worst part because they put almost everything the opposite way round to my native language, and this affects the way they think too, because they have to start at the wrong end of a chain of ideas. For example, if I say "the man who works in the shop behind the factory that your brother works in...", most of the steps in that chain link directly to the idea before them, making it easy to construct the clause as you think your way through it. In Japanese though, you have to think through the whole chain first and then start communicating it backwards from the far end, turning it into something like: "Your brother works factory in's behind at is shop-in works man..." That's really hard to adapt to.

You well mentioned about other higher priority in the life and do not wasting time on too many details of second languages however if someone want to immigrate to another country with different language and probably having a job, details(language) come to the priority. Its better to say with second language you may have more limited options in all aspects of life. My point refers to the part of life which more related to the culture ,language etc. Ex: A second language person may be a solicitor or psychologist but of course he/she is looser in competition with first languages because these field of study or work is highly influenced by language. However for some non-linguistic field such as hand jobs ,technology, medicine or anything that is not based on language competition is quite easier. Even some sectors are local (ex:law, psychology..) Thats why I think you may learn a second language for experience or maybe research or fun but it is not possible to speak as native language and your life might be more restricted in terms of lots of things.

Yes - if you move to another country where you need to use a different language, you're going to be at a disadvantage for a long time, but you can reach a point where you speak the language well enough for most jobs to be open to you, and people aren't worried about small errors so long as the meaning is clear. I know people who have moved to my country without speaking good English but who now speak it better than many native speakers after just a few years, though still with a hint of a foreign accent.

Perhaps there's some luck involved in this though, because it may depend on them having enough friends who correct all their errors to help them learn. Most people are very reluctant to do this as it feels rude to keep pointing out errors. There are also cases where the error itself may be so rude that they don't want to let the person know what they actually said. There's an example of that in your post above where you refer to "hand jobs", and I don't want to tell you what it actually means (but it's often done with dogs to help them breed without meeting each other). I'd advise you to refer to manual labour instead.

You need to make sure all your native-English-speaking friends know that you want them to point out all your errors, and keep reminding them of this if you think they're missing any. There can also be difficulties in finding enough of the right friends if you live in a place with lots of immigrants who don't speak English well enough to notice the errors, and in situations like that, errors can be spread from person to person, appearing to be correct because so many people make the same mistakes. This can be made worse if the few people around who are native English speakers are racists, so it's easy to be trapped in an environment where you don't have access to the help you need.

The Internet can help though if you can find the right contacts there. I'm happy to continue a conversation with you here if you want to give it a go (although I only look in here once a day, so it'll rarely be more than one post per day), and I'll correct everything and help you learn better ways to say things. For example, with "Forget about common exceptionals, your fortune influenced by mother tongue language", I don't know what you mean by common exceptionals/exceptions, and when you say "fortune", I think you mean "success". "Fortune" tends to mean "wealth", but it can mean "success" and "failure" in some contexts, such as where a "fortune teller" stares into a crystal ball (a ball made of glass) and makes predictions about your future. "Fortunately" means "lucky" (a good outcome by chance).

Recent Visitors 5

Photos

Posted by David_CooperBrazil's native language groups

Posted by David_CooperI like language maps - if you find any, please share them here.

Posted by JettyWhen a word has more than one meaning. 🤣

Posted by David_CooperTest your French

Posted by JettyIneptocracy

Posted by JettyI wonder if this works in any other language, though, in Chinese, for example.

Posted by JettyWait! You don't pronounce the L?! 😂

Posted by David_CooperI've often seen these in English, but doubtless the rest of the world does them too.

Posted by David_CooperShrödinger's cat

Posted by misternatureboyAnybody else using Duolingo to study another language? Estoy estudiando español.

Posted by EquusDanceJust read a fascinating article on the origins of language.

  • Top tags#languages #world #culture #chinese #college #hello #community #teacher #movies #Russian #hope #cats #teach #guns #insane #poetry #university #church #coffee #friends #wealth #UNsinkable #dignity #Omg #JamesRandi #animals #cultural #flowers #Israel #Christian #fundamentalist #earth #Orientation #limit #suicide #Song #mynameis #monogamy #dogs #broadcast #laws #hell #USA #stars #drug #parents #money #religious #verses #memories ...

    Members 85Top

    Moderator