Even Greener Pastures
Language Learning => Questions about the Use of Language => Topic started by: Nikola on June 29, 2019, 08:00:25 pm
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Thanks everyone. Yes, SHL, I think you understand what I mean. It does feel like cheating. I wonder if native speakers of German ever think twice before putting a verb at the end of an English sentence, wondering "am I doing this because it's correct or because I'm German?"
I find the story about the Ukrainian/Russian speaker needing to check about different word endings for different gender peculiar to say the least, especially as she wasn't just checking if that was the case, she didn't know why it was so.
I’ve not seen any Germans incorrectly put a verb at the end of a sentence in English. For some reason they just don’t seem to have a problem it. Americans very much have a problem with not putting a German verb at the end of a sentence where it belongs, which drives me crazy. It makes me want to say, “No you dummy. That verb belongs at the end of the sentence! Your speaking Denglish.”
Pronunciation problems. Germans sometimes have problems with the v and the w, where they make a V sound like a W and mixed them up occasionally. The growling American R sound (so I’ve been told it’s growling) presents a small problem because the R sounds are different between the languages, and there are others too. Of course there’s the classic error in German in not using the English present progressive (because it doesn’t exist in German), like “I am living in the US for 5 years.” That one is more common than you’d think.
I like this video of a really cute German kid in Germany’s Got Talent singing Elvis Presley’s famous, “I can’t help falling in love with you.” His pronunciation is all around very good, I think, and you can only hear a slight accent. Just small stuff. Like notice how he makes a mistake with the lyrics “..would it be a sin” and and sounds like “vould it be a sin?” But, sometimes he gets the W sound right. The classic problem with the TH is usually not a problem with just a little instruction. That TH sound is really common in many other languages. Icelandic has a TH sound in just about every sentence.
It’s a minor point, and no one would care. Probably because the kid has such an angelic voice.
https://youtu.be/u4aKmTVfoEI
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In Russian, the Genitive case is sometimes used with negations. I still have problems with this, though, because it's not exactly a "rule" (so, sometimes you use Genitive, but sometimes you just use Accusative instead). With disliking, I think Russian would just use Accusative (at least that's what I'd use...), but you'd have to ask a Russian to be sure. :-\
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That's funny because I find Slovenian most difficult to understand among Slavic languages. But I wouldn't be surprised seeing this case changing.
On the other hand I never tried to find out why some languages have it while the other not. The same with different gender endings in the past tense or with double negation in Slavic and Romance versus Germanic languages. We don't have to understand the phenomenon to know it exists ;)
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They hear:
Ljubim belo vino. I love white wine.
Ne maram rdečega vina. I don't like red wine.
I know they're different verbs, it's not ideal, but let's focus on the changing case. Would it not be at least a bit strange if they found it surprising? I mean, Martin, would it leave you open-mouthed, asking "how did this happen"? :)
Nikola, no, I don't think it would leave Marcin open-mouthed with surprise, and probably no other Polish speaker, either. However, I do think you might still get the why-question every now and then. See, I think it's not about things looking familiar, it's about not knowing what the change depends on, exactly - because you'd never consciously worked out why the verb or the case/ending changes in this or that instance in your native language.
Else, it might be about not being able to make the transfer, or at least not immediately. Because it looks different, you somehow assume that it must be different.
Case in point: a while ago I met somebody with an extremely rare German surname, Callam (the "c" being pronounced like "k" in that instance). I wondered out loud where it came from and was told a genealogist had once claimed it must stem from the Latin word for "reed", calamus.
(Amusing side note: that's how the same genealogist had come up with a pretty family crest full of feathers, because, see, you can use a reed for writing, same as a feather.)
Now, a couple of days ago, I came across the Persian word for cabbage, transliterated as "kalam". With my introduction, you'll see the connection immediately. However, I only realized this was another possible source of that weird surname an hour ago, after I'd said the Persian word out loud for the first time. ;D
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This isn't quite what you were asking about, but in my Czech, I get more interference from Russian (which I learned as an adult) than from Serbian (my native language). A lot more. Both with grammar (e.g. case endings) and with vocabulary (so, I'll use a Russian word, only to realize that, oops, wrong language :-[).
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No, no, Nikola, I understood perfectly well. My Polish is sufficient by now to know that this Ukranian woman's question was on a par with asking why it's sometimes "był/o" and sometimes "była" in Polish. :)
And my question about liking/not liking something referred to the reasons for changing the case. The answer I would have needed, but which none of the native speakers was able to provide - remember, this was just after I'd started learning Polish! - was "In a positive sentence, you use the accusative, but if it's a negative sentence, you need to use the genitive".
I'm sure you'll admit that was a pretty reasonable question, given that German has nothing like it. :D
It was a perfectly legitimate question. I just can't help feeling that your example addresses a more challenging issue than Martin's. To compare the comparable, let's suppose the native speaker of Polish that you're talking about, is learning another Slavic language, namely Slovenian (this is the closest I could find to the Polish way of handling the "I like vs I don't like" case change).
They hear:
Ljubim belo vino. I love white wine.
Ne maram rdečega vina. I don't like red wine.
I know they're different verbs, it's not ideal, but let's focus on the changing case. Would it not be at least a bit strange if they found it surprising? I mean, Martin, would it leave you open-mouthed, asking "how did this happen"? :)
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No, no, Nikola, I understood perfectly well. My Polish is sufficient by now to know that this Ukranian woman's question was on a par with asking why it's sometimes "był/o" and sometimes "była" in Polish. :)
And my question about liking/not liking something referred to the reasons for changing the case. The answer I would have needed, but which none of the native speakers was able to provide - remember, this was just after I'd started learning Polish! - was "In a positive sentence, you use the accusative, but if it's a negative sentence, you need to use the genitive".
I'm sure you'll admit that was a pretty reasonable question, given that German has nothing like it. :D
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The thing I can say as the defence of the girl who asked the question is that the word "bio" may be misleading for people from the North (West and East) Slavic groups. We would expect the male form similar to "bil" (like Polish "był" and Russian "был"). The word "bio" makes us think of something like shortened "biological".
But when we hear the way they pronounce it (this "o" sounds like something between "o" and "l") it becomes more familiar.
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Alharacas, I think we'd have to get someone like Irena or Pasha to tell us just how surprising it would be for a speaker of Russian/Ukrainian to encounter what Martin describes:
Once I answered a question on It...i questions section. The question was about Croatian (which I don't speak, but understand simple sentences) and the person who asked was Ukrainian (if I remember it well) declaring herself as being native in two Slavic languages (the 2nd one was Russian obviously). The question was in English. She wondered why the 3rd person past tense ("was") is sometimes "bio" and sometimes "bila". The answer was that the past tense has separate male and female forms in Slavic languages. But she probably tried to think "too English" to notice that.
We're talking about verbs in different Slavic languages and the fact that the past tense reflects the gender. As far as I'm aware, this is how it works in other Slavic languages the student speaks. Now, I know that people's ability to reflect on their own language can be quite limited, but this should, as far as the level of difficulty is concerned, be nothing like explaining the declension of adjectives to a non-native speaker. Also, there is no reason why case endings are the way they are. You can't really explain why. But you can explain why the same verb in the past tense has multiple endings - because it reflects multiple genders.
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I have an example of this from my lesson today. We were watching this movie, ¨Temple Grandin¨, a fact-based movie about an autistic woman. (it is a good movie that I had not heard of before, although she is a very interesting person. I had read one of her books.) https://www.amazon.com/Temple-Grandin-Claire-Danes/dp/B009MEEZXI
In this movie there is a flashback of a memory of her mother when Temple was a child, laying on the floor writhing in rage while other adults looked on during her birthday party. I tried to figure out how to describe it, and said, ¨Well in English I would have said she ´she lost it.´ But you wouldn´t say it that way in Spanish, literally ¨lo perdío,¨ would you?¨ To which he replied, yes, we say it exactly that way.
The grammar was not tricky but somehow I always expect things that are expressions, like metaphors, to be different instead of exactly the same in Spanish.
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Thanks everyone. Yes, SHL, I think you understand what I mean. It does feel like cheating. I wonder if native speakers of German ever think twice before putting a verb at the end of an English sentence, wondering "am I doing this because it's correct or because I'm German?"
Can't speak for anybody else, but I don't, not about verb placement. Prepositions are a different matter altogether. The older I get, the more I find myself doubting my instincts - and rightly so. Sigh.
I find the story about the Ukrainian/Russian speaker needing to check about different word endings for different gender peculiar to say the least, especially as she wasn't just checking if that was the case, she didn't know why it was so.
Er... no. Not peculiar in the least. You try asking any Polish speaker who's never wasted a thought on his native language why the endings change when you switch from saying "Lubię białe wino" (I like white wine, accusative) to "Nie lubię czerwonego wina" (I don't like red wine, genitive), and in all likelihood they're going to look at you as if you'd asked them why some wines were red while others were white, why people die, or why dogs bark. (I know. I've tried. And one of those I asked had a degree in German philology.)
Failing that, ask any ordinary German why it's "der gute Schnaps" but "ein guter Schnaps" and watch them flounder and drown in the intricacies of a bit of grammar they use every day. :D
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Thanks everyone. Yes, SHL, I think you understand what I mean. It does feel like cheating. I wonder if native speakers of German ever think twice before putting a verb at the end of an English sentence, wondering "am I doing this because it's correct or because I'm German?"
I find the story about the Ukrainian/Russian speaker needing to check about different word endings for different gender peculiar to say the least, especially as she wasn't just checking if that was the case, she didn't know why it was so.
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Unfortunately, I never remember to make a note when it happens, that's why I can't give you any examples. But yes, every once in a while, there are bits of Polish which make me think "That's exactly like German!", followed by "I'd never have dared to say it like that".
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The thing I find interesting is that sometimes we not only define a foreign language as something different to ours, but as something that must be similar to other languages we've learned - especially to the one we use most. To be more specific - people who are not native English speakers but use English much more than the other languages they learned (like many users of this board, I think), compare the language they know to English.
Once I answered a question on It...i questions section. The question was about Croatian (which I don't speak, but understand simple sentences) and the person who asked was Ukrainian (if I remember it well) declaring herself as being native in two Slavic languages (the 2nd one was Russian obviously). The question was in English. She wondered why the 3rd person past tense ("was") is sometimes "bio" and sometimes "bila". The answer was that the past tense has separate male and female forms in Slavic languages. But she probably tried to think "too English" to notice that.
Another strange situation was when I tried to write a notebook entry in Russian (after over 20 years of not using it). The people commented that my writing was understandable, but sounded a bit artificially, like "literal translation from English". Did I do that? Russian should be more similar to Polish than to English. And I learned it much earlier than English. Was I thinking in English when writing that entry? I didn't noticed. Maybe subconsciously... Or maybe I just avoided everything that might be similar to my native tongue.
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Interesting question, Nikola.
Hum. Not being a teacher, I can’t really say how learners approach this. I think a good rule of thumb is just to reorganize a thought, or an expression, that you know to be correct, until you encounter an alternative, which may or may not be similar to one used in your own language, and never to assume anything along the lines of similarities, until you are 100% sure. Assume nothing. I guess that has always been my approach. Actually, because English is such a dominating /domineering language on the world front, it sort of makes sense that other languages would adopt expressions and idioms from English, that are either very similar or direct translations, into their own language and be okay with them. But, it’s all up to the natives to do that.
But, I think I know what you are talking about.
Since you speak German, you can relate to this.
If you want to say in German, “that makes no sense”, the technically correct translation is “Das ergibt keinen Sinn.” But, we all know people do say, and have been saying for years, “Das macht keinen Sinn”, just like English.
But, I read fairly recently, where someone wrote, that “das macht keinen Sinn” was bad German and should be avoided, because it’s just another example of German “word-aping”, as my former Professor used to say. It’s not real German.It’s too much like English.
But, I’ve heard highly respected native speakers, like Helmut Schmidt, in interviews say this: “das macht keinen Sinn”, so I will use it since I know it is okay. But, then I frequently lean toward “ergibt” instead of “macht” in that sentence, only because I like to use different words for the same thing, or expressions sometimes, because other people do. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced a “that can’t be right” feeling about it, but it does seem a bit like cheating almost to me. But, I do think I understand what you are getting at.
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Sorry, I didn't know what else to call it, maybe there is a term for it. I'm talking about the natural instinct that makes learners avoid constructions in their target language that sound too much like what they would say in their native language.
You might say: "But Nikola, people do the exact opposite. They make mistakes because they apply the rules of their own language in their target language so what are you talking about?" I'm talking about learners who have already reached a certain level in their target language and who have learned some rules, in particular ones that define the common word order. They've learned that what they have to do with the sentence in their native language is strip it down to mere ideas and reorganise those, often using a different word order, parts of speech and prepositions, in order not to sound too "foreign".
So you're at a point where you're proud to be able to suppress your foreignness when suddenly, you hear a native speaker say something that sounds like your native language translated word-by-word. And you think "What? You're allowed to do that?!" I've seen Czech people learning English experience this moment when, after years of being told to use the prepositional phrase with an indirect object,
I saved the last biscuit for you,
they find out they can squeeze the indirect object before the direct one,
I saved you the last biscuit,
creating a sentence uncomfortably similar to a Czech one. Often, their first reaction is "that sounds wrong".
When I started working in England, I brought my own mug to work. It said Co tě nezabije, to tě posílí. A colleague of mine asked what it said so I translated it as "If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger", not realising there was such a proverb in English. She said: "Oh, that's like our 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' and I said "that's actually the literal translation, I just didn't think I could say it like that".
Have you ever experienced a moment like this?