The Unique Skill of Understanding a Foreign Language

Daniel Tammet said

"It's one thing to learn a language it, to speak it, to produce it, to be able to talk with somebody. Comprehension, actually listening to a language and understanding it, that's something else because it takes time for the ear to get used to the totally different sounds"

Additionally, written language and spoken are often quite different. The vocabulary is different, and grammar rules are not respected. At least in English and Portuguese there are a tremendous number of sounds that are dropped when compared with written language. Ultimately, what got me over the hump was to recognize groups of sounds/words that occur together frequently and hear them as a single word.

For example, a Brazilian telling a story will start many sentences with "D-F-L". I finally asked someone what that mysterious word was. Turns out they are saying "Dai, eu falei" or "Dai, ele(a) falou" ("And then I said" or "And then (s)he said") The actual phrase has 5 syllables, while the compressed one is nearly 1. You wouldn't come across this phrase in any book and maybe not even on TV. It is something unique to natural, unplanned conversation.

So imagine that the spoken and written language are two different languages altogether. What are the implications? It means that you need to build up a vocabulary of sound groups. These will form the "vocabulary" of the spoken language. This is a hard task because it is usually not written down anywhere. But if you have access to native speakers, you can ask them questions just as I did. And I found that having even a small vocabulary of such "sound groups" goes a long way.

There are at least two benefits to thinking about written vs. spoken language this way. First, you will have less and less of a problem with people speaking too fast because you won't be translating from spoken language to written language (and then possibly back into your own language). You will hear a phrase and treat it as a single idea.

Second, you won't feel so bad that your comprehension skills are low because you'll realize that the task is actually quite difficult--you are learning 2 languages, not just one!

Thinking in another language #1

What does it mean to "think in another language"?  Is it an accurate measure of fluency in a foreign language?  Here is Foreign Language Doctor's opinion, and I think it makes sense.

The Evolution of Language

I never realized how bad it was, until the Internet was born.  

Grammar, that is.  In chat sessions, forums, and emails the level of English displayed is amazingly low.  People show no sign of knowing the difference between they're, their, and there.  Or between to and too.  I'm talking about basic 4th grade English here.  Not esoterica like why it is incorrect to use beg the question in the way most people use it...

What's interesting is that English is evolving MUCH faster than it did before.  Why?  Because in the old days, our primary reading materials were newspapers, books, and magazines.  Things scrutinized by editors for correctness.  This limited the degredation/evolution of the language from generation to generation.  

But with the Internet as our primary reading material, there is no restoring force.  Nothing to pull us constantly toward a fixed standard of English.  Descriptive linguists should have a field day with this; prescriptive linguists will probably be crying if they aren't already.