There are 12 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: Krista D. Casada
1b. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: H. S. Teoh
1c. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: Krista D. Casada
1d. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: H. S. Teoh
1e. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: Paul Schleitwiler, FCM
1f. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: Krista D. Casada
1g. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: H. S. Teoh
1h. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: Leonardo Castro
1i. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: Dustfinger Batailleur
2a. Re: Old Georgian
From: David McCann
3a. Re: Robot DARYL needs a conlang
From: Leonardo Castro
4a. Re: OT: Texas German dying out
From: BPJ
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "Krista D. Casada" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 7:21 am ((PDT))
I find this Chinese-Spanish translation idea humorous because, when I am
struggling to express myself in Arabic (a third-ish language), it's not English
(my first) that comes out. It's Spanish (the second).
Krista C.
________________________________________
From: Constructed Languages List [[email protected]] on behalf of
Roger Mills [[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2013 10:42 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
--- On Sat, 3/2/13, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 4:36 PM, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
> > It probably also depends on what languages you learn.
>
>
> I think not as much as you might expect. Any second language, even one very
> similar to your L1, is still a different language with its own
> peculiarities, and learning it will facilitate learning even a radically
> different language.
>
This is certainly true for vocabulary. When I was learning Chinese, I
would often describe the meanings of words in Spanish in my head, as well
as English, in order to work out the different semantics and uses. It
helps to have those multiple translations, since a simple English gloss for
a word will not give you the myriad nuances of its meaning and usage.
================================================
I'm not at all sure about this. It may also depend on the person...?
I don't mean to boast, and I seem to have some innate love of languages...but--
I had no trouble learning Latin, then Spanish, in high school. In college I
took Italian, no problem (of course they're all closely related). I learned to
read French on the fly, mainly from newspapers, back in the 50s. But enough
that I could pass the Fr. reading exam in grad school (70s). STill can't speak
it properly, even though I know how it's _supposed_ to sound.....
In grad school (68-75) I took on Dutch (from reading + dictionary) then a
required German reading course (vocab was easy, correct grammar wasn't , esp.
the declination of the articles and adjectives.....) Plus, 3+ years of
Indonesian, which never perplexed me either and which served me well when I
went over there. And bits and pieces of lots of its relatives (< dictionaries
and a little actual speaking in the field).
One afternoon in grad school I sat down with a Chinese speaker and tried to
figure out the tones. _That_ I just couldn't get (and I have trouble doing the
tones in my own Conlang Gwr :-(((( ) Maybe formal course work would help, but
at that time I wasn't really interested, sorry to say.
I have the feeling (at least in my own mind) that the various semantic concepts
(and the words associated with them, even my conlangs) are all stored in one
place in the mind/brain. I can give you the words for "dog, love, eat, come,
go, house"-- almost anything you might ask-- at the drop of a hat.
Messages in this topic (21)
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1b. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 7:32 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 02:21:47PM +0000, Krista D. Casada wrote:
> I find this Chinese-Spanish translation idea humorous because, when I
> am struggling to express myself in Arabic (a third-ish language), it's
> not English (my first) that comes out. It's Spanish (the second).
[...]
I grew up with Hokkien (L1), Mandarin, English, and Malay. The first
three are still in active use, but, being in Canada now, I have not used
Malay for a very long time, and can no longer actively recall much of
the vocabulary. Now that I've starting learning Russian, whenever I
struggle to recall a Malay word, it's Russian that comes flooding into
my brain instead. :-P
T
--
Questions are the beginning of intelligence, but the fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom.
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "Krista D. Casada" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 7:41 am ((PDT))
Well, that's useful! At least your newest stays "on top." My older new ones
want to be first. (I occasionally have the terrible feeling that my brain is
divided in half, with my L1 on one side and everything else scrambling for
space on the other.)
Krista
________________________________________
From: Constructed Languages List [[email protected]] on behalf of H.
S. Teoh [[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 9:30 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 02:21:47PM +0000, Krista D. Casada wrote:
> I find this Chinese-Spanish translation idea humorous because, when I
> am struggling to express myself in Arabic (a third-ish language), it's
> not English (my first) that comes out. It's Spanish (the second).
[...]
I grew up with Hokkien (L1), Mandarin, English, and Malay. The first
three are still in active use, but, being in Canada now, I have not used
Malay for a very long time, and can no longer actively recall much of
the vocabulary. Now that I've starting learning Russian, whenever I
struggle to recall a Malay word, it's Russian that comes flooding into
my brain instead. :-P
T
--
Questions are the beginning of intelligence, but the fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom.
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 8:16 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 02:41:03PM +0000, Krista D. Casada wrote:
> Well, that's useful! At least your newest stays "on top." My older new
> ones want to be first. (I occasionally have the terrible feeling that
> my brain is divided in half, with my L1 on one side and everything
> else scrambling for space on the other.)
[...]
This isn't the first time this is brought up on this list. A long while
back, there was a discussion about how we seem to have separate "slots"
for the language we acquired in our youth, but after a certain age, it
seems there's only one slot left for "foreign language", whatever that
may be, and trying to learn more than one at a time causes one to "crowd
out" the other(s).
Now I'm concerned that this is happening not only to languages I
acquired later in life, but also to childhood languages that haven't
been in active use. :-(
T
--
"You know, maybe we don't *need* enemies." "Yeah, best friends are about all I
can take." -- Calvin & Hobbes
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
1e. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "Paul Schleitwiler, FCM" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 10:37 am ((PDT))
For those experiencing difficulty recalling a language they haven't used in
some time, I suggest a method I stumbled on that works for me.
Spend a day immersed in that one language, reading and listening to it,
speaking it aloud to yourself or others if possible. Sleep on it. The next
day, your old facility is back. Sort of as if you had reminded your brain
where the old connections were.
I think memory is stored inn the whole brain, like a hologram, not just a
few cells.
Interesting experiment reported recently of researchers putting human brain
glia cells into mice brains. The treated mice outperformed control mice in
learning mazes and in memory tests. Maybe it's not the size of the brain,
but the kind of components and their organization?
God bless you always, all ways,
Paul
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 10:14 AM, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 02:41:03PM +0000, Krista D. Casada wrote:
> > Well, that's useful! At least your newest stays "on top." My older new
> > ones want to be first. (I occasionally have the terrible feeling that
> > my brain is divided in half, with my L1 on one side and everything
> > else scrambling for space on the other.)
> [...]
>
> This isn't the first time this is brought up on this list. A long while
> back, there was a discussion about how we seem to have separate "slots"
> for the language we acquired in our youth, but after a certain age, it
> seems there's only one slot left for "foreign language", whatever that
> may be, and trying to learn more than one at a time causes one to "crowd
> out" the other(s).
>
> Now I'm concerned that this is happening not only to languages I
> acquired later in life, but also to childhood languages that haven't
> been in active use. :-(
>
>
> T
>
> --
> "You know, maybe we don't *need* enemies." "Yeah, best friends are about
> all I can take." -- Calvin & Hobbes
>
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
1f. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "Krista D. Casada" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 11:01 am ((PDT))
Interesting notions . . .
________________________________________
From: Constructed Languages List [[email protected]] on behalf of Paul
Schleitwiler, FCM [[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 12:37 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
For those experiencing difficulty recalling a language they haven't used in
some time, I suggest a method I stumbled on that works for me.
Spend a day immersed in that one language, reading and listening to it,
speaking it aloud to yourself or others if possible. Sleep on it. The next
day, your old facility is back. Sort of as if you had reminded your brain
where the old connections were.
I think memory is stored inn the whole brain, like a hologram, not just a
few cells.
Interesting experiment reported recently of researchers putting human brain
glia cells into mice brains. The treated mice outperformed control mice in
learning mazes and in memory tests. Maybe it's not the size of the brain,
but the kind of components and their organization?
God bless you always, all ways,
Paul
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 10:14 AM, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 02:41:03PM +0000, Krista D. Casada wrote:
> > Well, that's useful! At least your newest stays "on top." My older new
> > ones want to be first. (I occasionally have the terrible feeling that
> > my brain is divided in half, with my L1 on one side and everything
> > else scrambling for space on the other.)
> [...]
>
> This isn't the first time this is brought up on this list. A long while
> back, there was a discussion about how we seem to have separate "slots"
> for the language we acquired in our youth, but after a certain age, it
> seems there's only one slot left for "foreign language", whatever that
> may be, and trying to learn more than one at a time causes one to "crowd
> out" the other(s).
>
> Now I'm concerned that this is happening not only to languages I
> acquired later in life, but also to childhood languages that haven't
> been in active use. :-(
>
>
> T
>
> --
> "You know, maybe we don't *need* enemies." "Yeah, best friends are about
> all I can take." -- Calvin & Hobbes
>
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
1g. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 11:54 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 12:37:46PM -0500, Paul Schleitwiler, FCM wrote:
[...]
> Interesting experiment reported recently of researchers putting human
> brain glia cells into mice brains. The treated mice outperformed
> control mice in learning mazes and in memory tests. Maybe it's not the
> size of the brain, but the kind of components and their organization?
[...]
I've always been skeptical about the claim that intelligence is
correlated with brain size. I like this idea that it's what components
are in there, that makes the difference.
T
--
"Hi." "'Lo."
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
1h. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 1:51 pm ((PDT))
2013/3/12 H. S. Teoh <[email protected]>:
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 02:21:47PM +0000, Krista D. Casada wrote:
>> I find this Chinese-Spanish translation idea humorous because, when I
>> am struggling to express myself in Arabic (a third-ish language), it's
>> not English (my first) that comes out. It's Spanish (the second).
> [...]
>
> I grew up with Hokkien (L1), Mandarin, English, and Malay. The first
> three are still in active use, but, being in Canada now, I have not used
> Malay for a very long time, and can no longer actively recall much of
> the vocabulary. Now that I've starting learning Russian, whenever I
> struggle to recall a Malay word, it's Russian that comes flooding into
> my brain instead. :-P
Someone has told me that those who want to learn several languages
should learn them in order of similarity, because it will make the
learning process easier. But, as someone interested in Comparative
Linguistics, I tend to do the opposite.
>
>
> T
>
> --
> Questions are the beginning of intelligence, but the fear of God is the
> beginning of wisdom.
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
1i. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "Dustfinger Batailleur" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 2:00 pm ((PDT))
This. I had a similar experience with Russian, Hebrew, and English. When I
moved to Canada, Russian and English remained in use and Hebrew faded away.
After learning French through the school system, whenever I try to remember
a Hebrew word French words usually come to mind.
On 12 March 2013 10:30, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 02:21:47PM +0000, Krista D. Casada wrote:
> > I find this Chinese-Spanish translation idea humorous because, when I
> > am struggling to express myself in Arabic (a third-ish language), it's
> > not English (my first) that comes out. It's Spanish (the second).
> [...]
>
> I grew up with Hokkien (L1), Mandarin, English, and Malay. The first
> three are still in active use, but, being in Canada now, I have not used
> Malay for a very long time, and can no longer actively recall much of
> the vocabulary. Now that I've starting learning Russian, whenever I
> struggle to recall a Malay word, it's Russian that comes flooding into
> my brain instead. :-P
>
>
> T
>
> --
> Questions are the beginning of intelligence, but the fear of God is the
> beginning of wisdom.
>
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Old Georgian
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 9:19 am ((PDT))
On Sun, 10 Mar 2013 15:33:27 -0500
Matthew Boutilier <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have been really into Georgian lately, and Caucasian languages in
> general, and am making reasonable progress on the (very first baby
> steps of the) grammar. But I am growing more and more interested in
> the OLD GEORGIAN phase -- it seems like there is probably some very
> interesting stuff there -- but cannot find any books or websites
> dedicated to the study of Old Georgian (spoken from c. 400 - 1000 AD
> or so, according to Wikipedia).
>
> Does anybody have suggestions for further reading materials on this?
There's a chapter in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Ancient Languages by
Kevin Tuite. He refers to The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus
(ed. A. C. Harris): Vol. 1, The Kartvelian Languages. The rest of his
references are to works in Georgian. La langue géorgienne (N. Marr & M.
Brière, 1931) is a grammar of Old Georgian.
Messages in this topic (3)
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________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Robot DARYL needs a conlang
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 12, 2013 5:12 pm ((PDT))
Hi!
Take a look at the principles of my conlang at
http://montalanki.blogspot.com.br/2012/11/introduction.html .
There are also some basic examples:
http://montalanki.blogspot.com.br/
It's somewhat more developed in my head. If you are interested in a
conlang with such principles, I can give you more information on it.
You could suggest changes or help me develop it further as well.
Até mais!
Leonardo
2013/3/8 Kai Oliver Arras <[email protected]>:
> Hi,
>
> I am new here and your help would be highly appreciated.
>
> My lab has built the interactive robot DARYL. We are investigating abstract
> R2-D2- and Wall.e-like languages for human-robot interaction since we believe
> that non-human social cues make robots more believable. We developed a sound
> synthesizer architecture based on SuperCollider to generate sounds in
> real-time and have created a sound language -- so far in a totally informal
> way. Its purpose is to enhance the robot's expressivity, see video at:
> http://srl.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/videosdir/DARYLsounds.mov
>
> Only recently, I came to realize that *you guys* are actually the experts in
> construct what could be a proper, formally derived sound language for such
> robots. We are a robotics research lab and have no expertise in this area.
>
> Questions:
> - Is this an interesting problem for conlangers?
> - Has anyone done this before?
> - Are there any links that I missed (after comprehensive internet searches
> including this group)?
> - Where could I get more information on the specific problem of creating such
> languages for robots?
>
> We are interested in creating a believable, understandable, and socially
> acceptable conlang for DARYL. If anyone is interested to team up with us on
> this, let me know :-)
>
> Thanks in advance, best regards,
> - Kai
>
>
> ........................................
> Prof. Dr. Kai O. Arras
> Assistant professor
> DFG Junior Research Group Leader
> Head Social Robotics Lab
> University of Freiburg
> Georges-Koehler-Allee 074
> D-79110 Freiburg, Germany
> Tel/Fax +49 761 203 979 46 / 75 20
> srl.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
> ........................................
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: OT: Texas German dying out
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 13, 2013 4:13 am ((PDT))
It may be that the accent is lingering while the grammar and
vocabulary are gone. It's not quite as likely when two different
languages are involved but quite common when local dialects
give way to a prestige/'standard' variety of the same language.
There is a stereotype heard here in Scandinavia thot people
in Minnesota and Wisconsin still speak English with a noticeable
Swedish/Norwegian accent. Don't know how accurate it is.
/bpj
On 2013-03-12 01:21, Adam Walker wrote:
> At least it is holding on somewhere. In Ennis it is pretty much dead and gone.
>
> Adam
>
> On 3/11/13, Anaïs Ahmed <[email protected]> wrote:
>> As I was passing through Ellinger, TX, I heard some people at a kolache
>> store talking English in thick Czech accents. This was not more than a year
>> ago. It's still there.
>>
>>
>> 2013/3/11 Adam Walker <[email protected]>
>>
>>> The same is true for the Czech spoken in Ennis, a town near me. Twenty
>>> or thirty years ago it was still common to hear older people
>>> conversing in Czech. Now its almost totally gone.
>>>
>>> Adam
>>>
>>> On 3/11/13, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> [QUOTE]
>>>>
>>>> When Kaye Langehennig
>>>> Wong<
>>> http://www.mysanantonio.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=news%2Flocal_news&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Kaye+Langehennig+Wong%22
>>>>
>>>> was
>>>> a little girl in Katy in the '60s, her parents would take her to visit
>>> her
>>>> grandparents in Fredericksburg. âMy grandparents lived in a stone house
>>> on
>>>> Main Street,â she says. âI played with horny toads and walked down Main
>>>> Street listening to the ladies in the shops talking in German.â
>>>>
>>>> Wong's father spoke only German until he went to school. âMy parents
>>> spoke
>>>> German to each other when they didn't want us to know what they were
>>>> saying,â she says. But like many parents of their generation, they
>>>> didn't
>>>> teach her.
>>>>
>>>> The German Wong heard on Main Street was unlike German spoken anywhere
>>> else
>>>> in the world. Texas German, the result of the flood of German
>>>> immigrants
>>>> into South Central Texas in the 19th century, is an amalgam of many of
>>> the
>>>> dialects spoken in what is now Germany but was, until 1871, a
>>>> collection
>>> of
>>>> independent states.
>>>>
>>>> [END QUOTE]
>>>>
>>>> Much more at the link.
>>>>
>>>> Read more:
>>>>
>>> http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Texas-German-dying-out-4343915.php#ixzz2NGn7j7ar
>>>>
>>>> --gary
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
Messages in this topic (5)
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