Reading and Language Learning
Living in Holland, the Aspiring Polyglot has been forced to take on Dutch. But how to build one's skills? She gave up on children's books and has been reading grown-up books, but is this the way to go?
I, myself, have been picking at Uzbek, and fantasize about finding a children's story or two - something nice and easy - until I remember my first attempts at children's stories in other languages. While beginning readers (See Dick run?) may have some nice, elementary structures and basic vocabulary put into a readily digestible form, the typical children's book is a mess, using short idiomatic sentences that work nicely with a well acculturated child but terribly for a non-native who can conjugate the basic verbs (which the child can't) but has a limited command of idioms, especially those used in transitional baby talk.
If you're reading a cognate language, or even a language where you've got a couple hundred words of vocabulary, I think you're better off with a grown-up short news article (on an everyday topic) or some such thing. The language is more likely conventional, rather than creative, and it's likely to be in a form where you can guess enough at what should be coming next that you can connect dots you wouldn't otherwise.
The real killer with children's books is that since they're addressed to native speakers, they assume knowledge both of the language and of the things one expects a child in the culture to talk about. And they fly off in different directions to match that mindset of a child taking in and mentally organizing the world. If you're learning the language of a society that takes its children's education seriously and you can read the children's books, you've got a very fine handle on the language. If you're interested in, say, Tibet, follow the child's lead by reading about what interests you. That way you'll keep reading long enough to - taking a phrase from an earlier post - overlearn your reading skills and the vocabulary for things you'd be interested in talking about.
For my part, I'm reading short stories (and listening to them) from the University of Washington. And I'm picking through the lyrics for my favorite songs that I've found at uzfiles.com. (Plus my Talk-Now Uzbek just arrived and I've learned some new vocabulary, but mostly everyday stuff that doesn't come up in the other stuff - nobody sings about their new belt and shirt or where you can buy some toothpaste).
I, myself, have been picking at Uzbek, and fantasize about finding a children's story or two - something nice and easy - until I remember my first attempts at children's stories in other languages. While beginning readers (See Dick run?) may have some nice, elementary structures and basic vocabulary put into a readily digestible form, the typical children's book is a mess, using short idiomatic sentences that work nicely with a well acculturated child but terribly for a non-native who can conjugate the basic verbs (which the child can't) but has a limited command of idioms, especially those used in transitional baby talk.
If you're reading a cognate language, or even a language where you've got a couple hundred words of vocabulary, I think you're better off with a grown-up short news article (on an everyday topic) or some such thing. The language is more likely conventional, rather than creative, and it's likely to be in a form where you can guess enough at what should be coming next that you can connect dots you wouldn't otherwise.
The real killer with children's books is that since they're addressed to native speakers, they assume knowledge both of the language and of the things one expects a child in the culture to talk about. And they fly off in different directions to match that mindset of a child taking in and mentally organizing the world. If you're learning the language of a society that takes its children's education seriously and you can read the children's books, you've got a very fine handle on the language. If you're interested in, say, Tibet, follow the child's lead by reading about what interests you. That way you'll keep reading long enough to - taking a phrase from an earlier post - overlearn your reading skills and the vocabulary for things you'd be interested in talking about.
For my part, I'm reading short stories (and listening to them) from the University of Washington. And I'm picking through the lyrics for my favorite songs that I've found at uzfiles.com. (Plus my Talk-Now Uzbek just arrived and I've learned some new vocabulary, but mostly everyday stuff that doesn't come up in the other stuff - nobody sings about their new belt and shirt or where you can buy some toothpaste).
2 Comments:
I agree with your approach of reading short news stories as an excellent learning approach. In the early '90s I decided I wanted to learn just enough Yiddish. How much was just enough? I figured that if I could read the headlines, photo captions, and classifieds in /Forverts/, I'd be doing great.
With that approach, I picked up more in six months than various courses I was taking covered in three years AND it stuck! I still have about 80 percent of what I learned then. Now when I want to repolish my Spanish, French, and German (and stretch the limited Italian I have), I go directly to the Web and the news kiosk.
My problem now with Suomi is that even using the ample Web news resources (Finland pioneered much Internetting as you know, and other high-tech tools), I have no reference for pronunciation. For some reason I break down giggling after about 20 minutes of study. I don't know why this is!
So I'm still looking for a good footpath into Suomi--it is my family's ancestral language, left behind mostly because of politics. Back there a ways were also many speakers of Sami, and other Finno-Ugric dialects. There is great beauty to them all, and I ache for them and persist out of that beauty and ache. The Itty-Bitty Suomi lessons were charming; please do the same for Mandarin and Cantonese! Also Vietnamese and Japanese! Hindi while you're at it!
OK, I'll stop now. Thank you for what you've already done.
Pakkana
A polyglot might as well have Transparent Languages 101 Languages of the World on the shelf, which gives a small hint at pronunciation. And I believe Audio-Forum has a Language/30 course availabe. While neither of these is the best option for learning a language, for hearing the sounds while using other resources, it might be worth a shot.
I'm glad you enjoyed the Itty Bitty course. Chinese and Japanese are coming one day. Hindi joins Tagalog, Icelandic and Swahili on a list of languages I hope to do one day. Vietnamese is tempting as a challenge, but unlikely. And I've no plans to do Cantonese.
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