The Language Learning Thread
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One honestly sometimes to question needs, if the Germans a good Idea with the capitalisation of all Nouns and with Word-Order, have.
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What language(s) were Yoda's speech patterns based on?
I have noticed that a lot of the languages in Star Wars are based on languages in the real world, such as Chalmuk forming the basis of the Ewok language. Do you know what language Yoda's way of sp...
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That was an interesting post. One of the answers opines that the word ordering in Yoda's speech occurs in almost no real human languages and is a clever device that George Lucas came up with to make Yoda seem very alien. Reminds me of the way that the author of A Clockwork Orange handled slang for his near-future teenage thug main characters. Rather than make up some kind of slang that would sound awkward and unrealistic their slang is just Russian words. It works perfectly and somehow makes the Droogs seem more menacing. I've always found that brilliant.One honestly sometimes to question needs, if the Germans a good Idea with the capitalisation of all Nouns and with Word-Order, have.
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What language(s) were Yoda's speech patterns based on?
I have noticed that a lot of the languages in Star Wars are based on languages in the real world, such as Chalmuk forming the basis of the Ewok language. Do you know what language Yoda's way of sp...
I want to share that I took this idea a while back and ran with it. I got a new teacher recently, and they speak both great English and my target language. I ran an idea by them- how about I write a short story of my own, plug it into an auto-translator, and then you take that translation and turn it into colloquial language for me? They obliged, and gave me a recording of their own recitation of the said short story. I drilled the story every day for about a month or so. With time, I not only managed to remember the story completely, but even began to recite while "sounding like a native speaker."
The story itself is actually a memory of mine. Rather, the recollection of one of my favorite times in my life, so really it's a handful of memories told as a few short paragraphs. I not only built up my vocabulary about my other hobby, I managed to internalize these memories in my mind both in my mother tongue and target language.
This had a noticeable impact. Every one I speak my second language with has noticed I'm stringing together longer sentences with more fluency. Furthermore, I sometimes find my self thinking in my target language first nowadays.
I want to mention something else related to the topic at hand here. A long time ago, I had a "learning disability." Without getting lost into that whole story, I'll just say I had a lot of trouble speaking(let alone reading) as a child. This is because my mind moves too fast for my lips to keep up with, resulting in me stammering, jumbling words/word order, or even making up whole new phrases and terms because I forgot a word while mid-sentence. This led to two things:
Sometimes I just use words in such a way that it sounds like I'm joking. In example, I needed assistance with a tire inflator once, but i forgot the word "inflator." I went to the guy in the garage and asked "Hey, can someone please help me with the tire-pumper-upper?" Another time I forgot the word "babyseat", so I just said "the VIP seat," and everyone laughed. Over time, this kind of thing became a staple of my sense of humor. Who'd have thought that a means of hiding a quasi-speech impediment would become a feature that endears me to people?
Second, it used to be that I simply could only focus my train of thought by moving my tongue like I'm speaking. I noticed my mother thinking quietly yet very expressively to herself as a small child. When I pointed this out to her, she said "no wonder my coworkers look at me weird when I'm thinking sometimes!" Eventually I realized I do the exact same thing: move my face and jaw like I'm saying what I'm thinking. With training I found myself being able to just make micro movements with my tongue while keeping my face relaxed. Now that I'm closing in on "fluent" in Mandarin, this has changed slightly. Whereas before I could only focus by thinking through my tongue, I now feel a bunch of associations sort of start to spring up without words in my mind. Sometimes it's images I recall, sounds, songs, memes, memories, anything. But it's formless. Then I choose which language to focus with and everything becomes more clear and linear real fast. Furthermore, it's easier to keep pace with my thoughts now because I can evermore often think of words to use in multiple languages! The short of it is that it is now easier to think.
Obviously I'm not just suggesting that memorizing short stories(especially short stories that are only just above your head) is a great way to learn a new language, I'm suggesting that learning a new language can help you organize your thoughts more efficiently, and this will in turn lead to better communication skills. These skills are sorely lacking in today's world, and people will notice when you've got them.
Lastly, I want to say something that may better fit into a positivity thread, but will post it here. When I was in second grade, i was lagging very far behind in reading, writing, and 'rithmetic(as it was called). I couldn't read anything. I was diagnosed as "learning disabled" and relegated to "sped class"(special education, the politically correct term for a class with the autistic kids). Eventually every different method teachers had were tried and failed. This led to my spending the last few months of second grade with a one on one tutor, who also tried everything and gave up. Upon giving up on me, she began to just read the same Berenstein Bears book to run out the clock. It worked. After a while, I memorized the very sound of her voice narrating the entire book. Then my mind would play her recitation like a song that's stuck in your head. Then one day the track in my head of her reading aloud began moving fatser than she was actually reading. From there, I flipped the page before she was done reading it. She sighed a deep breath of resignation and said "no, we're still on this page," and I flipped the page back ahead and started reading it. I read the whole book from there without her help and to her amazement. In those moments, reading suddenly made sense. I went from being unable to distinguish an apostrophe from an exclamation point to reading well beyond a second grade level with only one month left of second grade. I even overheard some teachers talk about letting me skip a grade, but decide against it since there were only a few weeks left, anyway. This anecdote says a lot about learning styles and the usefulness of practicing short stories when learning a new language.
For the longest time, I let the idea that I'm "learning disabled" or "ADD" define me. I leaned into being a creative type, which led to playing rock bass guitar. This led to typecasting myself as only a musician, and incapable of anything else. One thing led to another and I found myself with tinnitus so bad(from a job, not live concerts, if you could believe it) that I'll probably just have a hum in the drum for life, but am not actually deaf. I had to re-invent myself after that. It took a while, and was sort of an accident that I found being a language geek. I had a crush on a Chinese girl, and wanted to impress her. Never managed to make her swoon, but I did find a new love for the language itself. If you like drawing and calligraphy, the written Chinese language is for you. Nowadays, I'm a lot of things, but certainly not a retard. Not just a savant bass player. I'm still a nerd, no doubt, but trust me, so are most rock stars(aspiring or legit). Nowadays I'm a man who knows not just that I can learn, but how I learn. I've got a few hobbies, and have made accomplishments with each that have enabled me to communicate better than ever.
Don't ever decide it's over, just keep moving forward. Even if you find yourself starting over.
You make it sound like you are specifically trying to learn a gutter or teenage version of the language.
I did have an issue with one of my languages that I learned just the textbook form of it, or the more formal register of it, but wanted more of the slang so as to better understand and connect with the youth. There is this concept of register :
Register (sociolinguistics) - Wikipedia
Even the register of most of our first language, English, changes in different parts of the world.
There's one word for that in German - Ohrwurm
Ohrwurm – Wikipedia
I was almost offended that you would say that, but kept reading and found I'd never even heard of "register!" Interesting term, thank you. I actually haven't encountered much slang throughout the years I've been studying Mandarin.
What my teacher did was take the translation from DeepL.com and tell me "this reads well, but doesn't really sound great," the same way that written and spoken English differ in some subtle ways. Instead of infusing slang, they took phrases that are written often, but not used in daily speech and replaced them with phrases or words that are spoken more often. In example, my little story mentions mountains a lot. She gave me a few different words that all mean "mountain" or "mountain range(s)" so the story doesn't sound too repetitive. DeepL just kept using the same 山 , where words like 山脉，山区，群山 could go instead. Stuff like that.
Love the mention of earworms! If you like music and are curious about science, "This is Your Brain on Music" is a fantastic read. I really do mean that it's fantastic, even though I never say fantastic in real life
There's something about linguistic and musical study that is synergistic.