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Am I right in thinking this?

de Lynchie, 2010-julio-29

Mesaĝoj: 19

Lingvo: English

Lynchie (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 13:12:56

Am I right in thinking that the easiest way to learn a language is for a non-speaker of a language to communicate with someone who can speak it, and slowly learn through communication and osmosis, rather than learning lots of impossible to remember grammatical rules, and sentences which we would probably never use in any case? I'm absolutely loving my studies, although I've only just started, but, man is it more difficult than I thought from textbooks, etc!

darkweasel (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 13:35:20

I cannot say if you're right or wrong, but in fact I've never learned any vocabulary lists but simply used a dictionary when I needed a word while speaking or writing in Esperanto. Grammatical rules may be a different topic because if you want to spontaneously form good and grammatical sentences, you have to already know the grammatical rules.

Lynchie (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 13:39:05

I completely agree with that, yes. I just think that learning a language in a more natural, osmotic way is easier for some people than attempting to learn different grammatical rules, but that is just me. I've probably just had my head buried in a book too long today lol.

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 13:39:27

Grammar is very very useful once you get used to absorbing it from texts. But it does indeed need to be complemented by good exposure to native speakers and native vocabulary.

Think of grammar as the DNA of the language - it tells you what can actually happen in the language, and the base of all the logic in the language. Basic vocabulary makes up the skeleton (e.g. things like "of", "'s", "to be", verb endings etc). Then an expansive vocabulary adds the muscle, flesh (common vocab sort of makes up the vital organs, then you can imagine that things like technical vocabulary make up less vital things like skin colour).

Eventually, once you've learned all that, your language is just like a full grown human.

But using that analogy, I have a lot of skeletons and DNA maps lying around in my head with a few skeletal looking humanoid alien creatures running around, which says a lot about how thorough I am with language acquisition okulumo.gif (not very! lango.gif)

Lynchie (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 13:47:24

That's a lovely analogy ridulo.gif On a completely different note, I'd like to ask everyone when things really started coming together for them in Esperanto? I've been learning a phenomenally short time, 3 days in fact, and I am wondering if someone can give me some encouragement as say "it will all come together eventually!" lol

darkweasel (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 14:05:00

Lynchie:I completely agree with that, yes. I just think that learning a language in a more natural, osmotic way is easier for some people than attempting to learn different grammatical rules, but that is just me. I've probably just had my head buried in a book too long today lol.
Probably, the older you get, the more you have to rely on grammatical rules. Children learn their native language, however complex it is, just from listening to what others say and imitating this. They don't need a single grammatical rule for this, but they develop a feeling for what's correct and what's incorrect.

A classmate of mine learned German only in kindergarten, her native language is Spanish, and she speaks German nearly perfectly (you wouldn't guess she wasn't a native speaker just from listening to her). She probably still had the capability of learning a language "naturally" when she was in kindergarten.

I started learning English at school (except for some words we had learned earlier) at age 10, and soon I played English-language video games and read English-language web sites. Today I have a better English level than many of my classmates probably because I used the "natural" method of learning a language a bit in addition to the method of learning grammatical rules.

In Esperanto I mainly learned by grammatical rules from PMEG, and it seems to have worked. Maybe in Esperanto this is a better method because there are barely any exceptions to these rules, while in natural language there are a lot. Then again, things like usage of la can maybe be learned only in a naturalistic manner by people whose native language has no articles.

Lynchie (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 14:08:58

Thank you for that, I know you are right, all of you ridulo.gif I think I just gripe a bit at learning grammar. You want to be able to converse like a native speaker straight away, it just takes time I know. I will get there, with time ridulo.gif

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 14:57:36

If it helps, in conjunction with what Darkweasel said about the natural method - it's been said that you'll learn a new word in any language (native or not) provided it's used in context between 7-30 times (basically - it needs to be used in the correct situations with emotional attachment sort of - thus why playing video games in another language can be crazy-helpful, like The Legend of Zelda in french rido.gif)

Darkweasel:In Esperanto I mainly learned by grammatical rules from PMEG, and it seems to have worked. Maybe in Esperanto this is a better method because there are barely any exceptions to these rules, while in natural language there are a lot.
Interesting thoughts! I guess that irregularities in grammar are like having to learn a new word for every part of a word that's irregular.

jan aleksan (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 15:17:51

I also think that learning with real people is more efficient that alone with a book (even if it exists people able to work it out).

Take a look at the JEB forum (JEB=british esperanto youth), they are very active and often organise a week-end. I think the next one will be in Brighton.

Miland (Montri la profilon) 2010-julio-29 15:22:04

Lynchie:I've been learning a phenomenally short time, 3 days in fact, and I am wondering if someone can give me some encouragement as say "it will all come together eventually!" lol
Bonvenon! You are likely to make progress in Esperanto much more quickly than you would with other languages. You will probably notice this first with reading. Writing requires a greater creative effort than reading, and the most challenging task is speaking, because you have to find the right word immediately. Here is a past thread that may be useful, started by a previous beginner who had a question that may be in your mind, namely which courses to tackle. Take it steadily, and good luck!

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