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Fantasy » alt.fan.pratchett » [I] learning languages
[I] learning languages [message #237341] Mi, 15 März 2006 12:29
jester  
Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
learning a foreign language (specifically swedish, in this case)?

Anything that's good, bad, shouldn't be touched with a pole?

--
Andy Brown
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237343 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 12:44
news0601  
jester wrote:
> Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
> learning a foreign language

Yes, but it's not going to help you an awful lot. I have used Digital
Publishing's French course
(http://www.digitalpublishing.de/sprachen/ISR/isr-set.htm), and would
heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to learn French, starting from
German...

Michael
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237348 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 12:58
PeterH  
It all started on Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:44:52 +0100, when Michael J.
Schülke wrote:

> jester wrote:
>> Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
>> learning a foreign language
>
> Yes, but it's not going to help you an awful lot. I have used Digital
> Publishing's French course
> (http://www.digitalpublishing.de/sprachen/ISR/isr-set.htm), and would
> heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to learn French, starting from
> German...

Out of interest, does anyone know if learning a language in another
language (like learning French in German for an English speaker, IYSWIM)
is as good an idea as it sounds?


...PeterH
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237350 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 13:05
Orjan Westin  
jester wrote:
> Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
> learning a foreign language (specifically swedish, in this case)?
>
> Anything that's good, bad, shouldn't be touched with a pole?

What do you want to learn? Grammar, vocabulary, spelling,
pronunciation..?

I've never used any foreign-language-learning software, but I'll go out
on a limb here and recommend kids' games, especially interactive books,
and a decent dictionary. You can often get them with an option for
subtitles, and spelling exercises.

"Levande Böcker" is a publisher that has produced some really good ones,
and their web site is at www.levande.se

Orjan
--
The Tale of Westala and Villtin
http://tale.cunobaros.com/
Fiction, Thoughts and Software
http://www.cunobaros.com/
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237354 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 13:13
Graycat  
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:58:15 +0200, Peter Davies
<peterhjr [at] yahoo.co.uk> jotted down:

>It all started on Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:44:52 +0100, when Michael J.
>Schülke wrote:
>
>> jester wrote:
>>> Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
>>> learning a foreign language
>>
>> Yes, but it's not going to help you an awful lot. I have used Digital
>> Publishing's French course
>> (http://www.digitalpublishing.de/sprachen/ISR/isr-set.htm), and would
>> heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to learn French, starting from
>> German...
>
>Out of interest, does anyone know if learning a language in another
>language (like learning French in German for an English speaker, IYSWIM)
>is as good an idea as it sounds?

In my, admittedly limited, experience, it's a bad idea. I
tried to study french in english in Canada...and got _very_
confused. That I allready know some french from Swedish
didn't help at all. The little connects in my head didn't
work from english to french, so I had to translate
everything to swedish first, then french, and vice versa.

When I came out of class I'd start speaking Swedish to
people because I didn't know what language I was speaking
anymore... The worst part was that I could feel myself
getting worse and worse every lesson, so I dropped out
pretty quickly.

--
Elin
The Tale of Westala and Villtin
http://tale.cunobaros.com/
The Oswalds DW casting award - Vote Now!
http://www.student.lu.se/~his02ero/Oswald/index.html
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237364 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 13:46
PeterH  
It all started on Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:13:00 +0100, when Graycat wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:58:15 +0200, Peter Davies <peterhjr [at] yahoo.co.uk>
> jotted down:
>
>>It all started on Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:44:52 +0100, when Michael J.
>>Schülke wrote:
>>
>>> jester wrote:
>>>> Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
>>>> learning a foreign language
>>>
>>> Yes, but it's not going to help you an awful lot. I have used Digital
>>> Publishing's French course
>>> (http://www.digitalpublishing.de/sprachen/ISR/isr-set.htm), and would
>>> heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to learn French, starting
>>> from German...
>>
>>Out of interest, does anyone know if learning a language in another
>>language (like learning French in German for an English speaker, IYSWIM)
>>is as good an idea as it sounds?
>
> In my, admittedly limited, experience, it's a bad idea. I tried to study
> french in english in Canada...and got _very_ confused. That I allready
> know some french from Swedish didn't help at all. The little connects in
> my head didn't work from english to french, so I had to translate
> everything to swedish first, then french, and vice versa.

That just seems strange, because as far as I'm aware, you're fluent in
English and so should be able to use it to learn other languages. Maybe it
was the - albeit minimal - similarities between french and english which
threw you off? Now that I've thought about it, I've decided that using a
(non-native) germanic language to learn another germanic language would
most probably be impossibly confusing.

And while we're at it, learning Norwegian in Swedish would just be
pointless! :)


...PeterH
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237374 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 14:54
Kimberley Verburg  
Peter Davies wrote:

> Out of interest, does anyone know if learning a language in another
> language (like learning French in German for an English speaker, IYSWIM)
> is as good an idea as it sounds?

There are reasons for doing it that way, such as a lack of resources or
a desire to explore the new language from another point of view, but for
the average language learner it's a bad idea. If our English speaker is
reasonably proficient in the second language and that language is
related to the third, then they might benefit from sometimes comparing
the two. And apologies if it's stating the obvious, but total immersion
in the new language is the best way to go (if it's available of course).

Out of interest, why did you think it's a good idea?

--
Kimberley Verburg
kim [at] lspace.org
Re:[I] learning languages [message #237375 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 14:55
robcraine  
Peter Davies wrote:

>
> Out of interest, does anyone know if learning a language in another
> language (like learning French in German for an English speaker, IYSWIM)
> is as good an idea as it sounds?
>
>

Really? that sounds like a good idea? it jsut sounds like it would make
things far too confusing to me. But I guess it would depend largely on
how well you spoke the second language (in this case german)

Rob, who speaks some english, minimal french, and about a dozen words
of his native manx
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237382 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 15:48
Graycat  
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 14:46:31 +0200, Peter Davies
<peterhjr [at] yahoo.co.uk> jotted down:

>It all started on Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:13:00 +0100, when Graycat wrote:

>> In my, admittedly limited, experience, it's a bad idea. I tried to study
>> french in english in Canada...and got _very_ confused. That I allready
>> know some french from Swedish didn't help at all. The little connects in
>> my head didn't work from english to french, so I had to translate
>> everything to swedish first, then french, and vice versa.
>
>That just seems strange, because as far as I'm aware, you're fluent in
>English and so should be able to use it to learn other languages. Maybe it
>was the - albeit minimal - similarities between french and english which
>threw you off? Now that I've thought about it, I've decided that using a
>(non-native) germanic language to learn another germanic language would
>most probably be impossibly confusing.

I am pretty much fluent in English, that wasn't the problem.
The problem was that if you imagine my brain as a website,
where things are linked through hyperlinks there were links
between the swedish parts and the english parts, and links
between the swedish parts and the french parts, but not the
french and the english parts.

Fo for example, say I had to translate "My name is Elin, I
come from Sweden" into french, I would first have to
translate it into Swedish, because that's the only way I
could get to my French...the English words just didn't link
up with the French words in my head. Same if I was to
translate from French into English, I had to do it via
Swedish.

Add to that the complication that any new words I learned I
learned from English, so they weren't linked to my Swedish
vocabulary...

Add to that the fact that I was speaking a foregn language
every day, all day _anyway_, so I was allready dealing with
that.

In the end my Swedish, French and English just got so
tangled up that when I tried to switch from one to another
there was no telling which would actually come out...

--
Elin
The Tale of Westala and Villtin
http://tale.cunobaros.com/
The Oswalds DW casting award - Vote Now!
http://www.student.lu.se/~his02ero/Oswald/index.html
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237415 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 19:18
Jens Ayton  
jester wrote:
> Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
> learning a foreign language (specifically swedish, in this case)?
>
> Anything that's good, bad, shouldn't be touched with a pole?

Move to Sweden and do Svenska för invandrare. :-) (If you did do
this, the most important tip for success would be banning people from
speaking English to you unless you ask for clarification.)

For options not involving moving, I don't really know where to start.
When you've got the basics, however, it may be a good idea to get hold
of some Swedish videos without subs, and get george to help you with the
bits you can't grok.


--
\\\\ Jens Ayton, Fratello di Vetinari 36.3636363636364% insane
\\\\\__, Bringing sarcastic one-liners to the common hedgehog since 1999
\\\\\`/
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237428 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 20:32
jester  
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:18:57 GMT, Jens Ayton
<JGEZYJSLPAJH [at] spammotel.com> wrote:
<snip>
> For options not involving moving, I don't really know where to start.
>When you've got the basics, however, it may be a good idea to get hold
>of some Swedish videos without subs,

Hmm, some of my DVDs have a sweish language option.

>and get george to help you with the
>bits you can't grok.

If she ever stops laughing at my pronounciation of certain letters.
*sulk*

--
Andy Brown
"I had to kill him -- he was starting to make sense."
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237446 ] Mi, 15 März 2006 23:41
jester  
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:05:47 -0000, Orjan Westin
<nospam [at] cunobaros.com> wrote:
>
>"Levande Böcker" is a publisher that has produced some really good ones,
>and their web site is at www.levande.se

Not according to NTL's DNS servers.

--
Andy Brown
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
`
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237483 ] Do, 16 März 2006 02:02
Arthur Hagen  
Peter Davies <peterhjr [at] yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Out of interest, does anyone know if learning a language in another
> language (like learning French in German for an English speaker,
> IYSWIM) is as good an idea as it sounds?

I think it /can/ be a very good idea, because it forces you to start
/thinking/ in the language you want to learn, as our brains aren't really
capable of real time dual translations. In other words, you can't take the
easy option of translating in your head, and sound odd to everyone except
fellow speakers of your native language. Most people who do that don't even
realise how horrible they sound. Thinks he speaks correctly, Yoda does.
You can't become fluent until you've reached the point where you never have
to translate, but try to find words and phrases while thinking in that
language. Not having a way to fall back on your native language might help
speeding that process.

I can also see how it could be a quite difficult challenge, unless you have
a very firm grasp on the rules of the intermediate language, as well as a
fairly complete vocabulary. It doesn't help you much to learn that "zhoong"
means "thripka" and must always be used with divided diminutives, if you
don't know what "thripka" means or what divided diminutives are in the
intermediate language.

Regards,
--
*Art
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237486 ] Do, 16 März 2006 02:12
Arthur Hagen  
jester <usenet [at] jester.nu> wrote:
> Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
> learning a foreign language (specifically swedish, in this case)?

http://www.tiffman.com/bork.cgi?url=http://web.hhs.se/isa/sw edish/

> Anything that's good, bad, shouldn't be touched with a pole?

Indeed.

Regards,
--
*Art
Re: learning languages [message #237518 ] Do, 16 März 2006 10:19
Foxly  
I found the classroom approach to be best for the many questions that
will pop up and
for cultural references as you learn. It was worth the money when I
took Japanese I.
I'm not sure about Swedish, sorry. I can tell you my audio CD was
worthless, the textbook was better by far, and better than that was the
instructor.

Foxly

jester wrote:
> Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
> learning a foreign language (specifically swedish, in this case)?
>
> Anything that's good, bad, shouldn't be touched with a pole?
>
> --
> Andy Brown
> Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
Re: [I] learning languages [message #237566 ] Do, 16 März 2006 18:25
Orjan Westin  
jester wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:05:47 -0000, Orjan Westin
> <nospam [at] cunobaros.com> wrote:
>>
>> "Levande Böcker" is a publisher that has produced some really good
>> ones, and their web site is at www.levande.se
>
> Not according to NTL's DNS servers.

Hm... And not available at work either. Curious. I haven't heard
anything about them closing shop - they've had heaps of bestsellers and
won lots of awards, so it seems strange they should just disappear
without a trace.

I'll have a look around.

Orjan
--
The Tale of Westala and Villtin
http://tale.cunobaros.com/
Fiction, Thoughts and Software
http://www.cunobaros.com/
Re: [I] learning languages [message #238021 ] Sa, 18 März 2006 00:58
FiX01  
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:58:15 +0200, Peter Davies
<peterhjr [at] yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>It all started on Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:44:52 +0100, when Michael J.
>Schülke wrote:

>> jester wrote:
>>> Does anybody have any knowledge of and/or opinions on software for
>>> learning a foreign language

>> Yes, but it's not going to help you an awful lot. I have used Digital
>> Publishing's French course
>> (http://www.digitalpublishing.de/sprachen/ISR/isr-set.htm), and would
>> heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to learn French, starting from
>> German...

>Out of interest, does anyone know if learning a language in another
>language (like learning French in German for an English speaker, IYSWIM)
>is as good an idea as it sounds?

I'm reduced to learning Mongolian from an English course, as there is
no serious french course available. I don't find it different from
learning a furrin tongue from French, though; of course, as I'm only
at lesson 4 these days, maybe the cultural gap will kick in later...

FiX, probably back
Re: [I] learning languages [message #238041 ] Sa, 18 März 2006 01:27
FiX01  
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 15:48:40 +0100, Graycat <graycat.meow [at] gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 14:46:31 +0200, Peter Davies
><peterhjr [at] yahoo.co.uk> jotted down:
>
>>It all started on Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:13:00 +0100, when Graycat wrote:
>
>>> In my, admittedly limited, experience, it's a bad idea. I tried to study
>>> french in english in Canada...and got _very_ confused. That I allready
>>> know some french from Swedish didn't help at all. The little connects in
>>> my head didn't work from english to french, so I had to translate
>>> everything to swedish first, then french, and vice versa.
>>
>>That just seems strange, because as far as I'm aware, you're fluent in
>>English and so should be able to use it to learn other languages. Maybe it
>>was the - albeit minimal - similarities between french and english which
>>threw you off? Now that I've thought about it, I've decided that using a
>>(non-native) germanic language to learn another germanic language would
>>most probably be impossibly confusing.
>
>I am pretty much fluent in English,

Oh? We never notice! ;-P

> that wasn't the problem.
>The problem was that if you imagine my brain as a website,
>where things are linked through hyperlinks there were links
>between the swedish parts and the english parts, and links
>between the swedish parts and the french parts, but not the
>french and the english parts.

I think I understand what you mean, but that's not really how my mind
works: I have a french/english dictionary somewhere in my head, but
seldom use it.
When speaking English, I'm thinking differently than when speaking
french: the association is not between french sentence/english
equivalent but between ideas/emotions and the language I'm speaking
in... if I were thinking in french and speaking in english, I think
speaking english would be quite a torture.

And of course tranlsating from one anguage to the other is _quite_
more difficult than speaking in either language.


>Fo for example, say I had to translate "My name is Elin, I
>come from Sweden" into french, I would first have to
>translate it into Swedish, because that's the only way I
>could get to my French...the English words just didn't link
>up with the French words in my head. Same if I was to
>translate from French into English, I had to do it via
>Swedish.

Thinking about it, the association between words come first, _then_
does the hability to express myself without translating. So how
difficult will it be to learn Mongolian from English? I'll probably
have a confusing moment when I'll have a mapping between
English/Mongolian words and no direct mapping from french to
Mogolian... that will mean that to speak in Mongolian I'll have to
switch to english mode, then painstakingly translate to mongolian...
yes, I can see how this might be confusing!

>Add to that the complication that any new words I learned I
>learned from English, so they weren't linked to my Swedish
>vocabulary...

I'm _quite_ sure my english vocabulary is nowadays only marginally
linked to my french vocabulary, each occupies its own space in what
serves as my mind.
Best example of that is that when I can't find a word in english,
trying to find the french word doesn't work either: somehow my mind
can't come with the expression that represents the idea, and switching
languages doesn't alter this fact...


>Add to that the fact that I was speaking a foregn language
>every day, all day _anyway_, so I was allready dealing with
>that.

I've never slept better than when working in a country where neither
french nor english was the mother tongue: not only did I have to
express myself in english constantly, I also had to take into account
the other language: we can all in afp daily see that different
cultures speaking the same language sometimes fail to understand each
other... when you've got two person from different countries trying to
communicate with each other in a language that is foreign to both,
life becomes _interesting_...

BTW, I'm not really thinking of Netherlands there: the dutch are so
incredibly fluent in English than speaking with them is _very_ similar
to speaking to brit; which means that _they_ do most of the adapting
to my not being bilingual. When working in germany, both the germans
and myself had to keep on being as unambiguous as we possibly could,
which was somewhat demanding. When working in Hungaria, _I_ had to
adapt my English to the much worse level of english of the
hungarians... I, who sleep around four hours a day usually, had
trouble sleeping less than 10 hours a day ;-)

>In the end my Swedish, French and English just got so
>tangled up that when I tried to switch from one to another
>there was no telling which would actually come out...

Oh, I know the feeling; however, since my mother tongue is actually
neither french nor english, but gibberish, guess what comes out when
I'm confused[1]? ;-°

FiX

[1] Okay, _more_ confused than usual is you want to be accurate
Re: [I] learning languages [message #238046 ] Sa, 18 März 2006 01:34
FiX01  
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:54:48 +0000, Kimberley Verburg <kim [at] lspace.org>
wrote:

>Peter Davies wrote:

>> Out of interest, does anyone know if learning a language in another
>> language (like learning French in German for an English speaker, IYSWIM)
>> is as good an idea as it sounds?

>There are reasons for doing it that way, such as a lack of resources or
>a desire to explore the new language from another point of view, but for
>the average language learner it's a bad idea. If our English speaker is
>reasonably proficient in the second language and that language is
>related to the third, then they might benefit from sometimes comparing
>the two. And apologies if it's stating the obvious, but total immersion
>in the new language is the best way to go (if it's available of course).

>Out of interest, why did you think it's a good idea?

I'm quite interested in trying to learn a totally alien language from
English: when speaking in english, my cultural assumptions don't
apply, so I think it'll be easier not to project my cultural habits in
the new language when I learn it from english.

Basically, my perspectives are different in English and French, and
I'm more off-balance when speaking in English than when speaking in
French. What I'm looking for when learning Mongolian is not to be able
to speak Mongolian with a French mindset but to be able to alter my
mindset to a proto-mongolian one... and the distance from an alien
culture to another alien one is less than between my mother culture
and any alien culture...

FiX
Re: [I] learning languages [message #238052 ] Sa, 18 März 2006 01:44
FiX01  
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:02:03 -0500, "Arthur Hagen"
<art [at] broomstick.com> wrote:

>Peter Davies <peterhjr [at] yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Out of interest, does anyone know if learning a language in another
>> language (like learning French in German for an English speaker,
>> IYSWIM) is as good an idea as it sounds?
>
>I think it /can/ be a very good idea, because it forces you to start
>/thinking/ in the language you want to learn, as our brains aren't really
>capable of real time dual translations. In other words, you can't take the
>easy option of translating in your head, and sound odd to everyone except
>fellow speakers of your native language.

You're speaking in terms of sentences construction rather than in
terms of accent, right? I _don't_ want to lose my french accent when
speaking english. However, I _do_ hope than my grab of the english
language is better than my accent when speaking english ;-)

> Most people who do that don't even
>realise how horrible they sound. Thinks he speaks correctly, Yoda does.
>You can't become fluent until you've reached the point where you never have
>to translate, but try to find words and phrases while thinking in that
>language. Not having a way to fall back on your native language might help
>speeding that process.

It's not only a question of language. As I said to Kim earlier, I'm
not using the same reference point when speaking in english than when
speaking in french. And being on a somewhat shifty cultural ground
will (IMNSHO) help me take the steps towards mongolian culture...

>I can also see how it could be a quite difficult challenge, unless you have
>a very firm grasp on the rules of the intermediate language, as well as a
>fairly complete vocabulary.

Well, that's why learning a furrin language from English should be
easy: there are no rules in the english language, as any fule knows
;-P

FiX
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