Time for some serious LJ-ing: Languages learning.
atlantel reminded me that she had a NaNo blog for the month of November last year. Posting every day, and most of the time it was about something interesting.
And that made me miss the good old days when I was very active at LJ - and also that I bore myself, not to mention you, when I only post about myself.
So I'll really give it a try to post about something non-personal, as regularly as possible (aiming at once a week), and I will keep it *gasp* public. In the case that sometime I might write something half-interesting and you'd want to invite someone else. Especially since my core f-list is.. rather unactive.
Today I will start off lightly, I only have a small topic about languages:
Second language influences third language
I appologize for the bad title.
My family is now proud subscribers of a language magazine. In a recent issue of this there was an article about something that I've known for a long time, but yet never thought about:
When you learn a third (or forth or fifth) language you tend to be more influenced by your second language than your first language - even if your first language is more similar to the language you are trying to learn.
An example: I have studied German, which is very similar to my native language, Swedish. Often much more than either language is similar to English. Yet a lot of Swedes learning German tend to use English syntax and words rather than Swedish when speaking in German.
In German and Swedish you say "I play guitar". Only in English do you say "I play the guitar". Yet almost every Swedish beginner in German adds the article.
The same is true for Germans learning Swedish - the correct way to form the sentence "Now I speak Swedish" is in both Swedish and German "Now speak I Swedish". Still, many German exchange student I've met form sentences in the English way.
So, according to the article, this is due to the fact that in the brain ones native language is in one part of the brain, while all other languages are in another. It makes sense - your native language(s) is special. And having a place each for all the other languages seems unrealistic (I don't know anything about the brain or its storage possibilities, though). But it also makes me sad, as it means that you really can never learn another language like your own - it will always be in the "wrong part" of the brain.
This makes my envy for the from birth bilingual people grow even stronger, but it certainly explains my almost impressive ability to speak in German and Italian at the same time.
So, how is that for a start? I promise I won't always talk about languages :p But I must admit it's nice to write something again.
And that made me miss the good old days when I was very active at LJ - and also that I bore myself, not to mention you, when I only post about myself.
So I'll really give it a try to post about something non-personal, as regularly as possible (aiming at once a week), and I will keep it *gasp* public. In the case that sometime I might write something half-interesting and you'd want to invite someone else. Especially since my core f-list is.. rather unactive.
Today I will start off lightly, I only have a small topic about languages:
Second language influences third language
I appologize for the bad title.
My family is now proud subscribers of a language magazine. In a recent issue of this there was an article about something that I've known for a long time, but yet never thought about:
When you learn a third (or forth or fifth) language you tend to be more influenced by your second language than your first language - even if your first language is more similar to the language you are trying to learn.
An example: I have studied German, which is very similar to my native language, Swedish. Often much more than either language is similar to English. Yet a lot of Swedes learning German tend to use English syntax and words rather than Swedish when speaking in German.
In German and Swedish you say "I play guitar". Only in English do you say "I play the guitar". Yet almost every Swedish beginner in German adds the article.
The same is true for Germans learning Swedish - the correct way to form the sentence "Now I speak Swedish" is in both Swedish and German "Now speak I Swedish". Still, many German exchange student I've met form sentences in the English way.
So, according to the article, this is due to the fact that in the brain ones native language is in one part of the brain, while all other languages are in another. It makes sense - your native language(s) is special. And having a place each for all the other languages seems unrealistic (I don't know anything about the brain or its storage possibilities, though). But it also makes me sad, as it means that you really can never learn another language like your own - it will always be in the "wrong part" of the brain.
This makes my envy for the from birth bilingual people grow even stronger, but it certainly explains my almost impressive ability to speak in German and Italian at the same time.
So, how is that for a start? I promise I won't always talk about languages :p But I must admit it's nice to write something again.