it's a vicious circle
Before diving into the posts of the last two days (why do you people have lives?), I have some things I'd like to say. *clears throat*
- French literature. Downright failure. I deprived myself of sleep and forced myself to endless hours of French movies, websites, books, podcasts, music etc. for two months and the result was hearing the teacher ( Read more... )
- French literature. Downright failure. I deprived myself of sleep and forced myself to endless hours of French movies, websites, books, podcasts, music etc. for two months and the result was hearing the teacher ( Read more... )
That's probably part of your problem - it's like you're translating twice, and something gets lost there.
How'd you learn to think in English?
Learning a language in a school setting is just... weird, and I have some mixed opinions on it (even though it's exactly what I'm doing right now). Your teacher I'm sure is right - if you spent six months in France, sure, you'd learn to think in French! How you, or I, or anyone else can learn to be that fluent without just totally submersing yourself in the language is beyond me.
Makes me wonder if it's even worth it to spend the time and money and energy on university classes - if it takes four years to get a degree in a foreign language, why not just move to that country for four years? (Says the language student, lol) You'd learn more, and you'd learn faster. But then you wouldn't have that piece of paper saying you've got a college education so...
Yeah. Interesting to think about though.
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How'd you learn to think in English?
I don't have a real answer. I started learning English when I was 11, and the Internet at the time was almost completely in English, so I grabbed the dictionary and translated every single word. I paid attention in class because I needed the grammar, but by my twelfth birthday I had outgrown standard education. Things sort of evolved from there, and I think I stopped caring about school-English altogether in 2003 when I bought OotP in England.
I agree with everything you said, and last summer while I was in France I felt better about my French. I mean, I could talk to people! It wasn't that hard! I even read the entire Ramses series checking only once or twice with the dictionary!
And then I got back in the uni environment and, well, see how things turned out? Here it takes 3 years to get a degree (you get an optional year abroad if you apply for it - which I didn't, stupid me), but nobody is willing to give you a job without a Master's.
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this is an interesting phenomena - it seems like it's something that a lot of people get stuck on - you know, first translating into your second language and then into whatever else you're trying to learn. Almost like your brain has trained itself to think "foreign language=English" (or whatever your second language might be) and MUST go through those pathways to get anywhere else.
In Italy I knew a Canadian girl. If you ask her she'd say she "knew" Italian but not that she "spoke" it. She did speak some, I mean, she had lived in Rome for the better part of a decade, and would regularly make pleasant chit-chat with people in Italian, but if she were going to have an actual conversation, it was in English or French. English was her first language, and French was her second (in Canada, everyone learns French in school) and she told me the exact same thing, that first she translates to French, and then to Italian.
I think in a way I had it easy - Spanish and Italian are so similar that it was, at first, extremely helpful to think something in Spanish and then sort of... switch it around so it sounded Italian, and then go with that :P Eventually, though, I had to break that habit cause some things are NOT similar AT ALL and the more I learned the more it became clear that I had to simply put Spanish out of my head entirely.
And as for classroom languages... I work with a girl who has a degree in Spanish and yet comes to me for translations (we have quite a few Spanish speaking coworkers from South America, and I live in a very touristy area so in the summer we often have guests who don't speak English) but I know that whatever work she had to complete to get her degree, exam or paper or whatever, I would NOT be able to pass. So really, who'd be more useful to hire for their language skills, her or me?
Strange situation, really.
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Spanish and Italian are so similar...
Funny, a lot of English people tell me the same thing, but we Italians find it a very difficult language! :D
Almost like your brain has trained itself to think "foreign language=English" (or whatever your second language might be) and MUST go through those pathways to get anywhere else.
How scientific of you. :) When you describe the process, it sounds even more laborious than it is inside my head. And the worst part is that once I go over it mentally, I have to do it all over again to actually voice the thought! I usually open my mouth, my neatly translated French sentence in mind, and... 'Well, as I - oh.'
I'll have to break the habit too...
ps. I'd hire you, not to be rude to your co-worker, but I am always highly suspicious of people with a language degree. Especially after seeing some of my classmates graduate... the obscenities I haven't heard...
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