Quote:
Originally Posted by William Murphy
I understand Spanish better than speak Spanish
This is a myth. If you speak any Spanish at all your ability to speak Spanish will always be better than your ability to understand; which is probably true for all languages. The reason is simple. The Native Speaker of any language will always have a much larger and varied vocabulary than you not to mention all the dialects, slang, idiomatic expressions and accents that are out there just waiting to make comprehension harder than speaking. When you speak Spanish you are in control of the word choice; when you are listening to a Spanish speaker the opposite is true, thereby making understanding much more complicated than simply speaking.
So why do some people think they can understand Spanish better. The fact is there are literally thousands of words that are similar and/or identical in Spanish and English. What the person is hearing is something like this.
Blah, blah, blah, a word I recognize, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, another word I recognize, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, another word I recognize.
OR
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, CONTROL, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, STUDENT, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, OEPRATION
The words: Control, Student and Operation exist in Spanish and English
It is because of these words that exist in both language that the new student is fooled into thinking their comprehension is better than it actually is.
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Molto interessante Guillermo. Ma che ne dici di questo? Ops, I was thinking in Italian. You got me to thinking about the order a person learns a second language/new language or even a first language. The order of learning a language is:
Also you could think of it as the normal way or natural way of learning a language is:
1. understanding (for understanding a language you have to listen to the language a lot)
2. speaking
3. reading
4. writing
So according to this theory a person must be able to understand a language before she/he can speak the language. (Not counting saying catch phrases of course but actual conversation.) Then before you can read a language you need to be able to know how to speak a language and then to be able to effectively write a language you have to be able to know how to read the language.
Of course this does not mean you can not use written language as a guide to learning a language but you can't pronounce the words well without knowing how to speak the language.(try reading French out loud without knowing how to speak French.)Spanish and Italian for that matter if you don't speak them.) Spanish and Italian have similar vowels sounds making them some what easy to read as compared to French with it's silent letters and different vowels sounds etc. etc.
Along with this there is what they call "the silent period" of learning a language. A time when the words are just not coming automatically out of your mouth. Normally for an English speaker in a total immersion or semi-total immersion situation this silent period lasts anywhere from 3 to six months. During the silent period you should be listening to your second language constantly and of course also studying the language. This has happened to me with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perikles
They would have been speaking Scottish Gaelic, or a mixture with English. The Gaelic languages have very little in common with Germanic languages other than being Indo-European, so no, Scottish is not close to English.
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Hola Perikles. Gracias for responding to me.
Was doing some searching on the internet and found this below. Not saying it's true but what do you think of it?
"Scots is closest to English, in fact you could say it's an English dialect, though it has more Scandinavian words like bairn [from Viking times] than standard English.
English is a Germanic language. After Scots, the closest is probably Dutch, then Low German, then High German.
Gaelic and Welsh are completely separate - they are Celtic languages. Welsh is called p-Celtic and Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic are q-Celtic. Words that begin with a p- in Welsh often begin with a c- in Gaelic. But none of them are close to English at all. Hurray!"
Also I remember reading somewhere that if the French Normans had not invaded England or conquered England in 1066 then English would today be a lot like the Dutch language. Have you ever heard of that? Therefore maybe Dutch is the closest language to English. Also have you heard before that 1066 is the most important date as far as how the English language was effected? Latin French went into English and somewhere around 40 to 60% of English vocabulary comes from Latin by the way of French. And of course since Spanish, Italian and Portuguese come from Latin they also have these same cognate words related to English as French does.