Accents

I was talking with two international students today--one Korean, one Vietnamese--and we got into a discussion about accents.

Accents, we decided, make language learning hard. I, as a native English speaker, don't have too hard a time understanding different accents. English, Chinese, Arabic, Australian, Western, even Cockney, I'll understand well enough. Growing up, you hear all sorts of English dialects and accents. I may even have a little more experience with accents than some, since I grew up in a college town with a lot of internationals.

It's different for a learner. You learn with your teacher's accent, and it can be hard to transition to another. For example, the difference made it harder for the two students today to understand each other, and they also said it was hard to understand people who spoke different dialects of English. And they're not the only ones.

Dr. I., who I mentioned in an earlier post, has been in the US for quite a while, but her mother hasn't been here as long. She says her mother understands English pretty well here--but, if they're an hour south, she has to translate for her mother.

A friend of mine, J., is from eastern Europe and learned British English pretty early on. When she came to the US, though, she could barely understand what people were saying. In many ways, she had to relearn the language--but she speaks English like a native now.

I haven't had too much trouble with this--yet. Part of it is that I'm still in the US and don't have to function in another language. Here's what I think is relevant for me:

-I'm learning France French, not North African French or Quebec French. A funny story I once heard about an American teacher who knew France French but was in Quebec: she was at a meal and offered more food. "Non, merci," she said. "J'ai plein." I'm full. Things went from normal to awkward, and she couldn't understand why her Quebecois friends were acting so strangely--until she realized that, in Quebec French, "j'ai plein" meant "I'm pregnant."

-I'm learning Modern Standard Arabic. That's the printed, political, and academic language. The reasoning is that, though it's not how people regularly talk, it'll do academically and it's understood--if not spoken--everywhere. Dialects are offshoots of Modern Standard; for example, Egyptians pronounce "J" as "G" and many Saudis pronounce "Q" as "G." I've got a friend who's teaching me some Saudi dialect, though, and I'm very grateful for it.

If you know where you want to go, try to learn the dialect and accent.

Y'all

Sometime or other, you'll probably see me write (or hear me say, if you know me) "y'all." Now, I'm not from a part of the country where that's a common thing, but I got started on it when I started learning French and Arabic. In English, the plural "you" is the same as the singular, and sometimes that's just not satisfying. "Y'all" does the job quite well.

That's all I have to say to y'all for now.

Third Language Learning

A friend of mine also interested in SLS mentioned that she wondered what learning more than two languages would do to how you learn.

I'm here to explain that as best I can without knowing much at all about SLS yet.

English: My native language, learned as a child. I fancy I understand it rather well.

French: My second language, started in high school. I'm nowhere near fluent, but you could parachute me down anywhere in France and I could probably find my way home, or at least get into a good discussion about literature. I hate the grammar, love the pronunciation, like and mostly understand the literature, and ask that, s'il vous plait, you'll speak slowly.

Arabic: My third language. Parachute me into Egypt, and I'll be able to tell someone who I am and that I need to find someone who speaks English. I might even be able to carry on a halting conversation about my pets. Hate the vocabulary, like reading and pronunciation.

I'm in the process of learning both French and Arabic right now. I'm also in the process of saying, "Bonjour ya Carmen. Kayf halak? Ca va." I usually don't start speaking in Arabic when I'm trying to speak French, but I've had some close calls, including a time on a test where I had to choose between the wrong season in French and the right season in Arabic. (I went with French.)

But when I'm in Arabic, French is usually my fall-back language. If there's something I don't know how to say in Arabci and I have time to think about what I'm saying, I'll usually use English. If I'm still trying to say it in Arabic, the word I don't know will probably be French.

Sometimes I think I get into a 'foreign language mood.' When that's the case, it's easier to grab a word from my second language than my first. It gets a bit confusing, especially if you're the one trying to understand me.

So that's speech and thought; now for learning.

Learning French in high school was a valuable experience; it taught me how to learn a language. Before that, I didn't know such a thing as regular verbs existed. There were certain phrases I knew I should look out for and learn quickly, and ways to chart verbs that would help me study more effectively.

On a related note, it was studying French that made me realize how little I knew about English. Sure, I was good at grammar, but I didn't even know if we had regular verbs. I had a better idea of what I needed to learn in college. If I hadn't realized this, I'd probably still be in English Education, preparing to teach literature.

In summary: learning a second language taught me not only how to learn a third, but how to learn my first.

Small Vowels and 1st Graders

I had a chance to talk to Dr. I. a week or so ago, and--as she's an Arabic teacher and a native speaker--I asked her about the short vowels* I keep seeing at the ends of words in my Arabic New Testament. She said that, as a matter of good pronunciation, you do indeed use them.**

So, naturally, I asked her why we hadn't learned any of this first semester, when we first learned to conjugate verbs. She replied that, when she first taught, she'd been a stickler for that sort of thing. Eventually, though, she found that de-emphasizing them and encouraging useage instead of perfection helped students progress more quickly and enthusiastically.

Last semester I did service learning at the local elementary school for an education class. Just about every Monday morning I was there, the 1st graders had a writing exercise based on something current (ie, Halloween) or a book we'd just read together. I'd go around helping and encouraging: "Good job!" "Have you an your family ever gone on vacation somewhere? --Cool! --Now write down what you just told me." And, while they were writing: "Is that the right way to spell the word?"

The teacher talked to me later on. "You don't need to worry too much about the spelling," she said. "What's important is that they're writing."

I tend to be nitpicky about grammar and spelling, so those two events made me pause and think. There's a lot to be said for perfection--that's the goal. But perfection comes with time. Which would you prefer, a class that does incessant drills, or a class that makes you interact? Starting both with the passable and with the easy leaves room for enthusiasm.

To put it this way: you can't head into the gym and start with 200 pounds. You have to start with something you can actually handle and work up to something you can actually handle (though 200 pounds is a lot). That's why language classes start with "Ana ismee Rachel. Ma ismuki?" It took us a couple months to get through the alphabet, much less start verb conjugation.

*Arabic has three long vowels written in the word with the consonants, and three short vowels written above or below the word. The short vowels are often omitted in writing, except to clarify the meaning. Children's books and holy books are generally fully vowelized, which is why I knew these vowels on the ends of words existed.

**From what I know: sometimes they're grammatical (the indicative and the subjunctive have different final vowels. Other times I think they're part of the word and serve to make the sound flow better. I could be wrong.

Statement of Purpose

For once, I'm not procrastinating on schoolwork! And this is most likely the most epic non-procrastination in my life.

You see, I have an essay due in (let me check my watch) three years. My college has a wonderful program that lets you make up your own major, but it requires a giant essay before graduation. In my application, I promised to keep a periodic record of what I've learned. This is that record.

So what is this intriguing major--Enigmatology? Magic? Kinesioeconomics?* Sorry--it's a lot more boring than that: Second Language Studies. I'd like to teach English in the Arabic-speaking world, and none of the existing majors here would fully prepare me for that.

I plan to post here whenever I have something worth posting. That'll probably be a lot of posts in the next few weeks, then maybe once a month. We'll see. I'll be drawing from my classes on Second Language Studies (SLS), but also from my experiences in learning French and Arabic.

This blog is mostly for me--something I can't get lost in a pile of paper--but if I've got decent ideas, it's not all that hard to click the "Follow" button!

*Whatever it is, it can't be as fun as Astroavionics.