The word “participle” is well-known, and used a zillion times in English grammar. It is only “partizip” that was confusing. Thanks for explaining.
A single letter change makes a new word (in English) with a different meaning. For example “quiet” vs. “quite”. Different words, different pronunciations, different meanings, different uses.
I won’t comment on your other ideas. I probably don’t have any good suggestions to add to your ideas.
I corrected it in the initial post, to avoid further confusion. Thanks for pointing that out. 
It’s not that it’s harder to pronounce, but you know that language changes, often for what we might call laziness. Or sometimes it’s just seemingly random.
Looking at Spanish and servir, I see that sometimes the root has an e, sometimes an i, in both tenses, so the root vowel is not indicating a change to past tense, it’s the suffix that serves that purpose. To see why the root vowel changes, we’d have to look at the evolution of the word. But I bet it’s just like French i.e. take the pronoun and the root, and add on a conjugated form of the verb to have or to be. I am not familiar with Spanish.
Here’s examples of tense formation in French for servir:
Present: Je sers.
Past tense: Je + [avoir conjugated] + servir => Je + ai + servir => J’ai servi.
Future tense: Je + servir + [avoir conjugated] => Je + servir + ai => Je servirai.
We see small changes along the way, so the formation is not completely regular. But I bet you that is how Spanish often works too.
Yes why not. However, it would need a mechanism, and the proposed mechanism for evolution of semitic language root vowel changes took thousands of years. I suspect it is unlikely, but I’m no expert linguist, so my opinion might be wrong.
There is a lot of vocabulary related to sea faring, Is that what you mean by military? I was unable to find a word list. And perhaps a native non PIE population learnt PIE, but retained important words. Who knows!
Well so-called Indo European languages have so many shared features that PIE is surely a fact. And I believe most latin, Greek and Slavic words can be traced back to common ancestors, or loan words from other languages e.g. Arabic.
I think the suggestion is that there was a non PIE population somewhere in northern europe that contributed some linguistic features to proto Germanic. English has almost no words from it’s celtic predecessor, presumably because English was the prestige language. English absorbs massive amounts of French vocabulary, even today, witness banquette and faux. And yet we rarely absorb words from German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish or Norwegian. I think this is because French is seen as prestigious.
Anyway, it’s all very contentious and mysterious. I have a feeling computational linguistics will make progress in this area in future decades.
Thanks. I realised what partizip meant. It’s not the simple past tense that is difficult, that’s pretty easy. It’s phrases like Ich kann sie wachsen sehen.
I was at school in the sixties and seventies, and in that era it became popular to not teach grammar. Thus I had zero grammar lessons in English. That is why I have had to learn about pronouns, prepositions, gerunds and so on while learning foreign languages. It’s shocking in my opinion, but sadly true.
@LeifGoodwin You are right that those Spanish verbs denote the tense via the suffix, not just by there vowel shift. However, this is the case for most English and German verbs, too. I tried to look up the numbers and it seems that both in English and German the number of verbs with that property of vowel shift is restricted to 200-300, with both languages having more then 100,000 verbs, so it isn’t a representive feature anyways.
In addition, both examples you provided had a change in ending in addition to the vowel shift in Old English, too.
to come: ancuman
I come → I came: ic ancume → ic ancōm
you come → you came: þu ancymest → þu ancōmeto rise: arisan
I rise → I rose: ic ārīse → ic ārās
you rise → you rose: þu ārīst → þu ārise
Some English and German verbs also show a combination of both.
I bring → I brought: ich bringe → ich brachte
I think → I thought: ich denke → ich dachte
Sidenote: I just became aware that we are discussing two issues here.
The english wikipedia article doesn’t mention them, but the german one does. That is interesting in regards to your earlier comment, to which degree political opinions might effect the content of wikipedia. Would be a good topic for a doctoral thesis.
Some words originally mentioned by Sigmund Feist, that he suspected to originate from semitic languages are: Schwert/sword, Schild/shield, Helm/helmet, Bogen/bow, Speer/spear, Lanze/lance, Feind/enemy or foe, Krieg/war, …
The problem is that either there could be words found in nongermanic indoeuropean languages that are lexically similar, or that share the same semantic. The latter is important as this implies that the concept of a certain object (like helmet) already existed in several indoeuropean languages. So everyone in europe knew what a helmet was except for the germanic tribes, and they only found out after contact with some semitic tribes?
The oldnordic word for shield is skjöldr, the germanic one skeldu. The latin word is scutum, the lithuanian word is skìltis.
Lance is lancea in Latin and longché in Greek.
There are of course non-military associated words. Bär/bear is another word for brown, which can be found in the lithuanian béras.
Schiff/ship comes from skipan, which has the additional meaning of barrel. The latin word scyphus means drinking cup, which were made from wood at the time. The latvian word skibît means to cut or carve.
The overall issue is that most words that are supposedly substrates fall into catagories that, if one takes a look at history, are commonly superstrates. The culture who was victorious uses their language to describe aspects that are related to ruling. This includes anything related to war, administration, legislation or any other aspects of higher culture. Substrates can usually be found in regards to terms of everyday life. So the ruling class starts to use the words of the common people in order to communicate with them. But a king doesn’t talk to a peasant about administrative or cultural matters, so to speak.
Similar considerations can be made in regards to names for animals and plants, another category with a supposedly high amount of semitic substrates. Usually the words were used that already existed. So if one tribe conquers a region and there is an animal new to them, they will most likely just use the term from the local language spoken. But if they bring an animal they cultivated, they will most likely continue to use the word they used all the time. In general you don’t invent a new word if there already exists one. For that very reason a lot of the German vocabulary related to cooking originated from French.
That indoeuropean languages share so many features can be the result of a common proto language - or it is the result of a lot of contact among those cultures as well as cultural common ground (trade, romanication, the migration period in the first millenium, the spread of christianity, dozens of wars, …).
Btw.: I didn’t say it doesn’t exist. It seems to be a highly acknowledged theory in the fields of linguistics. But it is exactly that, a theory. It might be correct, it might be incomplete or completely wrong.
Even though I agree that the influence of French was most likely stronger then from the Germanic languages, I may note that there are quiet a bunch of German loan words in the english language. And banquette exists in German, too (Bankett). So maybe we got it from French and gave it to you 
(There are words in German that we took from the French who took it from Arabic, like Sorbet).
Than I would assume that this is what is causing you the most issues, not your memory.
Regarding your example sentence.
It is probably not obvious but sie wachsen is the object of the sentence, as is her grow in the English counterpart. What can you see? Her grow. The object, like the subject of a sentence isn’t neccessarely a noun.
It is exactly the same as in the following sentences
I like to eat ice cream → Ich mag es Eiscreme zu essen
I want to watch a movie → Ich möchte einen Film schauen
I can see the girl dancing → Ich kann das Mädchen tanzen sehen
So the word order is Subject-Predicate-Participle-Object in English and Subject-Predicate-Object-Participle in German. So basically object and participle are swapped. I hope that brighten things up a bit.
Do you know of a phonics course for French that is geared towards children learning to read?
In teaching our children to read English, I have come across wonderful, systematic presentations of spelling rules/phonics pattern that have made it quite easy for our children to master English spelling. The best ones are geared towards classical homeschoolers. I’ve always wanted to learn French, and my youngest has expressed an interest in learning French, but I’ve never been able to get the project started because so much of my approach is based on large quantities of reading, and the spelling is a barrier I have not been able to overcome.
I agree with your criticisms of Krashen. Krashen’s theory is a classic of a certain species: one that embeds a anti-traditional moral/social point of view inside a pseudo-scientific theory. It’s obvious that Krashen and Kaufmann share whatever inclines people to have an affinity for that sort of theory, but the actual intellectual foundations for the theory are weak.
I assume that the originators of the Semitic substrate theory had looked at proto-Germanic (PG) words rather than modern English words, as the latter tell us nothing. My examples were clearly badly chosen. However, you have convinced me that the Semitic substrate theory may stand on very shaky ground.
English too absorbed French kitchen terminology.
Without doubt languages tend not to replace existing words. English is weird though. Bench is an old word, probably from French. But for some reason posh people keep referring to banquette, when they mean bench. I assume that bench is seen as common, whereas banquette is French, thereby proving how sophisticated the posh people are. Fake is an old word, possibly of Germanic origin. False is an old word of French origin. Posh people have started to say faux, which comes from French, instead of fake and false. Thus someone has a faux smile.
It’s as if we are insecure and dislike our own language so much that we must use French words, even when our own words originate from French.
The French are absorbing a lot of US business speak, sadly.
Fair enough.
Yes we do take some German words, such as zeitgeist, angst and schadenfreude, but not so many. We often see British adverts with people speaking French, to create an air of sophistication. I can think of current adverts for biscuits and beer. It is rather rare to hear British adverts in German, only Volkswagen/Audi comes to mind - Vorsprung durch Technik - and they do so to invoke engineering excellence.
Thank you, that makes sense. Yes, the verb wachsen is in a sense acting as an adjective on sie i.e. her/they i.e. Ich kann die Pflanzen wachsen sehen.
I’m sorry, I don’t. I can only suggest you start a thread on this forum and ask your question.
Spanish is similar to French but much more phonetic and grammatical gender rules are much easier. That said, I love the French language. French spelling is much easier than English, but not phonetic. I learnt some French at school, and the spelling never troubled me. Maybe your children will sail through it.
I had never thought of it that way, but it makes a lot of sense. Krashenistas sometimes sound like cult leaders.
I feel quite angry that Steve Kaufmann pushes Krashen. He attends polyglot conferences, so he should know that each polyglot uses different techniques.
With German, I have stopped ‘acquiring’ from so-called comprehensible input (which in practice does not exist) and moved over to old style study of texts, and I am making much more progress. That is also how I learnt French to intermediate level.
Actually banquette has two meanings and, as I wasn’t aware of before, in German we use its second meaning: a feast (which in English seems to be banquet, lol).
I can relate to this. In Germany there are people who heavely overuse english words even though there are existing german expressions for what they are trying to say. And often they do it in a nonsensical way.
I can’t say a whole lot in regards to business speak from my own experience, but considering what I have heard it is an issue here, too. Unfortunately it seems to be the case that even though the majority isn’t happy about that (because they find it hard to understand), the individuals in higher positions seem to favor it. I guess it is some sort of hierarchical behaviour based on the language used.
In French the words are Le banquet and La banquette. We kept the original spellings. It seems that in English banquette means a fixed bench, or fixed seating.
Yeah. The German word Bankett, which seems to derive from Le banquet actually has several meanings.
But I digress.
The reason is not poor memory, but rather the other point you mentioned here: your level in both languages. There are many factors, which determine whether or not you remember a newly learnt word, but level in the language is one of the main factors. In a language you are advanced in, you simply require much less repetition to learn a new word and remember it (an order or two of magnitude) than when you are a beginner. Eg. 2 times as an advanced learner vs. 200 times as a complete beginner. This is my experience.
Alternatively, consider this:
The only problem with your explanation is that as soon as I changed my learning method, I started to remember German words. Before I was really struggling. This is a change I made in the last week, and words are finally sinking in. For me the idea that words sink in ‘naturally’ using the ‘natural’ method of Krashen is just wrong.
Two years ago I had no problem learning French words. I used ‘old fashioned’ methods.
Years ago I learnt some Welsh, and had no problem remembering words. I used ‘old fashioned’ methods.
I don’t doubt that recall does improve with level, that is definitely true with my French. I have noticed that in French I can often remember words straight off, just as in English.
I’ve done a lot of reading, and I found some academic works on Krashen’s method. It is not supported by the evidence despite the false claims to the contrary of its supporters. In truth it is a series of unsubstantiated hypotheses. In fact, most of it is contradicted by experimental research, many current theories and even its proponents who in practice use different learning methods.
I found some interesting videos by two respected polyglots, Luca Lampariello, and Lydia Machova. They both state that in their view a learner needs to find the method that suits them. In other words, there is no magic method that everyone should use. That is my experience too. And I believe Obsttorte said as much earlier on in this thread.
What did you change from to?
I’m not really up-to-date nor versed in the research relating to Krashen’s theories and the studies around them, but is looking up unknown words in the dictionary really part of his theory? The way I see it is reading (while listening) and looking up unknown words in the dictionary is more just doing hundreds upon thousands of drills like flashcards, but in many different contexts and actually being interesting. To me, it seems a much faster method than waiting for the perfect context to be able to guess the definition of the word, because you are a child listening or reading without access to a dictionary. As to theories, any man and his dog can pull some theory out of a dark place, so I take them largely with a grain a salt.
Krashen’s “theory” is a set of five hypothesis.
The last point is the only one I would second. However, that is nothing Krashen came up with first.
In essence I am not sure whether anyone here on LingQ is learning foreign languages using the Krashen method solely, especially considering how blurry it is formulated. It is also contradictory. If someone who is at a low level in the target language uses material that is somewhat comprehensible, it is probably pretty boring, which will let the affective filter become active, hindering the learning process. If the learner uses material that is interesting, it will most likely be way above his level. Once a point is reached where those two things don’t contradict each other the decision on whether one “learn” or “acquire” the language is probably more a matter of personal preferences and the time one allow it to take. Maybe at this point the level is already high enough to suit the individual needs, so it doesn’t play a role, anyways. Not everyone aims for C2 
But in the end I think you are right that what we are doing is essentially just flash cards in funny. Which isn’t a bad thing, imho.
I was trying to watch and read lots of German videos which were just a bit beyond my level, and gradually pick up the language by looking up words.
Now I’m using videos that are far from comprehensible, in fact largely incomprehensible at first, I study them much more, analyse the grammar, and make more of an effort to remember words. That last part is hard to explain, but I look at the word more, look at the structure, and actively try to memorise it. Overall, I study the language rather than ‘acquire’ it, a horrible vague word. This is how I got to intermediate French many decades ago, at school, then with the Alliançe Française and Institut Français. It’s more like school work.
Not really. Obsttorte has give a decent explanation of the theory. As far as I can see, there’s quite a few people who push the idea of ‘acquiring’ language by consuming lots of comprehensible input, or more accurately ~90% comprehensible. They claim you don’t need to study, that acquiring occurs naturally. They use Krashen to justify these claims. LingQ is promoted using Krashen’s theory, though obviously the LingQs, dictionaries etc are extras.
I could write quite a bit on why I now think this is mostly nonsense. But I’m not sure it would be interesting.
To be fair, the method might work for some people, but probably not most.
I agree on both points.
I think there are quite a few different ways to learn vocabulary, which is often the biggest weakness for a long time. The whole sitting back, daydreaming, while everything occurs ‘naturally’ in the background by some ‘natural’ magic really isn’t very efficient.
The level of concentration, emotionality, comparing, contrasting, analysing, mental work in general, etc. you do while going through material really changes how much you remember. It’s very taxing mentally, if you write things out, analyse in depth, read the history of the word, make significant effort, etc. which signals to your brain it’s an important thing, hence worth remembering. While you are reading (while listening) to material, you can do also do things mentally to try and increase your level of mental work. It’s very subtle, and some things like concentration are trainable to some extent, but there are definitely ways to do it while reading/watching German videos.
@LeifGoodwin - While I fully acknowledge your use of the word “obvious,” I find it curious that “fracasser” and “fracture” could be considered cognates in a limited context. While there are many categories of direct objects that can be fractured but don’t work with “fracasser” (like bones), consider materials and structures.
For instance, while one can say:
One cannot say:
However, one can also say:
But not:
This illustrates an interesting example of words that are cognates in some contexts but not in others.
I don’t speak French but from the examples you provided I get the impression that fracture is passiv (it happens to someone, like breaking an arm) and fracasser is active (so someone breaks something, maybe even on purpose, like the glass).
The sé at the end of the conjugated form fracassé reminds me of Spanish verbs where the reflexiv pronouns are directly added to the end of a verb. So if I would assume this to be the case here, too, and approach the sentences provided in a very naive (and probably wrong) manner, I would read
as
A similar example for Spanish was discussed here
As both are romanian romance languages this might be a shared feature.
I think you meant to write romance, not romanian. Apologies for being picky, but it’s an important distinction.
