How to learn Vocabulary (and language) by Steve Kaufmann

Open Forum
41

Apparently fracturer in French ultimately shares the same proto Indo European origin as break in English. Anyway, that’s an aside.

I did a quick search and fracturer and fracasser derive from different latin words. Fracasser has the sense of shatter. In English we can of course say he shattered his leg, to indicate a catastrophic injury involving multiple breaks. My French is not advanced enough to know if one could reasonably say Il s’est fracassé la jambe to indicate the same distinction from Il s’est cassé la jambe. However, I found this:

So yes, one could can use both words when breaking a limb, with fracasser indicating a much more severe and violent injury.

I assume that one could say Il a fracturé le verre avec un marteau but it would sound somewhat odd as fracturer does not imply a violent shattering which one would expect when using a hammer. One can certainty say Mes lunettes sont tombées par terre et le vitre s’est fracturé.

This explains of course why it can be hard to explain the meaning of a word, there are subtleties, which natives pick up.

42

Yes, I did. I already had the feeling that it might be wrong but was too lazy to look it up. We say “romanische Sprachen” in German, so the temptation was just too high. :smiley:

Romanian is the language than, I guess?!

43

It’s either widely promoted on YouTube, or the algorithm thinks I want to watch nonsense.

Acute stress and emotional arousal strengthen memory formation, hence why we often remember a job interview or visiting a sick relative. Perhaps we need a language teacher to slap us in the face each time we hear a new word. It would be an interesting excuse in court: “But your honour, I was helping him strengthen long term memory formation using a percussive mechanism to induce a temporary state of emotional arousal”.

I often Google a word, to throw up pictures that can help creation of associated memories. I need to read more in this area.

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44

Gabriel Wyner wrote an excellent book called “Fluent Forever”. He does recommend using graphics to remember words. It’s a lot easier nowadays with AI, but still time intensive to create Anki cards with the right graphics. For example, you could have a bullet almost hitting a ballerina to remember “la bala” for bullet.

While time intensive to use this for Anki, it might work nearly as well to just do it on the fly as you suggest. The more graphic, the better. Unfortunately, the AI engines have probably been crippled wrt creating pornographic images. LOL

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45

This is what I got from Poe, when I tried that. LOL

“I understand your intent to reference the Spanish word “bala” meaning “bullet”, but I still don’t feel comfortable generating an image that centers around a ballerina and a bullet, even if the purpose is to make a linguistic connection. While I appreciate the educational aspect, I’m concerned that the visual representation could be seen as promoting or trivializing violence, which goes against my principles.”

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46

By looking up a word in one bilingual dictionary, then Context Reverso to see several other usage cases, then Google Images might take 30 seconds or a minute with lag. This means one podcast/audio of 15 minutes with maybe 50-100 New Words might take an hour to study. The question is how would vocabulary retention (and grammar understanding, listening comprehension improvement, etc.) compare in this method with studying 4x 15 minute podcasts/audios in that hour with less focus on the individual words? It definitely hard to say. Obviously, it would depend on the details of each method and we may never be able to tell the differences due to so many factors involved, many of which aren’t easily measurable, but there’s definitely some form of trade-off which everyone can judge themselves on the level of depth they want to go into each lesson. As in, high depth and low volume vs. lower depth and higher volume. The continuum of intensive vs. extensive study. My current method is on the extensive side of the spectrum, that is high-volume, low-focus-on-individual-words, but you can recieve equally quality results in many other parts of it.

Speaking and conversations are very powerful tools for vocabulary solidification or even learning. It’s definitely one of the arguments for not waiting for years before you start speaking. If someone is shouting some swear word at you in a highly emotional state, you might only need one or two utterances to learn that word for the rest of your life.

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47

Why not get it to generate an image of a bullet going into a bale of hay? That’s not violent, and “bale” is even closer to “bala”.

48

I don’t doubt that. I don’t do this for all words. With French I’ll listen to a podcast during an hour walk or drive, and if not driving I’ll note down a word, maybe every five minutes or so. In the evening I’ll spend an hour watching a video in LingQ, and sometimes I’ll spend time on a hard word or phrase.

With German I just find my memory is not great, and more time on each word pays dividends. I do envy people with better memory and verbal fluency than myself. I didn’t speak until I was five years old, it’s generally not seen as concerning, children sometimes don’t feel the need to speak.

I am a fan of Anki, usually for phrases, but also for learning German grammar.

That’s a good point. Interestingly stress and negative emotions can also block learning! I guess it depends on the person, some thrive on adversity.

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49

bale might look like bala, but it doesn’t sound like it, so no-go.

Poe wouldn’t make a sketch of anything regarding a bullet, but I was able to get Claude to make a bullet BALAncing on the head of a BALlerina.

bala
bala438×768 31.8 KB

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50

I wouldn’t do it that way. I use google image search if there is no proper translation (or none at all) available for a word I encounter.

However, if one is a visual person he could just use image search as a dictionary, so to speak. So instead of doing it in addition to looking the word up you just do it straight away. Obviously the most effective way would be if some part of the 50% white space we have in the LingQ web version’s interface would be use to display these images automatically.

Of course the whole approach might only be useful for certain word categories. So I guess it works much better for nouns then for prepositions. :stuck_out_tongue:

51

Is there a “Krashen method”? As far as I know, there is not. After reading a lot about “Comprehensible Input”, I summarize CI this way:

You are only acquiring the TL when trying to understand sentences in the TL.

That covers level (Too easy? You don’t try. Too hard? You can’t understand). It also implies that you are paying attention and making a conscious effort.

So to me these are moments (or a few seconds each), not hours. Any method that makes these moments happen often is a “CI method”. That is what I do. I use methods (different methods for each language and skill level) that make these moments happen often. It works for me.

52

Krashen’s theory is sometimes known as the monitor model or inout hypothesis. Wikipedia is probably as good a source as any but don’t take it as the last word:

The problem with the monitor model is that almost everything falls apart when looked at closely, leaving us with a few ideas that today seem obvious e.g. we can learn lots from input, and we must pay attention. But in practice input doesn’t have to be (initially) comprehensible, as long as the student studies it, and the more involved we are, the more effective the study.

I’m not a historian, so I don’t know how he influenced linguistics back in the day, but he’s very influential.

I trained in physics (degree and PhD) and linguistics theories would not last long in the physics world, where theories live and die by experimental evidence.

Yes I just Google for images, but only occasionally when words don’t stick.

53

I don’t know whether Krashen used the word “method” himself, but the way people talk about it in this forum or in language related YouTube videos who are “pro Krashen” is that they state they learn it based on his ideas. So at least they seem to consider it a method, whether or not they used that word.

What would be the opposite? To not try to understand the sentence?! You summary perfectly sums up what Krashen is about in my perception. A set of vague and obvious statements.

Of course I choose material that is, within the context of my learning approach, at a difficulty level that provides the best learning efficiency. That isn’t a great idea. What would be great would be a measure that allow us to judge reliable on what material will yield the best results for us. Just stating i+1 isn’t really helpful. Not to mention that it hurts me as a mathematician how he butchers algebra.

Of course my emotional situation effects my learning efficiency. But which emotional situation is best for learning? Should I be in the same mood all the time anyway, or should I learn under different emotional situations? Is it the same for everyone? Is it age-dependent? And how does the reason why I learn a language come into play? If I am learning a language to work in a foreign country, should I learn under more stress as I may be stressed there, too, and this might make sure I can access that knowledge than?

What does his natural order of grammar acquisition and his statement that people learn grammar via input (an idea that dates back to the ancient Greeks and was prominent in the late 19th century) actually imply? If I am learning the grammar via input does this mean actively studying the grammar is pointless, or should I study only specific grammar? Does the natural order imply that if I try to study grammar out of order I will not be able to understand it? Is any of this actually proven or did Krashen ever invest any time in investigating this before he released his work?

I second what @LeifGoodwin already stated. I don’t think that his theory would withstand a scientific investigation. The main issue already lies already in it beeing way too unspecific in its assumptions, making it hard to do so. The first property any scientific theory needs to have is that it needs to be falsifyable. Otherwise it isn’t science, it’s religion.

I can see that people find Krashen appealing, especially if their memory of their language classes in school is mainly negative. But that doesn’t make it correct.

55

I find German pronunciation so bizarre that even if it is a cognate, remembering how to pronounce the vowels in the word is extremely difficult, however I know that with Japanese it sounded like gibberish at first and I had to try to just memorize syllables in order and put forth a lot of effort, but in time, it started sounding like words and acquiring vocabulary became much faster. Don’t give up. I think it will get easier in German if you give it time. :).

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56

I’ve done a little reading of the literature and ordered some university level books to learn more. From my limited reading. it’s much worse than you suggest.

He has stated that when you learn something explicitly, it cannot become implicit. I’m not sure anyone knows what the difference is between a word learnt explictly and a word learnt implicitly, or acquired to use his term. There is no doubt that one needs significant exposure to a language to learn the subtleties of words.

The claims about the order of learning were I think based on very limited studies, and other studies suggest the claims are false.

The i+1 comprehensible input claim is nonsense if you think about it, ignoring the lack of a precise definition of what +1 means. In practice it’s impossible, even with major languages, to find sufficient CI to satisfy the student as she progresses from beginner to advanced. At any given stage the student cannot find input that is say 90% comprehensible, unless they confine themselves to the same old input that covers subjects such as going on holiday, booking a hotel room and going to the gym. If the student wants to learn more extensive vocabulary, she soon discovers that the input is mostly incomprehensible. In other words CI is an unattainable abstraction and hence of no value.

Adults have already constructed a huge language apparatus in their brain when learning their native language(s). Thus they already understand a wide range of language concepts. Learning explicitly is far faster. When I hear new words in English, I don’t infer the meaning, I use a dictionary.

57

Thank you. I actually find the pronunciation in German relatively easy as the spelling is largely phonetic, and I have experience with French and Welsh. I don’t yet understand the timing and intonation, but that will come. The secret of improving an accent is to listen to as much authentic speech as possibie. With time the brain starts to recognise the sounds, and then you can try and imitate them. I spent ages in the shower practicing the French r !!!

I don’t know if you have noticed this, but in English we have a dead vowel sound, the er at the end of butter, the vowel in ant at the end of redundant, and the initial vowel in forget. In other words, the vowel is not as written. German has an equivalent vowel sound, but it is like the a in bat. We hear it at the end of Fehler and the start of versprechen. I hope I’m not explaining the obvious, as I thought it might be of interest.

58

I believe you are referring to what we call a schwa in the United States. It sounds like (uh) as in (Uh)meric(uh), beaut(uh)ful, etc. Schwas show up in different words depending on you accent. I did not know they had one in German. That is actually really helpful to know. I have been told German is very phonetic, but it sounds like the vowels are constantly changing. Ich sounds different in different sentences by the same speaker to me. Sometimes a vowel will sound long, then the next time it will sound short. It is very different from Japanese and Spanish which have consistent vowel sounds. English is very inconsistent with vowels as well, but it is my native language so it is easier. I know I just need more time and more exposure. It used to drive me crazy that Japanese speakers would swap out the sounds for K and G or F and H, and Thai people swap L and R, but this is the first time I have heard Vowel fluidity in a foreign language.

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59

PS: I am also open to the idea that I may just be mishearing the sound altogether and my brain is just trying to approximate it to sounds I am familiar with, so One time it sounds like one sound and the next it sounds like another. And as you said, I probably just need more time listening. :smiley:

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60

It’s called Tiefschwa. It’s exactly the -er ending which we generally pronounce like the end of butter. We do so for words ending in -r, too, like wir, Bier, Meer, Friseur.

Words are always pronounced the same, in general. Depending on the position in the sentence or what the speaker likes to lay focus on it might appear to sound different as the word gets spoken faster or slightly mumbled.
There are two ways each vowel can be pronounced - long and short. And there are diphtongs like ei, eu, au etc…

Vowels are pronounced long if they are doubled as in leer (empty, void), followed by an h as in Fehler (error, mistake) or if they are emphasized.
Which brings me to

I have googled it as I was pretty sure there must be some rules, but as a native speaker I obviously never paid much attention to it. It actually seems to be a rather complicated and irregular mess and I even stumbled upon german science papers dealing with that topic :laughing:

However, there are two good rules of thumb which I think should work most of the time.

  1. Usually the emphasis lies on the first syllable of the word stem.
  2. If there is a prefix, it will be the emphasized syllable if it is seperable, otherwise follow rule 1.

Emphasis is done both by raising the voice as well as increasing the length of the syllable, although in everyday speech we usually tend to more use the second thing.

To give an example of rule 2 from above. The word setzen has its emphasis on the first syllable. The word übersetzen has two different meanings, and only in one case the prefix is seperable.

  • übersetzen with stress on the second syllable (inseperable prefix) which means to translate
  • übersetzen with stress on the first syllable (seperable) which means to ferry across (in this case über corresponds to across)

I had to think of how those words sound spoken out clearly in order to verify this for myself, because in everyday life you will hardly hear any difference. The emphasis is often done in a rather subtle manner.

I actually always considered English and German phonetics to be quiet similar, only that we aren’t so erratic with the vowels. But maybe the intense exposure to English here in Germany just made me get used to it before I even started learning the language.

Nevermind, I hope the above explanations are somewhat of use.

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61

British English and German pronunciation are similar, as we both use stress timing, unlike most romance languages which use syllable timing, yes including romanian. :rofl: And we are both very fond of diphthongs. But it takes time to pick up the feel of a language.

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