That´s awesome ! Ô-ô
My history teacher used to belittle people who “moved their lips” when reading. He interpreted it as a sign of stupidity. Actually it was more telling of his stupidity, or more accurately, his being judgmental; and his preference to make students feel bad about themselves. He never held me up as an example, but it was excruciating to witness his awful torture in the classroom of other students.
Oh how I would like to send him a scientific paper on the fact that not only does everyone vocalize even when they are “not moving their lips”, but that it is now a useful tool for scientific and other progress. It would be fun to point out that no matter how you resist “moving your lips”, you are still triggering the same muscles in the same way, but in a nearly undetectable (and yet scientifically verified) way. Thus, he was moving his lips, so to speak, every time he read (RED) silently with no option not to trigger the muscle via the synaptic impulse.
The same theory is also well-known among great athletes who rehearse moves in their head before performing to enhance their outcome. Going through the moves in their mind, with micro synaptic impulses, and the brain firing away as if it were truly happening…
The old codger may well be dead for all I know, but I will never forget his humiliation of those poor students who moved their lips while reading.
Sidenote: Whenever he handed me my test to start, he never failed to say: “Rubin, fail with dignity… fail with dignity…”
Ironically I got an A- in that class. All I can figure is that he is bitter and hateful for some unknown reason.
C’est la vie…
@Paule89
“In German I learnt to say VegeTArier as a child, but the other day I heard some Germans say VegetaRIER which to me doesn’t make any sense. The spelling of Vegetarier to my mind asks for VegeTArier…”
I never heard anyone say “VegetaRIER”.
When you say this, you are actually talking about the emphasis in the word, is that correct? The way the post is worded makes me think you mean the way it is spelled (spelt), so it’s confusing for me to parse. Because in each of these examples (unless I am just too tired right now) it seems to be spelled the same way.
Which begs the question what is the difference to which you refer? I do not understand, but want to.
Pls advise…
Further, my understanding is that German puts the emphasis (stress) on the first part of almost every word, so that’s also why I ask. In both examples you cite, the stress (emphasis) is in the middle or ending. Of course in English we have simpler masc/fem things going on, but more complications in the emphasis department. So I just want to understand.
@Paule89 replied to my comment about the apparently shifting stress on a word I used to read frequently as a child, and always thought of as “VegeTArier”. His reply that he had never heard anyone say VegetaRIER reassured me!
Apparently we have an inbuilt rhythm/syllable counter which helps us to stress words in our native tongue correctly. There’s a fascinating link in an earlier thread of mine
Your German listening skills will be honed by paying attention to this guy and you’ll understand German stress rules much, much better, promise!
@Paule89
“I guess the only way to completely get rid of that problem would be reaching “illiterate flueny” before you start reading and writing (which is how we learned our native language). I don´t know how one could do that as an adult, though”.
Ha ha I know 2 ways. Your gonna love it…TPR is one way to do this and the ALG method is another.
You were not receptive to the idea of TPR in a previous post on this topic.
Are you a believer of TPR now? Your facetious comments have come back to bite you…
"Ha ha I know 2 ways. Your gonna love it…TPR is one way to do this and the ALG method is another. " - Treiscuarenta
Both of these are “classroom methods” though. I guess you could reach an “illiterate C2”-level with these methods, but that´d be pretty expensive. I might be able to take beginner TPR classes in Japanese here in Berlin, but I´d probably have to take 1-on-1 lessons as soon as I reach the B1 level. That sounds nice but I simply don´t have enough money to do that. I should´ve said “I don´t know how one could that as an adult and without spending a huge amount of money”.
"You were not receptive to the idea of TPR in a previous post on this topic.
http://www.lingq.com/forum/1/31053/?page=1#post…
Are you a believer of TPR now?"
I didn´t make fun of TPR, I made fun of you because your post had a “You´re sceptical about TPR? You´re a f-ing imbecile!”-feel to it.
" Your facetious comments have come back to bite you…“”
Maybe I´m just misinterpreting your comments, but it seems like you´re taking all this waaaay to seriously.
@Paule89
I think the problem is your interpretation and I think you make too many quick assumptions. I thought your reply was funny both times (here and in the TPR post).
The original post (which has been heavily edited now) acused Asher of being arrogant and dogmatic. I defended Asher and TPR…that was all…but you saw that as an opportunity to go off topic
I laughed at your off topic (somewhat frustrated) comment and replied showing that I thought it was funny…meaning I thought it was funny that it could frustrate you so much…
Btw, you can take TPR and ALG out of the classroom and you can gain literacy from them too (not sure if you’re implying that it can’t do this?). If you can find a japanese native and teach them TPR then you can cut costs…
Whatever.