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So, on the going-to-Japan front, i thought it might be useful to learn at least a little Japanese (uh, a VERY little Japanese) before i head out. I don't expect wonders, and i don't expect to really understand others that much, but i would like to be able to at least greet people, use vaguely the correct form of thank you, ask if people speak English (or say i don't really understand Japanese), and ask people how to get somewhere. It seems polite. I might BE a crappy gaijin, but at least i'm one who made a wee effort to respect the place i'm visiting.
To that end, i picked up the quickie Pimsleur set of Japanese I. (We have the full set of French I, and are about 15 lessons in. I need to start working through those again, when i'm through with the Japanese lessons.) They arrived yesterday, and today i made my way through the first lesson twice, and am three-quarters of the way through the second lesson. (That commute is good for something!)
The Pimsleur system is all about teaching you spoken language - there's little-to-no written work and accompianament - they walk you through the rules of language as you get to them when learning basic interactions, all out loud, with lots of repetition and aural/spoken interaction. When i was working on the French lessons, i knew i was relying on Russell a lot to spell things out for me - i always wanted to know how something was spelled when i was hearing a new word for the first time, and i knew it drove me crazy not to know, but i'm not sure i quite understood how crazy. Today, i was going nuts for a mnemonic. I'm terrible with aural mnemonics. TERRIBLE. I had to do the first lesson twice - unless i can see something written down (even phantom-written, in my head), i have a hard time matching the word to both its sound and meaning. I'm a little familiar with some Japanese phrasing (when romanized), so the few words i recognized (desu, ka, arigato, etc) were a lot easier than things like 'you', or 'understand' (anata-wa, wakarimasu,), and the 'thanks-to-you' (i can't even remember it) that comes after 'i'm fine' (genki desu), and so-on. I struggle to remember strings of sounds that don't make sense, and even when i can SAY them, i can't remember them a moment later.
Another odd observation - i also find it easier to remember how to pronounce a sound that's a little odd to me (un, bon, vin, blanc? desu?) if i can see how they're spelled in my head - EVEN IF I SWALLOW THE LETTERS AND NEVER QUITE SAY THEM.
I wonder if i'm visual because i grew up voraciously reading, or if i'm a dedicated reading machine because i'm visual?
How do you learn?
Posted by meriko at October 02, 2002 10:38 PMI will try to keep my response to less than 300 pages.
Your language learning experience is not entirely typical. Being visual probably has something to do with it, being EXTREMELY literate definitely has something to do with it, as does being able to transliterate Japanese phonetically with some semblance of regular spelling. You might (correctly) imagine that having people see how English words are spelled does not always help them very much. In the case of "un bon vin blanc," which uses damnably wicked French spelling, I think that, not only is your visual side kicking in, but that your scientific, find-a-method-in-this-madness side is busy trying to figure out the spelling system, giving you another pathway to use when remembering the new words.
Also (and this is still just me talking out of my butt), I think that you are way more used to having to "decode" difficult visual input (i.e. writing) than you are audio input. Perhaps you need to write a new version of your plug-in.
I am such a geek.
Posted by: Meredith on October 8, 2002 09:34 AMI knew she would have an answer.
One of these days my wife should write that 300-page response and call it a book.
Yeah, i think she should, too.
Though she didn't actually answer my question. ;)
Mere, as i thought about it more, i also think that i'm used to storing the word as a visual, written thing, that i attach a sound to. I definitely learned what words meant long before i learned how to say them (ask me to tell you the 'genitals' story, someday). So i wonder if my brain is used to storing the word as text, and needs that anchor for attachment? So interesting. 8)
I also agree that Japanese is great for regularity of spelling and even pronunciation - i was able to pick out the words i knew so often in conversation while i was in Tokyo - but even the damnable french words that are hard to spell, and don't look at all like what they sound, are easier to remember if i know how to spell it. I'm a weirdo. Study me!
Sure she did. She presented a reasonable hypothesis of how you learn. That was, in fact, the question you ended with.
Actually, i asked 'How do YOU learn' ;)