well
Question:
If I am 60 something, and I put on the TV constantly in a foreign language quite different from English, will I eventually learn the language simply from exposure, or will it always sound like babble babble bump? I speak simply of leaving the TV on in the language, but making no conscious effort to learn or retain. I simply stare at the pictures, hear the sound, and say to myself uh yes I see. I also am not referring to watching a language a previously studied in High school or College. If I studied Spanish and French and am a native speaker of English, can I acquire Polish or Russian simply by staring at the Cable Channel in that language, or will I become some kind of living cartoon in the house? I wish to …… well, you get the idea
immigrants learn english this way sometimes, so i guess you could. although it would probably be easiest to learn spanish as it has many cognates- words that are almost the same as english. languages with totally unfamiliar sounds and words would be the hardest to learn, i would think. kate
Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – If I am 60 something, and I put on the TV constantly in a foreign language quite different from English, will I eventually learn the language simply from exposure, or will it always sound like babble babble bump? I speak simply of leaving the TV on in the language, but making no conscious effort to learn or retain. I simply stare at the pictures, hear the sound, and say to myself uh yes I see. I also am not referring to watching a language a previously studied in High school or College. If I studied Spanish and French and am a native speaker of English, can I acquire Polish or Russian simply by staring at the Cable Channel in that language, or will I become some kind of living cartoon in the house? I wish to …… well, you get the idea immigrants learn english this way sometimes, so i guess you could. although it would probably be easiest to learn spanish as it has many cognates- words that are almost the same as english. languages with totally unfamiliar sounds and words would be the hardest to learn, i would think. kate
I’m pretty good at languages – I speak 2 fluently, a third pretty well, four more well enough to read a newspaper and have simple conversations, a few more so with a few words and some sign language I can make myself understood. But watching TV in a foreign langage is one of the hardest things to me. I can only watch TV in my fluent languages. Problem is, if you’ve learned a language in school, you have mostly a visual grasp of the words, and as you listen, you are madly trying to sort out individual words from this continuous stream of sounds, correlate them to the words you know, work out what the whole sentence means – and by then, the speaker is 3 sentences farther along. Also native speakers drop words and don’t pronounce them the way you learned them in school. We had a Polish kid staying with us, trying to learn some English, and he asked me once: what does garragerup mean? Garragerup means I have got to get up. You see the problem. But then when you’re living in a country and being immersed in the language you don’t have the same visual-auditory disconnect. You hear it all around you, catch the odd word, try to use it, get feedback, gradually you build up a vocabulary and some kind of feel for how it works. That’s how kids learn language – pretty much unconsciously. And watching TV can certainly be part of that process. If you learn a language that way as an adult, you probably won’t ever get it quite right, but in a year or so you’ll get along OK and understand most things. My mother lived in English-speaking countries for 40 years, and studied it in school, and still wasn’t very good, so I guess it’s also a matter of having a knack for it.
Response:
Thanks. I already understand Spanish. That’s not the problem.
Response:
If I am 60 something, and I put on the TV constantly in a foreign language quite different from English, will I eventually learn the language simply from exposure, or will it always sound like babble babble bump? I speak simply of leaving the TV on in the language, but making no conscious effort to learn or retain. I simply stare at the pictures, hear the sound, and say to myself uh yes I see. I also am not referring to watching a language a previously studied in High school or College. If I studied Spanish and French and am a native speaker of English, can I acquire Polish or Russian simply by staring at the Cable Channel in that language, or will I become some kind of living cartoon in the house? I wish to …… well, you get the idea
