Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Marah » 2011-09-25, 18:57

I guess they just speak it with friends and family, they don't read don quijote or stuff like that.
Par exemple, l'enfant croit au Père Noël. L'adulte non. L'adulte ne croit pas au Père Noël. Il vote.

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Bubulus » 2011-09-25, 19:08

Chekhov wrote:So why do they continue to speak it? Why don't they just switch to being monolingual in English?
Because it's useful if their parents and other people they interact with don't speak English well enough, but they never feel the need to read or write in it.

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Saim » 2011-09-26, 0:11

Serafín wrote:Do you know the difference between ‹aun› and ‹aún›? [/troll] No, really, both are pronounced the same, sometimes [awn], sometimes [a."un], and they're hell hard to spell as the Academies say they're supposed to be spelled like. In fact I never know if I'm doing it right, because I can't even get to understand how the rules work exactly. Gladly, they're the two words I can't spell...

I don't think that's such a hard rule for English-speaker (or at least in my experience), because we use totally distinct words for each. As such, I think of "aun" as the translation of "even" and "aún" as the translation of "still", and since I learned them from writing first I don't think I risk mixing them up.

I had no idea "aún" could be pronounced [awn] and "aun" [a.'un], though. I always thought they had fixed and distinct pronunciations.

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Bubulus » 2011-09-26, 2:07

Saim wrote:I don't think that's such a hard rule for English-speaker (or at least in my experience), because we use totally distinct words for each. As such, I think of "aun" as the translation of "even" and "aún" as the translation of "still", and since I learned them from writing first I don't think I risk mixing them up.
That looks like a literal translation of the advice the Academies give: use aún when it can be replaced by todavía.

(The advice doesn't work for me though. Looking at examples like these, I see sentences where supposedly I shouldn't be able to replace the word with todavía, and yet I can. I suspect that it might be geared towards standard Spaniard usage or something, so I may use todavía in contexts where Spaniards and others don't, but it's only a suspicion yet to be tested.)

I'm not sure if this translation works, and the Academies' use of aún=todavía and aun can truly be translated with still and even in all contexts. Words aren't often 100% equivalent between two languages, you know, especially words like these. In these examples, the Academies say you should use aún only, can you translate them to English using "still"? (Being a non-native I'm not 100% I'm translating them right, you tell me.)

    Aún la espera.
    "He (or she) is still waiting for her."

    Este modelo tiene aún más potencia.
    "This model still has more power."

    Aún si se notara en los resultados..., pero no creo que mejore.
    "If it were still clear in the results..., but I don't think it will improve."

    Ahora que he vuelto a ver la película, me parece aún más genial.
    "Now that I've seen the movie again, I still like it more." (I'm nearly completely sure you should say "I like it even more" here.)
For the following examples, the Academies say you must use aun. Can you translate them with "even"?

    Puedes quejarte y aun negarte a venir, pero al final iremos.
    "You can complain and even reguse to come, but in the end we're going to go."

    Ni aun de lejos se parece a su hermano.
    "Not even from far away does he look like his brother." (or "...she...her...")

    Me esmeraré, pero aun así [= aunque sea así], él no quedará satisfecho.
    "I'll do my best, but even then, he will not be satisfied."

    Aun conociendo [= aunque conoce] sus limitaciones, decidió intentarlo.
    "Even knowing his limitations, he decided to give it a try."
I had no idea "aún" could be pronounced [awn] and "aun" [a.'un], though. I always thought they had fixed and distinct pronunciations.
They don't. A couple of citations on the topic:

    Este adverbio oscila en su pronunciación entre el hiato [a - ún] y el diptongo [aun], dependiendo de diferentes factores: su valor semántico, su situación dentro del enunciado, la mayor o menor rapidez o énfasis con que se emita, el origen geográfico del hablante, etc. Dado que no es posible establecer una correspondencia unívoca entre los usos de esta palabra y sus formas monosílaba (con diptongo) o bisílaba (con hiato), es preferible considerarla un caso más de tilde diacrítica.
Real Academia Española y Academias Asociadas. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. 2005. Online version at rae.es. http://buscon.rae.es/dpdI/SrvltGUIBusDPD?lema=tilde2. Retrieved on September 25th, 2011.

(My translation:) "This adverb varies in its pronunciation between the hiatus [a."un] and the diphthong [au_^n], depending on different reasons: its semantic value, its place in the utterance, the greater or lesser speed or emphasis that it's pronounced with, the geographical origin of the speaker, etc. Since it is not possible to establish a 1:1 correspondence between the uses of this word and its monosyllabic (with a diphthong) or bisyllabic (with a hiatus) forms, it's preferred to consider it as another case of tilde diacrítica (semantically disambiguating acute accents)."

    The words [aˈo̞ɾa] /aˈoɾa/ ahora, [aˈi] /aˈi/ ahí, [aˈun] /aˈun/ aún/aun, when they are not in an intoneme and are linked to what follows, have the frequent variants [ˈaoɾa, ˈai, ˈaun]: [aˈo̞ˑɾa ˈβje̞ˑne, ˈaoɾa] /aˈoɾa ˈḅjene/ ahora viene, [aˈi es̺ˈta, ˈai]i [-s-]a, [aˈum mi ˈpaˑðɾe, ˈaum] /aˈun miˈpaḍɾe/ aun mi padre, [aˈun noˈs̺ale, ˈau]i [-s-]a /aˈun noˈsale/ aún no sale.
Canepari, Luciano. A Handbook of Pronunciation. 2005. Lincom Europa: München (Germany). Pag. 251. (The original canIPA has been converted to IPA, except that I left the intonemes marked with a triangular half colon, and left his notation for Spanish /b~β, d~ð, g~ɣ/.) (What he says about ahí and ahora is totally true, too.)

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Saim » 2011-09-26, 10:15

Serafín wrote:Ahora que he vuelto a ver la película, me parece aún más genial.
"Now that I've seen the movie again, I still like it more." (I'm nearly completely sure you should say "I like it even more" here.)[/list]For the following examples, the Academies say you must use aun. Can you translate them with "even"?

You're right that this sentence sounds a bit awkward. All the other translations work. So it's not a 1:1 correspendence then, but at least considering the examples you've given it's pretty close. Can you replace that "aún" with "todavía" here?

Anyway, thanks for all the examples and explanations. :)

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Bubulus » 2011-09-27, 3:52

Saim wrote:
Serafín wrote:Ahora que he vuelto a ver la película, me parece aún más genial.
"Now that I've seen the movie again, I still like it more." (I'm nearly completely sure you should say "I like it even more" here.)[/list]For the following examples, the Academies say you must use aun. Can you translate them with "even"?
You're right that this sentence sounds a bit awkward. All the other translations work. So it's not a 1:1 correspendence then, but at least considering the examples you've given it's pretty close. Can you replace that "aún" with "todavía" here?
I can always replace their examples with aún with todavía. The problem is, there's examples they give with aun where I can also replace the word with todavía:

    Ni aun de lejos se parece a su hermano.
    "Ni todavía de lejos se parece a su hermano."
    (<Wrong according to the Academies, fine to me.)

    Puedes quejarte y aun negarte a venir, pero al final iremos.
    "Puedes quejarte y todavía negarte a venir, pero al final iremos."
    (<Wrong to the Academies, fine to me.)

    Me esmeraré, pero aun así [= aunque sea así], él no quedará satisfecho.
    "Me esmeraré, pero todavía así, él no quedará satisfecho."
    (Wrong to both the Academies and me.)

    Aun conociendo [= aunque conoce] sus limitaciones, decidió intentarlo.
    "Todavía conociendo sus limitaciones, decidió intentarlo."
    (Wrong to the Academies, fine to me.)
The thing is, I suspect that aun/aún in my dialect has gained a semantic expansion now including some of the notions of "even (if)", while in Spain and other places it hasn't at all. I've tried to understand how they use the word, without much result. I don't understand what the Academies understand as an uso ponderativo of aun/aún and how that differs with the aun/aún that doesn't have most notions of "even (if)". To make matters worse, the RAE's dictionary isn't even consistent on its definitions of aun/aún and todavía.

In the end I've resorted to never use the word if I want to produce a piece in perfectly spelled Spanish, limiting my use of aun/aún to chatting, texting and the like (where people usually don't write acute accents, making it a non-issue).

I wish the Academies dropped this shit and just made it like, if you want readers to pronounce it [awn] write ‹aun›, and for [aˈun] write ‹aún›, to make it easy for people like me, since the current distinction is mostly artificial and based on semantics anyway (a case of tilde diacrítica). But the problem is it'd be too clear and practical. :roll:

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby aaakknu » 2018-07-07, 11:22

Saim wrote:
Serafín wrote:Ahora que he vuelto a ver la película, me parece aún más genial.
"Now that I've seen the movie again, I still like it more." (I'm nearly completely sure you should say "I like it even more" here.)[/list]For the following examples, the Academies say you must use aun. Can you translate them with "even"?

You're right that this sentence sounds a bit awkward. All the other translations work. So it's not a 1:1 correspendence then, but at least considering the examples you've given it's pretty close.

But you can translate "aún" with "jeszcze" into Polish, right?
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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Saim » 2018-07-07, 15:04

Salajane wrote:
Saim wrote:
Serafín wrote:Ahora que he vuelto a ver la película, me parece aún más genial.
"Now that I've seen the movie again, I still like it more." (I'm nearly completely sure you should say "I like it even more" here.)[/list]For the following examples, the Academies say you must use aun. Can you translate them with "even"?

You're right that this sentence sounds a bit awkward. All the other translations work. So it's not a 1:1 correspendence then, but at least considering the examples you've given it's pretty close.

But you can translate "aún" with "jeszcze" into Polish, right?


I'm no native, but I think so.

Znowu oglądałem film i jeszcze bardziej mi się spodobał.

In Ukrainian you could use ще I take it?

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby aaakknu » 2018-07-07, 15:29

Yes.
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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Bubulus » 2018-07-08, 12:25

Is there any pill for not hating records of your past self?

I swear that whenever I read things I wrote years ago, I cannot even describe the cringing I get. Why was I so riled up about the details of the RAE's opinion regarding aun vs aún? It's not like it's something particularly important.

Also, aún más 'even more' does seem to be the only exception to Saim's very good suggestion of me using English to figure out which meaning ("still" vs. "even") is meant, since using my native Spanish dialect doesn't work.

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-07-08, 14:23

Hey, I cringe at records of my past self, too. It's normal, though. We grow up and learn things over time. :)

Besides, sometimes, I even cringe at records of my present self. :P

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Saim » 2018-07-08, 14:58

Honestly I'm embarrassed that I made such an authoritative statement about a language that I knew at around B1 level (although I think my naïve young self had already put 3 stars for Spanish on my profile by then :lol: ), and one based on translation from English at that. Were I to write that post today I would've put in at least two hedging statements and immediately asked for Ser's input (which I remember being helpful at the time so don't beat yourself up, man!).

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby Vlürch » 2018-08-22, 13:49

For me, it's often easier to speak or write a foreign language than to understand it spoken or written by others, although obviously in a way that's full of mistakes. I mean, of course reading is generally the easiest, but when you don't remember half of the words you see, you realise just how bad you are at the language and start feeling like shit; when writing or speaking, you'll make all kinds of mistakes, but at least you'll feel like you remember something and and can pat yourself on the back (even if undeservedly). :mrgreen:

Japanese is a strange case in my experience in that I can't understand anything confidently in either writing or speech but can speak simple sentences, but could never write at all; if someone said those same sentences to me, though, I probably wouldn't understand since I couldn't be sure if there were some homophones and I'd start doubting where the word boundaries were.

Then again, it's also (almost) unique in that it has phrases that are immediately recognisable and reproductible that will sink somewhere deep into the linguistic black box of your subconscious mind, and likely understand even if you know nothing about the language; the only other language I can think of that has anything similar is Arabic, but those are all Islamic phrases so I'm not sure if they really count. With Japanese, it's just common sentences like 分かりました (wakarimashita), ごめんなさい (gomennasai), どもありがとうございます (domo arigatō gozaimasu), etc.

...or maybe that makes no sense.
vijayjohn wrote:Hey, I cringe at records of my past self, too. It's normal, though. We grow up and learn things over time. :)

Yeah, but knowing that anyone can read something incredibly cringy you wrote years ago... especially now that any random person's past is likely to be scrutinised for anything politically incorrect or politically correct if they say/post the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that can have real-life consequences... well... :para:
vijayjohn wrote:Besides, sometimes, I even cringe at records of my present self. :P

Same, pretty much at least once a week. I'm pretty sure I'll be cringing at this post tomorrow. :lol:

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-08-23, 17:15

Ser wrote:Is there any pill for not hating records of your past self?

I swear that whenever I read things I wrote years ago, I cannot even describe the cringing I get


Maybe that's why necroposting is forbidden... :roll:

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby linguoboy » 2018-08-23, 17:18

IpseDixit wrote:
Ser wrote:I swear that whenever I read things I wrote years ago, I cannot even describe the cringing I get

Maybe that's why necroposting is forbidden... :roll:

Makes as much sense as any other explanation I've ever heard.
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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-08-23, 17:34

linguoboy wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:
Ser wrote:I swear that whenever I read things I wrote years ago, I cannot even describe the cringing I get

Maybe that's why necroposting is forbidden... :roll:

Makes as much sense as any other explanation I've ever heard.


You don't think it should be forbidden? I think it's a very sensible rule actually. People change and quoting a person from say 7 years ago is kind of pointless imo, because you have no idea if they still stand by what they said.

I would be for necroposting only if we could delete old posts.

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby linguoboy » 2018-08-23, 17:37

IpseDixit wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:
Ser wrote:I swear that whenever I read things I wrote years ago, I cannot even describe the cringing I get

Maybe that's why necroposting is forbidden... :roll:

Makes as much sense as any other explanation I've ever heard.

You don't think it should be forbidden? I think it's a very sensible rule actually. People change and quoting a person from say 7 years ago is kind of pointless imo, because you have no idea if they still stand by what they said.

You can revive a thread without quoting someone though.
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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-08-23, 17:53

linguoboy wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:
Ser wrote:I swear that whenever I read things I wrote years ago, I cannot even describe the cringing I get

Maybe that's why necroposting is forbidden... :roll:

Makes as much sense as any other explanation I've ever heard.

You don't think it should be forbidden? I think it's a very sensible rule actually. People change and quoting a person from say 7 years ago is kind of pointless imo, because you have no idea if they still stand by what they said.

You can revive a thread without quoting someone though.


But you're still reviving a thread with stuff in it that was written years ago, I still find that problematic, but of course it depends on the specific thread too. For example I think there's nothing wrong with reviving a thread in the translations forum (maybe except for the fact that you take visibility away from newer threads).

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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby linguoboy » 2018-08-23, 18:55

IpseDixit wrote:But you're still reviving a thread with stuff in it that was written years ago, I still find that problematic

I honestly don't see the problem. Those old posts are still here, whether someone draws attention to them or not. If I search a user's old posts--or even if I just search certain keywords--I'll come across them. If you're truly concerned about being held accountable for old posts, perhaps the best solution is to delete your account periodically and start a new one.

I think a bigger issue with responding to particular people is that often they're no longer active here.
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Re: Learning new languages: Speaking vs Writing vs Reading

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-08-24, 0:25

I also don't see the problem.


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