LL-L "Language acquisition" 2007.04.22 (01) [E]

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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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L O W L A N D S - L  -  22 April 2007 - Volume 01

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From: Sandy Fleming  <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2007.04.21 (02) [E]

> From: "Ben J. Bloomgren" <Ben.Bloomgren at asu.edu>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2007.04.21 (01) [E]

>
> Naturally enough, I see the evidence of this
> when I try to teach non-signers a few signs and they just can't copy
> my
> handshapes and movements accurately, the way a proficient signer
> would.
>
>
> As for spoken languages, I must have the juggler's mind. I know and
> encounter so many people who try to learn a foreign language but
> cannot for the life of them pronounce correctly the sounds of the
> receptor language. Most of that is the lack of native speaker training
> outside class and beyond the professor, but some of it is their mouth.
> For some odd reason, some tongues that have not had the exposure to
> the rolled r of Spanish just cannot recreate it. The only sounds that
> tried to trip me up were the nonpulmonics of Zulu and other Nguni and
> Khoisan languages and the voiceless uvular stop of the Arabic word
> "Quran". I have to be really careful because I'm a language snob. I'm
> not one of these who can just bow slightly and sigh, "oh... well...
> He's trying..."!

Oh, by the way, as if that last post of mine wasn't long and off-topic
enough, I missed an observation about language acquisition that I meant
to make.

Learners of British Sign Language usually buy videos containing stories
signed by various native signers at the appropriate level to practice
their receptive skills. It gets interesting when you can't understand a
thing and try going through it again with the video at half speed. Then
you see that there are a lot of signs being made that you just didn't
see at all. You wonder how on earth anybody can follow something that's
going so fast you can't even see it. But eventually you can do it and
can move onto the next level of difficulty.

This was really brought home to me recently when I paid a visit to
someone to help her in going through a video she had. It turned out to
be one that I'd seen a few years ago and I remember that back then I
couldn't believe that anyone could ever follow signing at such speed.
But now I was just about falling asleep, it seemed so slow!

I imagine there are analogies in learning spoken languages, but since in
my adult life I've always depended mostly on the written word and
phonetics for these, I'm not sure.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

•

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