LL-L "Language learning" 2003.02.16 (14) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Leslie Decker <leslie at volny.cz>
Subject: LLLL-L "Language learning" 2003.02.16 (08) [E]

I have to say I agree here. I was in the same situation when I started
learning Dutch (I'm an American, I learned Dutch for three semesters at an
American university, and then studied for a year at the University of
Leiden. I had already been learning German for several years when I
started). In the beginning it was very frustrating to separate German
grammar and pronunciation from Dutch, although I must admit that now that my
Dutch is better than my German I usually have the opposite problem! It sways
back and forth though, since at the moment I have little contact with Dutch
but do watch a lot of German tv,and I find that I can't remember if a word I
want to use is German, Dutch or both. I've got L2/L3 interference!

My situation was a little different than the people in my classes who didn't
speak German. I think the most common problem for the Americans (besides the
pronunciation) was the word order. I remember once in our lesson the
professor, who was an American as well, trying to explain subordinate word
order, and several of the students kept asking WHY the verb moves. He got
very frustrated after several times trying to explain that there is no WHY,
just do it! Many of them couldn't imagine that people could actually think
in that order.

The Dutch classes I was in in Leiden were full of people from all over, and
i do remember there being special errors for all of them. Articles were a
problem for the Slavic speakers (and others), and pronunciation a big issue
for a lot of them. The r's did cause a bit of trouble--my English friend
pronounced them just like she did in English, and I couldn't understand one
of the French girls at all because I could never tell if she was saying <r>
or <g>, because as far as I can tell, she pronounced them the same way. I
myself think my Dutch <r> is okay, even if I can't maintain it all the time,
but I still have problems with the exact nature of many of the vowels, and I
have a tendency to use a softer <g>, more like a southern speaker,
especially if I'm speaking quickly. As far as the <r> goes, I was told to
just tell people I'd studied in Leiden, since the Leiden city variety <r> is
similar to American. :-)

I do find while teaching English here in the Czech Republic that L1 plays a
huge role. The biggest problems most of my students have are articles, verb
tenses, and word order, and the more Czech I learn the more I can hear
exactly what the underlying sentence is when they say something. I also get
a lot of L2 interference, many people here have also learned some German, so
I get a lot of German words and structures.

It was suggested on this list that one of the best ways to learn to get a
'feel' for a second language is to listen to a native speaker of that
language speak your own, and pay attention to the mistakes, or at least
differences. I've found this to be a good method. All of my Czech teachers
have asked me how I can manage to get the prepositions and word order right
when so many of their other students (mostly native English-speakers) can't,
and I tell them the truth: that I simply translate the mistakes my students
make back into Czech. I figure if they say 'on the party' then I should use
the equivalent of 'on.'

Groetjes,
Leslie Decker

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