LL-L "Language acquisition" 2006.05.07 (10) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

======================================================================
L O W L A N D S - L * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
http://www.lowlands-l.net * lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
Rules & Guidelines: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules
Posting: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org or lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
Commands ("signoff lowlands-l" etc.): listserv at listserv.net
Server Manual: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html
Archives: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8) [Please switch your view mode to it.]
=======================================================================
You have received this because you have been subscribed upon request.
To unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l" as message
text from the same account to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or
sign off at http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================
A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
=======================================================================

   L O W L A N D S - L * 07 May 2006 * Volume 10
=======================================================================

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2006.05.07 (09) [E]

Arthur wrote:
>As to translations, I have often noticed that non-native English speakers
>translating into English sometimes follow the easy path of using the 
>English
>word belonging to their own family instead of the word or term usually
>employed by native speakers: Ergo, we find Germans translating
>"Doppelarbeit" into "double work" instead of "duplication"; or a French
>speaker referring to "sagacity" when the native speaker would have used
>"wisdom".

Actually, oddly enough, this kind of thing happens a lot to native English 
speakers as well! This would drive me crazy when I worked as a localisation 
manager for a big software company and would have to tell the boss that we 
definitely could not use certain free-lance translators because they were 
simply not up to snuff. He (and others along with him) would inevitably 
reply: "But that can't be, (s)he's a native speaker!"

One person, an American who has lived in Germany for some 20 years (and 
still working as a translator, I shudder to think) would always thranslate 
German "wobei" as "whereby" (although that is not what it means at all), and 
"dabei" as "thereby" (same thing). I had to correct some of her 
translations, and she had actually translated "Kuhstall" (a large dairy 
barn) to "cowstall"!

I have seen other British, American and Canadian translators do the same 
thing. Actually, some of them were so bad that they could not be used at 
all, because what they produced still looked and felt completely German! 
Maybe native speakers are so confident of what they are writing that they 
barely think about it and just put down what feels right at the time.

Another example: since German has the same word vor "every" and "each", they 
will often use "every" in English when it should be "each", because "every" 
is more common and springs to mind first. Or they will leave the German 
"chance" where it should be "opportunity" in English. Also, native speakers 
tend to not use constructions that do not occur in the source language, like 
the gerund, for example. Or they tend to use the present tense just like in 
German, where the future tense should be used in English.

It's the same thing the other way round, of course. I have the job of 
sifting through possible translators for a large British multimedia 
localisation company, so I see all kinds of translations, good and bad. 
There are many German constructions, wrought by native German speakers, that 
are not really German at all.

Obviously, if you live in a foreign country for a while, your native 
patterns of speech will be influenced by the language you encounter daily, 
and they will begin to sound right to you even in your native language. I 
once heard a Welsh friend of mine, who had then lived in Germany for about 
six years, reprimand his young son: "So goes it not!"

In our family, we speak German and English roughly in equal parts. But it 
sometimes happens to my two older daughters and myself, who all speak Dutch 
as well, that we use a term or construction only to realise that we 
translated directly from Dutch. Or my husband, who is also a translator, 
asks me for an English word for something because he can't think of one at 
the moment... and I come up with a good one, only to see him stare at me in 
disbelief. Dutch again!

Gabriele Kahn

-------

From: Ben J. Bloomgren <Ben.Bloomgren at asu.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2006.05.07 (09) [E]

So, we will never load a file down; or load a picture up. We will merely
download and upload. Enough to make one chuck up, nee?

Arthur, as an American, I love the phenomenon of the separable suffix out. I
changed out the light bulbs. I took out the trash. The evidence bears you
out. I love the huge amount of uses for out and up. I saw one of those funny
emails about up that said that we can fall down but we can't fall up. We can
screw something up but we can't screw it down.
Ben

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language acquisition

I can just see that this is going to be a popular one, one for sharing time. 
And it's all our Arthur's fault.

Ben, buddy, don't get hung up on "out" and "up" when it comes to "split" 
verbs (which, of course, English has too, though just a muted version). 
There's also "on," my wife's favorite when she does her own take-off of 
Missingsch-derived North-German-colored English as a part of our _lingua 
domestica_.  She likes adding an "on" to the very end ... on, sense or no 
sense, especially if it competes with another preposition; e.g., "Put it in 
the oven in ... on!", "OK, give it on!",* "You look like you're having a 
thirst on."  [* Not too nonsensical if you consider grammatical "Bring it 
on!" and "to get it on"]  Apparently she was inspired by hearing a lot 
dangling prepositions during visits to Northern Germany, and _an_ must have 
stuck out for her.   In a particularly flamboyant mode she'll top this off 
(and on) with the typically North German _nä?_ (like Standard German _nicht 
(wahr)?_, French _n'est pas?_ and very much like Japanese ね? _ne?_ [nE]); 
e.g., "You're having a head on ... nä?" (= "You're having a headache, aren't 
you?").  And she does this Hamburg intonation thing with it ... on.  She 
certainly has that one down.  And it can crack me up ... on ... and upcrack 
as well.

Cheers!
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2006.05.07 (01) [E]

I know a lot of people who learned Dutch as a second language and yes,
most of them found it very difficult. And most were quite young (under 18)
when they started to learn it in secondary school, getting special
programs first to learn Dutch. Among their maternal languages are Chinese,
Arabic, Pular, Portuguese, Kurdish, Farsi, Somali and many more.

About the social setting: many foreigners from English speaking countries
complain that the Dutch refuse to speak Dutch to them in the Netherlands,
so they won't get the chance to learn in in daily use. Many Dutch think
their English is quite good and they like to show that, but I think that a
lot of people also somehow ashamed or at least embarassed when they think
the other one doesn't understand it (him) and they have to adapt to his
level.
For non Europeans like the ones I described in the first part they usually
adapt in another way: simplify their language, speak louder, gesticulate
and preferably just don't speak with them at all if it's not necessary.

Compared to German, I can imagine that Dutch must be easier to learn for
an Anglophone, because it only has two instead of three genders, it
doesn't have functional mutations like umlauts, the adjectives and
articles don't change according to the case, and Dutch has more
French/international loans and the way the Germanic words look like in
English is more in common with Dutch than with German...

Groeten
Ingmar

>From: Pat Reynolds <pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk>
>I've seen it reported in a couple of places (and can dig out the
>references if anyone's interested), plus had it confirmed anecdotally,
>that learners of Dutch are told that it is a 'difficult' language to
>acquire as an additional language.
>My learning on additional language acquisition was a _long_ time ago,
>and I certainly haven't been keeping up with the literature.
>Would anyone who _has_ been keeping up with the literature be able to
>point me at anything useful?  I am particularly interested in seeing if
>'difficulty' has been examined, and, assuming that the Dutch people are
>talking about people who speak other European languages, whether Dutch
>actually _is_ more 'difficult'.
>(I am, by the way, interested in the language as opposed to the social
>setting : it is much easier to learn French in rural Belgium than it is
>in urban France). 

==============================END===================================
* Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
* Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
* Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
* Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l") are
  to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at
  http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
======================================================================