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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Learning foreign languages from another language family
Question:
I am a teacher and have had basic classes in teaching ESL students. I took these classes a few years ago.

I recall from a lecture in class - or perhaps from a reading in a text or our required reading materials - that different language families can require varying amounts of time for learning. In other words, from a general and overall population standpoint, the time it for native English speakers to learn another northern European or Celtic language takes the least time for us (native English speakers); Romance languages the next level of time; the mid-eastern languages a third level of time; and the Asian languages the longest amount of time. And, then, it's the reverse for the Asians to learn mid-eastern; Romance; northern European inc. English, etc.

Is my memory of this theory close to reality or current research theory or have I recalled incorrectly?

I know that individual differences can also be very important in learning another language - and many exceptions to the general population time rule can apply and do everyday.

If you could also refer me to the archives for articles related to the time it takes to learn languages from different language families, please provide me with the proper search terminology. Thank you!

Reply:
Hi, Leah. (I did, almost successfully, resist saying 'Hialeah')

Well, that's the theory, and it's based on some semisolid facts. There is reason to believe (of course, much here is anecdotal, but I'm sure somebody has done some more or less rigorous investigations of this) that the closer two languages are in structure, the easier it will be for speakers of one to learn the other. Since languages belonging to the same family are very likely to share structures (as well as vocabulary), this, then, would seem to lend support to the theory. There are, though, a bunch of 'buts'. First, a 'mechanical' one: the comparison in principle assumes similar learning conditions for the two foreign languages (hereinafter referred to as 'L2s'). As an example, I learned German in 2 years of university classes, and have never really been able to read it comfortably. On the other hand, I learned Spanish pretty much 'on the ground' in Mexico and can read, write, etc. that language with little problem (noticeably nonnative output, but not bad, after 30 years). So this example might seem to go against the theory. French, on the other hand, I studied all on my own during a month of concentrated wading through a 20-lesson course and a short linguistics book (but *with* benefit of a very good English vocabulary, including many recent French borrowings) and got an A+ on a translation exam in grad school (contrasted with a D- on a similar German exam). This experience led me to believe that, in many ways (vocabulary, superficial syntactic structure), English was more a Romance language than a Germanic one. However, years later I spent about 3 weeks in West Berlin and ended up speaking rather fluent and very grammatical German (still couldn't understand too much, though). This last experience finally convinced me that English is, after all, a Germanic language!

A second point is that, for various linguistic and sociolinguistic reasons, 'closeness' of two languages is not a reciprocal relationship. A notorious example is that speakers of Brazilian Portuguese have relatively few problems understanding, with no previous study, speakers of neighboring Spanish dialects. But most Spanish speakers cannot understand much of anything spoken in 'Brasilero'.
The reasons for this are mainly linguistic, and are similar to why many speakers of other languages can understand my Midwestern English, but have much more problem with other varieties of American and British (etc.) English. Basically, Midwestern English represents in many ways a more 'basic' variety than other English varieties (which can sort of be described as Midwestern Am. English with some added sound changes). Similarly, Spanish (especially some North and Central American varieties) is more 'basic' in this sense than Portuguese.

Unfortunately, I can't direct you to any articles on this topic. You might try Googling something like 'dialect [also try: language] intelligibility measures' and other related search terms. Good luck. Hope this has been helpful.

Jim

James L. Fidelholtz
Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje
Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México

Reply From: James L Fidelholtz    click here to access email
Date: Oct-04-2009
Other Replies:
  1. Re: Learning foreign languages from another language family Nancy J. Frishberg    (Oct-04-2009)
  2. Re: Learning foreign languages from another language family Robert A Papen    (Oct-04-2009)
  3. Re: Learning foreign languages from another language family Anthea Fraser Gupta    (Oct-04-2009)
  4. Re: Learning foreign languages from another language family Elizabeth J Pyatt    (Oct-04-2009)
  5. Re: Learning foreign languages from another language family Joseph F Foster    (Oct-04-2009)
  6. Re: Learning foreign languages from another language family John M. Lawler    (Oct-05-2009)
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