I come from a different linguistic tradition. 😊 I would argue that we live in the same world and vastly different cultures have more in common than might think, which makes them translatable in the first place. For almost any strange Chinese custom, I can find a similar European custom that allows me to understand it. At the same time, our prescription of the world is constructed by the social groups we belong to that have their norms and conventions. As social animals, we need to understand them to make top down and top up predictions as to what the other person will say to understand them, and that's where the pragmatic categories come in (prototype semantics). In this framework, categories are not that clear cut at all. Yes, Russian speakers have two words for blue, but they still imagine them as closely related colors.
Thanks for the thoughts! I think it's very fair to say that we have a lot in common, because we're all driven by the same core needs. But the cultural environment we're raised in leads us to interpret things in the world so differently that, as social animals, most of our 'reality' is the cultural construction, and not what's actually out there!
Fascinating. I am learning Spanish (well, that is what I have set out to do - I'm not sure it's actually working) and one of the things I come up against constantly is that ideas are just not expressed in the same way in Spanish as they are in English. Not only do the structures of the sentences differ (as you demonstrated) but some verbs do not translate exactly form one to the other or at least are not use in the same way. I struggle a lot with putting sentences together and keeping the direct and indirect object straight and in the correct place in the sentence with the correct pronouns. It does not feel intuitive to me at all and so I am interested in what you say about switching off our preconceived notions about things in the world that are similar and different. How on Earth of you do that? I spend a lot my of Spanish learning time making comparison between Spanish and English and vice versa. I even spend a lot of the time I have with my Spanish tutor talking about these things instead just speaking Spanish. I have this overwhelming need to analyse everything instead of just accepting things as they are in Spanish and much of this analysis stems from making comparisons. Recently though, I have had a strong sense that this actually gets in the way of learning Spanish. But, how do I stop? . Sometimes I put it down to me having more of math brain that a linguistics brain. A need for logic rather than linguistic expression. I understand what you are advising, but not really how to go about putting that into practice. Do you have any tips? Can you make another video about this idea that goes into more detail? Thanks for a very thought-provoking presentation!
Hey Karl, I'd love to make a video that speaks to this in more depth. Let me suggest a couple of things to try in the meantime. I think that what you say about getting a feel for it is exactly right-you're very focused on knowing the differences, but you need an extra step to get them from conscious knowledge to more automatic behavior. The first thing I would suggest is to listen and repeat. Put on a podcast, for example, or a show, or a RUclips video in Spanish, and listen to a lot of this content. This may help you start to get a feel for how it should sound, rather than just knowing. And then, as you do this, periodically repeat exactly what the person you're listening to has said, so that you can start getting that feel from your ear to your mouth. And the second thing I would do is, when listening like this, and repeating, or when just thinking about Spanish words and phrases, and even possibly in conversation, do some imaging in your mind. What this may help with is connecting Spanish words and phrases more directly to ideas, rather than going through English to get to those ideas. An example I'm thinking of is 'le'. In order to start to cement the idea it represents, think of the word 'le', and in your mind picture, say, a person, maybe off to the side of your mental image space, to show it's in the third person, and then arrows pointing at this person. If it's a man, replace it with a woman, and think of 'le' some more, then switch back to a man. Add a few together, with the arrows pointing, and think of 'les'. The arrows show movement, and will hopefully help to get that indirect object idea to pair up with this word and others. Try these things and let me know how it goes!
Thanks ❤
Hope it was helpful!
🤯 great video! as a native Spanish speaker, my mind was blown when I learned that the Spanish d was not the same as the English one!
And that's just one example!
I come from a different linguistic tradition. 😊 I would argue that we live in the same world and vastly different cultures have more in common than might think, which makes them translatable in the first place. For almost any strange Chinese custom, I can find a similar European custom that allows me to understand it. At the same time, our prescription of the world is constructed by the social groups we belong to that have their norms and conventions. As social animals, we need to understand them to make top down and top up predictions as to what the other person will say to understand them, and that's where the pragmatic categories come in (prototype semantics). In this framework, categories are not that clear cut at all. Yes, Russian speakers have two words for blue, but they still imagine them as closely related colors.
Thanks for the thoughts! I think it's very fair to say that we have a lot in common, because we're all driven by the same core needs. But the cultural environment we're raised in leads us to interpret things in the world so differently that, as social animals, most of our 'reality' is the cultural construction, and not what's actually out there!
Fascinating. I am learning Spanish (well, that is what I have set out to do - I'm not sure it's actually working) and one of the things I come up against constantly is that ideas are just not expressed in the same way in Spanish as they are in English. Not only do the structures of the sentences differ (as you demonstrated) but some verbs do not translate exactly form one to the other or at least are not use in the same way. I struggle a lot with putting sentences together and keeping the direct and indirect object straight and in the correct place in the sentence with the correct pronouns. It does not feel intuitive to me at all and so I am interested in what you say about switching off our preconceived notions about things in the world that are similar and different. How on Earth of you do that? I spend a lot my of Spanish learning time making comparison between Spanish and English and vice versa. I even spend a lot of the time I have with my Spanish tutor talking about these things instead just speaking Spanish. I have this overwhelming need to analyse everything instead of just accepting things as they are in Spanish and much of this analysis stems from making comparisons. Recently though, I have had a strong sense that this actually gets in the way of learning Spanish. But, how do I stop? . Sometimes I put it down to me having more of math brain that a linguistics brain. A need for logic rather than linguistic expression. I understand what you are advising, but not really how to go about putting that into practice. Do you have any tips? Can you make another video about this idea that goes into more detail? Thanks for a very thought-provoking presentation!
Hey Karl, I'd love to make a video that speaks to this in more depth. Let me suggest a couple of things to try in the meantime. I think that what you say about getting a feel for it is exactly right-you're very focused on knowing the differences, but you need an extra step to get them from conscious knowledge to more automatic behavior. The first thing I would suggest is to listen and repeat. Put on a podcast, for example, or a show, or a RUclips video in Spanish, and listen to a lot of this content. This may help you start to get a feel for how it should sound, rather than just knowing. And then, as you do this, periodically repeat exactly what the person you're listening to has said, so that you can start getting that feel from your ear to your mouth. And the second thing I would do is, when listening like this, and repeating, or when just thinking about Spanish words and phrases, and even possibly in conversation, do some imaging in your mind. What this may help with is connecting Spanish words and phrases more directly to ideas, rather than going through English to get to those ideas. An example I'm thinking of is 'le'. In order to start to cement the idea it represents, think of the word 'le', and in your mind picture, say, a person, maybe off to the side of your mental image space, to show it's in the third person, and then arrows pointing at this person. If it's a man, replace it with a woman, and think of 'le' some more, then switch back to a man. Add a few together, with the arrows pointing, and think of 'les'. The arrows show movement, and will hopefully help to get that indirect object idea to pair up with this word and others. Try these things and let me know how it goes!