Re: sound changes (was Conlangea Dreaming)

On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Robert Hailman wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >
> > Sometimes I really wonder if the language that I learn in the classroom
> > is going to be any good for communication with Real People who are L1
> > speakers of that language.
>
> I've found from my German & French Education that it really doesn't - I
> may know the Vocab & the Grammar, but when it comes out of Someone's
> Mouth, I just get lost. It's not as perfectly structured as the
> Sound-Bites we're fed in School, and Real Germans and Real Frenchmen
> speak far too fast for me to understand them.
<sigh>  I'm much better at reading/writing than conversational anyway,
but somehow you think that all this practical stuff about rent and
getting a job and what to wear and so on would actually be useful if you
evr went to country X...and it sometimes really seems not.  My IBH French
class actually had two native French speakers in it, one from Paris and
one from somewhere else.  I could actually sometimes understand the
Parisienne because she wasn't as fast, but trying to figure out what
Clémence said....

They were both great people, mind, and stuck in the class because of
their own IB requirements.  (I'm sure they found it quite, quite
redundant!)  But when the teacher and the two L1 French speakers were
conversing merrily in French the rest of us felt rather depressed.

I'm afraid the only languages I have any hope of becoming
conversationally fluent in are English and Korean.  <sigh>

YHL