Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: CHAT: Synesthesia and conlanging (was Re: The ConlangInstinct)

From:Don Blaheta <blahedo@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 8, 1999, 8:01
Quoth Barry Garcia:
> scaves@frontiernet.net writes: > >The hardest part of any > >foreign language for me is learning to comprehend it spoken. Reading > >it is the easiest, writing it is the next easiest, speaking it > >is...okay, >=20 > I can understand spoken Spanish pretty easily (if it's a fairly neutral or > a Mexican accent, Cuban accents i can barely understand at all), and I can > understand it written down even better. The hardest part for me is getting > the words out. I always seem to forget the simplest words too! Strangely, > I can compose things in writing easily, but getting the words out of my > mouth is the hardest part. Which is why i'll most likely have to go over > seas to Spain for a year to gain fluency. I also dont think I pronounce > things that well, but i've had facilitators at school tell me my accent > was surprisingly good for a beginner.
Wow, I just about had to check the from line to see I hadn't sent this. This describes *perfectly* how I am with French. It's funny how easy it is to come up with a coherent stream of written French, and how very hard it is to stutter out any spoken French at all. Although, I find that as I "slip into the groove" as it were, I do much better. Maybe that just means I'm starting to be able to think in French (yay!). =20 The interesting thing, though, is how differently other people experience it. I know people that can converse fluently but have the darndest time trying to write---they get bogged down in the grammar (does it end in -=E9, -=E9e, -ait, -ais, -ai, ... lots of homophonous suffices in French!) Others have no problems with production, but can only understand the slowest spoken dialogues. I wonder if these orderings are consistent across languages for each person? If they're the same for their L1? --=20 -=3D-Don Blaheta-=3D-=3D-dpb@cs.brown.edu-=3D-=3D-<http://www.cs.brown.edu/= ~dpb/>-=3D- When in panic, fear and doubt, Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.