Re: Are some languages easier to learn?

On Sat, 17 Oct 1998 09:43:55 +0200 vardi <vardi@...> writes:
>Hi,
>
>        I agree with the distinction that's been made between learning
>as a
>native language (or perhaps learning any language when one is very
>young) and learning a second or subsequent languages.
>
>        My son is 2 1/2, growing up in Israel, with English from me
>and Hebrew
>from his mother. His Hebrew is dominant (we have a 50-50 joint
>parenting
>agreement, but of course he gets Hebrew at kindergarten, and from
>about
>70% of the friends/family to whom he's exposed).
I have a friend whose sister made `aliyah when she got married a few
years ago.  Both parents are English-speaking `olim - she's from the US,
he's from Canada - and they were worried for a while that their first
child, David couldn't speak Hebrew.

>        Of course, Omri (that's his name) makes mistakes in both
>languages. In
>English he sometimes says "mouses", and he tends to use "not" to
>negate
>entire sentences (I say to him "that cat is very big, isn't she" and
>he
>says "not that cat is very big").  In Hebrew he makes analogous
>mouses-type mistakes (and, if Steg is reading this, he has the cutest
>way of declining prepositions; e.g. he'll say "ani rotse lehavi kisei
>velashevet alo" instead of "alav", and many similar constructions that
>sometimes sound like some remnant of pre-Biblical Hebrew).
That is cute! :)  This isn't the same mistake, but when i started
learning Spanish, i made a lot of mistakes because of mixing it up with
Hebrew....one of the strangest (as opposed to a more common one like
saying lo' instead of no) was when i declined Spanish prepositions with
Hebrew suffixes.  I would say things like "el cielo esta' sobrekha",
attaching the Hebrew "-kha" from "`alekha" to the Spanish "sobre".  I
would also use the construction "hay para", a direct translation of
"yeish l-", instead of the verb "tener" for "to have".

>        Anyway, the bottom line is it seems to me that Omri has had
>from the
>earliest stage a clear awareness that here are two languages, with
>different rules, but he seems to soak up both with equal pleasure and
>ease (again, allowing for the dominance of Hebrew in his outside
>world).
>        Conlanglikeg coluiereiin,
>        (In Conlangish friendship)
>        Shaul Vardi

-Stephen (Steg)

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