Language learning – Arnold Zwicky's Blog (original) (raw)
Archive for the ‘Language learning’ Category
On the journalism watch
August 30, 2018
Two recent magazine articles of linguistic interest: from the Atlantic issue for September 2018, “Your Lying Mind” by Ben Yagoda, about cognitive biases; and in the _New Yorker_‘s 9/3/18 issue “The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages: What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us?” (on-line title; “Maltese for Beginners” in print) by Judith Thurman.
Posted in Books, Illusions, Language learning, Psychology | 1 Comment »
¡Albondigas! ¿No te dije?
November 22, 2017
“New Sentences: From Duolingo’s Italian Lessons” by Sam Anderson, in print in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday the 19th:
‘Gli animali rimangono nello zoo.’ (‘The animals remain in the zoo.’)
— From Duolingo, a “science-based language education platform” available on Apple, Android and Windows smartphones and online.
Language-learning sentences are always slightly funny. They exist to teach you linguistically, not to communicate anything about the actual world. They are sentences that are also nonsentences — generic by design, without personality or ambiguity: human language in merely humanoid strings. [They are, as the philosophically inclined among us sometimes say, mentioned, not used.] The subtext is always just “Here is something a person might say.” It’s like someone making a window. What matters is that it’s transparent, not what is being seen through it.
Posted in Humor, Language learning, Translation, Use and mention | 1 Comment »
Audio-lingual meatballs
December 18, 2014
From dinner at Reposado (‘quiet, restful’) — an upscale and elegant Mexican restaurant in Palo Alto — on the 14th, albondigas (‘meatballs’):
From the menu:
Pork and beef meatballs, root vegetable puree, tomato oregano sauce, demi glace, cotija cheese
Here, just the meatballs in a tomato sauce; but albondigas are most often served in a broth, as meatball soup.
Photo by Ned Deily, who ordered the dish in a bow to his high school Spanish class, which was taught resolutely by the audio-lingual method; students had to memorize and repeat dialogues, in particular one about albondigas that has stuck with him through all the years since.
Posted in Language and food, Language in advertising, Language learning | 1 Comment »