English is my second language and I remember a time when I received a text on my phone and asked my friend to pass me my “trembling” phone. This has become a joke since. I never understood why there should be so many different words for saying the same thing in English. Reading the Atkins and Levin paper that covers near-synonyms found in our electronic corpuses, helped me understand this. I learned that although words that seem like synonyms are common in many ways, but the differences in their use make them uniquely different from other similar-meaning words. For example, the verbs “tremble” and “vibrate” are similar in meaning but cannot be used interchangeably when talking about a phone. So the use of the verb is based on the subject and whether the verb is transitive or intransitive. This aspect of English has been the most difficult for me to learn as a non-native speaker.
I remember thinking that there were spelling mistakes in the English dictionary when I used it to find the meanings of verbs. Being used to the Arabic dictionary, I would always automatically look for verbs in their third person singular perfect. So for example, I would look for the meaning of the verb “eats” but would find “eat” instead. This happened multiple times and that was when I realized that this can’t be a spelling mistake. I learned that in English verbs are listed in the first person singular present form. Hence, reading about citation form in the Haspelmath reading was very interesting to me as it reminded me of my own experience using the dictionary.
Pluralizing nouns in English has been a trouble for me. There are so many exceptions in the language that one needs to learn about. For example, learning how “radius” becomes “radii” and how “fish” is both singular and plural - so much memorization. It was fascinating to learn how plurals in Somali are often formed by duplifixes. To make a noun plural, the last syllable is said twice. To me this is a very clear way of showing multiplicity. For example, if we were going to pluralize the word “apple” in Somali, it would become something like “apple-ple”.
Although almost fluent in English now, I sometimes feel my sentences are not as concise as those of native English speakers. Something that a native English speaker says in five words, I might say in eight. Slobin’s paper gave me a perspective on this issue. His paper characterizes and categorizes languages by the type of verb-orientation the sentences in the language use. English for example is satellite-framed which means that when expressing motion events, English speakers typically express manner in the verb. However, in languages such as in Arabic which is verb-framed, speakers usually express path in the verb and either leave out the manner of motion completely or express it in a complement of manner. This may be one reason why my sentences are typically longer than a native English speaker’s.
As a native English speaker, I am always so impressed by people who pick up English as a second language. There are so many weird rules and exceptions and idioms in English that I feel lucky that I just kind of absorbed them, like a passive sponge. Anyway, I enjoyed your little anecdote about the "trembling" phone! The image of a "trembling" phone is hilarious, and I can totally see how non-native speakers would not know something was off until their native speaker friends start to cry of laughter.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny that you mention the concept of a 'trembling phone' because I feel that although it sounds a little out of place, I would have definitely simply pass you the phone without realizing that the right word is vibrating first. Being that English is also my second language, I also struggle to determine the right word based on context and do not question whether other people are using the word in the right context, but assume they know what they are saying. I believe this relates to the fact that even when second language is not our first language, we should still remain intrigue in exploring and learning about all the words used. We can only get better.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was very interesting -- thanks for sharing! I myself am a native English speaker (in that English is my preferred language, though not my first), but my mom's native language is Chinese, and sometimes I notice that she will interchange words that mean similar things, even though semantically, it doesn't quite sound right to a native speaker. That said, I'm impressed by the ability of non-native speakers to pick up on the quirks of English, especially since so many non-obvious idioms have developed throughout its history, and many words have diverged from their dictionary meanings (or the meanings that might be taught in a foreign language classroom).
ReplyDelete