Before i started learning japanese, it never occurred to me to question whether i really "knew" english. i guess there's no real reason to question your native language but...

being aware of how things are when you don't understand them, i've started to notice when i lack understanding in english, and the things i do to trick myself.

the biggest one is probably the "boredom" trick. If i don't know what somethings talking about, i automatically assume it's something extremely boring and i just haven't bothered to read / listen because of that. (with the implication that of course, if i did listen, i would understand, i just cant be bothered to).

the second one is just plain ignoring things. Like, not even realising there's a word on a page i don't know the meaning of unless it's directly pointed out to me. This happens a lot with things like menus. It also happens with grammar structures. I was watching an american program, and someone said, "well i'l be darned if gone with the wind wasnt a book". i don't recognise that structure, and wouldn't know what she meant without context. But i'd never have noticed that before.

So, does anyone else trick themselves like this, (or am i incredibly arrogant? tongue).
And, for anyone whose reached a high level in another language, is there a point where you start to do this with your second language? That would be great!! Or, do you remain always so aware of the things you don't know?

Well, I'm incredibly interested in everything, so I can't totally relate to ignoring things around me in English (I need to learn to do it more), but I can relate in Japanese. I've signed up for some emails and such that are aimed at Japanese people and it takes all my willpower to try to read the headers... Forget about the bodies. Most of the time, I haven't a clue what's going on.

I've found that even words I know get ignored if they are encased in a bunch of stuff that I obviously don't. I haven't yet learned to scan Japanese pages for things I can read. I expect that learning more vocab will fix this automatically, though.

As for the last, you will reach a point where you can deduce the meaning of a word in a sentence from context. At that point, you'll probably also start to ignore conversations in Japanese just like you do in English, if you don't force yourself to pay attention to them. It'll happen sometime after you find yourself able to take part in conversations freely, instead of fearing them.

yeh, it happens... that is why it is good to read stuff that you are already familiar with (ex: game instruction books) when you 1st start reading... that way it is much easier to pick up stuff from context.

It's an interesting theory that I also recently maybe had a bump in with. Studying for the GRE I never realized how many English words I know wrongly or could never define, but only understand as an emotion, or image in my mind. Kind of weird...

welldone101 Wrote:Studying for the GRE I never realized how many English words I know wrongly or could never define

Hahaha me too! It was weird to look at a page of ENGLISH words and literally not have a clue what any of them meant!

When I started learning English I had a fascination with arcane words. Though I never saw them in everyday use, nor really got to use them in conversation since nobody knew what they meant, I guess it paid off since now that I too am studying for the GRE I already know most of the words.

IceCream Wrote:That would be great!! Or, do you remain always so aware of the things you don't know?

Yes. I'm at that level in Esperanto. I can happily read something like Silento for pages on end before I feel I have to look something up. My SRSed vocabulary is only about 2500 words, and if I pay attention, I know I'm skipping words, but if I don't, it's not obvious. So, yes, this level does exist for foreign languages, too.

In Japanese, on the other hand, I'm still painfully aware of everything I don't know. Fortunately, that means I never have to worry about finding something to learn.

(Once I've run out of things to learn, I'll switch my focus to learning things in Japanese, so I'm not worried about that either.)

I've been bilingual most of my life, so sometimes when I hear something in English I can't quite grasp, I try translating it into Korean or vice versa. I think I actually translate most of what I hear actually as a part of my process to understand what has been said or written, which is why I catch so many odd things in English and in Korean. (and why I have that processing delay where it takes me an extra second to understand verbal communication..)

Sure there's words now and then in both Korean and English that I don't understand, but it's usually only 1-2 words every 5-6 pages if I'm reading a book. Even in those cases I can kind of guess what the word means or the phrase means from the context, or I forget about it :p until I hear the same phrase or word again. Then I remember: Hey, I read that in x book. What was it supposed to mean? I'll have to look it up..

Few weeks ago a funny thing happened to me. I was doing my daily bunch of kanji and stumbled on yet another keyword I couldn't understand well enough to make a story for. Now that happens quite a lot to me, so I wasn't any surprised by the fact itself, what was strange though is that I somehow could translate this English keyword to my native language right away. The problem was… I had no idea what that word in my native language meant, so I had to look it up.

I don't feel that I really *know* ANY language at the moment. I'm considered a literate adult in my country and my native language ability always was somewhat above average, I can put Russian words together in a lot of fun and tricky ways, yet I'm perfectly aware of having a lot of gaps in my knowledge of this language. There are words I don't understand, there are grammar constructions I'm very shaky at using and even worse at being able to explain, there are zillions of words I can't spell for life and there are few that I can't even pronounce from the first try.

This realization used to make me feel slightly insecure but I'm rather comfortable with it by now. I think it makes me feel better about other languages I don't know. Like I'm 100% Russian and I've never been to any English-speaking country even as a tourist. I had short conversations with native speakers may be 3-4 times in my whole life. There's absolutely no reason for me to consider English language 'my native', yet I don't consider it 'foreign'. I just don't see a big difference in how I feel about things I don't know in Russian and things I don't know in English. There are less of the former than the latter but that's pretty much it. Can't wait for my currently non-existent Japanese to get there -)

Nope, I never cheat myself like that (edit: any implied judgment here is only based on/directed at the heavy challenge I place on myself alone). Nice to see another example, however, of how learning Japanese and shifting contexts like that can point out little tweaks one can make in their native language engagements.

Oh, actually something relevant is that one thing I've realized while self-studying Japanese and how to self-study better, is when to 'let go' of obsessing over high fidelity parsing or even rote memorization and realizing that some things are only truly understood through the kind of native-like intuition that comes through exposure and build up of a mental corpus, however strategically you might speed up the constitution of your linguistic repertoire.

I'm always reading past words I don't know in English, usually without noticing at all(and, so I can't tell how often it actually happens). In Japanese, I'm aware that I don't know the word, but I can read past it comfortably.

Overly technical, academic or archaic texts in English aren't fun to read. I can read the words, but the meaning doesn't really sink in well. I'm working on that... Since I have to read more for university, all these previously 'obscure' words pop up again and again. How many people know what "succour" means? Never saw it before school...

managerial, recognizing, and believing were all spelled wrong.. (FYI)

I'd never seen 'succor' spelled with a 'u' before, didn't realize the British/Canadian style could be applied to it...

Hashiriya Wrote:managerial, recognizing, and believing were all spelled wrong.. (FYI)

and i Dont think we even Want to talk about IceCream's punctuation! ;p

Hashiriya Wrote:managerial, recognizing, and believing were all spelled wrong.. (FYI)

"Recognising" is wrong? I thought it was just a spelling variant :/

atylmo Wrote:

Hashiriya Wrote:managerial, recognizing, and believing were all spelled wrong.. (FYI)

"Recognising" is wrong? I thought it was just a spelling variant :/

I'm pretty certain it's a legitimate variant. But I could be tricking myself... but I guess that makes it legitimate!

not according to spell-check

Personally, I'd rather just come across things I know/don't know, evaluate whether I want to learn it based on various criteria, and move on. No tricking myself necessary... In fact, I find my evaluations are more fun/efficient/easy (as defined by aforementioned criteria/goals) when I accept that I'll never stop learning and just cultivate an appreciation and awareness of the process at every level, rather than just skimming for fuzzy meaning that might/might not be correct.

It's funny that you mention the dictionary, IceCream. I used to avoid it like the plague, and somehow amassed a very large vocabulary through context (now, however, I just make mental notes as needed/desired and reference later). Likewise, I find no use for this 'spell check' people rely on, perhaps because I find 'spell check' to be frequently wrong. ;p

Hashiriya Wrote:not according to spell-check

Not according to American-English spell-check.

Recognise and recognising are British/Australian variants:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Recognising

Never trust your spell-checker when it comes to British/American English differences.

OK, I'm new here, so this may have been asked before, but what's with all the correcting of people's spelling on this forum? Not that spelling isn't important, and not that it's excusable for a native speaker to make spelling mistakes when Firefox has a built-in spellchecker, but is it really that big of a deal when somebody misspells a word? Is there really ambiguity when somebody confuses an "ie" with an "ei," or an "s" with a "z" in the spelling of some word?

welldone101 Wrote:It's an interesting theory that I also recently maybe had a bump in with. Studying for the GRE I never realized how many English words I know wrongly or could never define, but only understand as an emotion, or image in my mind. Kind of weird...

Uugh... Don't get me started on the so-called English words the GRE tests people on. It's like they deliberately sort the words in an unabridged dictionary according to frequency and then discard the most frequent 99%.

captal Wrote:

Hashiriya Wrote:not according to spell-check

Not according to American-English spell-check.

Recognise and recognising are British/Australian variants:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Recognising

Never trust your spell-checker when it comes to British/American English differences.

In your face, Hashiriya. Pah! Arrogant imperialist Americans. ^_^

jajaaan Wrote:OK, I'm new here, so this may have been asked before, but what's with all the correcting of people's spelling on this forum? Not that spelling isn't important, and not that it's excusable for a native speaker to make spelling mistakes when Firefox has a built-in spellchecker, but is it really that big of a deal when somebody misspells a word? Is there really ambiguity when somebody confuses an "ie" with an "ei," or an "s" with a "z" in the spelling of some word?

I don't think anyone's treating it like it's a huge faux pas. Personally I think if we've a bunch of language learners with varying levels of English on a forum, it should be kind of automatic and acceptable to occasionally, jokingly or neutrally correct basic mistakes in spelling and/or punctuation, typo or not, for mutual benefit. No need to make a big deal out of it...

I place emphasis on 'basic' stuff in that it's common/universal/good to know for general purposes. If someone has their own writing style/purposeful deviancies, I usually just silently roll my eyes, depending on what I personally think of it. (As I'm sure many do my own writing style which tends towards all sorts of annoying extremes.)

I am an American, therefore I use American spelling... I also use bad American grammar

nest0r Wrote:I don't think anyone's treating it like it's a huge faux pas. Personally I think if we've a bunch of language learners with varying levels of English on a forum, it should be kind of automatic and acceptable to occasionally, jokingly or neutrally correct basic mistakes in spelling and/or punctuation, typo or not, for mutual benefit. No need to make a big deal out of it...

I don't want to derail the thread, but surely there are better places for people to improve their English spelling than the forum for a community of people learning how to write in Japanese.

Im from Australia and I hate obscure Latin.