Well it's hard to put a time frame on things because it depends on how much time you spend. Generally speaking though if you can't feel any improvement (for example in your comprehension of random native materials) after a couple of months of regular study your strategy might be not be great. There will be times when you feel like you're improving quickly and other times when it seems slow, but you should be able to feel it. I consider myself fluent in japanese now after 4 years, the last year of which I've been studying a lot more chinese. 'Fluent' is of course a pretty subjective word of course and I remember feeling pretty 'functionally' fluent after maybe a year an half and I also know that as long as I keep using Japanese, I'm going to be better at it next year than I am now. My point mainly is to get out of the habit of trying to understand everything completely and instead trust in the process a little.

SendaiDan Wrote:

Quote:"It's simply poor English" doesn't work as an explanation -- there's no such thing as "poor English"; they are either speaking a dialect or speaking "standard English". (The only time you can really have "poor" speech is if someone is trying to speak in a dialect that they are not proficient in.)

Well in that case then it can be referred to as grammatically incorrect English can it not? "I saw it" is the grammatically correct past form not "I seen it", just as "I went there" is the grammatically correct past tense of "I have been/gone there".

It's grammatically incorrect in what you might call "standard English", but it's grammatically correct in certain dialects.

Quote:I never hear people say "I gone there" so why should they use "I seen there" and it be correct?

That's irrelevant. You might as well say that you hear people say "I studied" and "I have studied", so why shouldn't you be able to say "I seen it" and "I have seen it" and be correct? (And there are dialects where "went" is used as a past participle as well as past, so you hear "I've went there before" and especially "I should've went earlier")

Btw, I like what you wrote on the 'baby talk' subject. There should be a kindergarten for adults were learners are encouraged to act as babies and treated like babies in Japanese.

bcrAn Wrote:Btw, I like what you wrote on the 'baby talk' subject. There should be a kindergarten for adults were learners are encouraged to act as babies and treated like babies in Japanese.

There already is one; it's called Japan ;-)

@oniichan: haha (I've heard a few similar descriptions: extended adolescence ... escape from reality ... summer camp with money ... acting/play school ...)

yudantaiteki Wrote:However, starting at a very early period, many children are also "learning" their native language in the sense that they are being taught additional vocabulary, and learning to conform their speech to some sort of standard dialect. [...] People often are confused about this process and incorrectly say that if someone uses "seen" instead of "saw", that they don't understand grammar. In fact, they understand grammar just fine, they're simply speaking a dialect where "seen" is the normal past tense of "see".

What dialect are children who are still learning their first language speaking in? They haven't heard these non-standard variations anywhere, they're engaging in grammar (over)generalizations and sometimes making stuff up based on erroneous pattern assumptions. So would they be an example of people not proficient in any dialect yet?

Quote:One of the sources of confusion in (non-specialists) dealing with child language acquisition is that there are really two different things going on -- there's the "acquisition", which is when children are automatically learning grammar and vocabulary of whatever language they're being exposed to. The method by which children do this is still not completely understood, but it seems to be automatic for any (non-deaf, etc.) child that is exposed to language, and it has nothing to do with how often the child is spoken directly to, correction, etc.

I consider this an overstatement. But we needn't to-and-fro about it. I recall you've already had a discussion with nest0r who linked to their preferred articles. :-) I think it's enough to just mention that there are different views on both "acquisition" and the effect of input. If specialists have different theories, I don't see how we can be certain.

In any event, I don't think babies have much to do with adult L2 learning. (It's a shame certain popular blogs encourage learners to focus on their "baby equivalent" so much. Not sure if it was originally intended as metaphor or motivational gimmick, but it appears to have taken on a literal life of its own.)

SendaiDan Wrote:There is no such thing as a Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane accent as there is Cockney, Jordie, Liverpudlian, London, Manchester, Boston, New York, Californian, Texan or Southern accent. It is all Australian.

Actually, some would disagree, even though Wikipedia isn't an authority on the issue. Anyways, even "poor" English is English.

Thora Wrote:What dialect are children who are still learning their first language speaking in? They haven't heard these non-standard variations anywhere ...

In any event, I don't think babies have much to do with adult L2 learning. (It's a shame certain popular blogs encourage learners to focus on their "baby equivalent" so much. Not sure if it was originally intended as metaphor or motivational gimmick, but it appears to have taken on a literal life of its own.)

Maybe, it is time to be more objective towards language learning. However, the choice is always up to the individual now isn't it.　木を見て森を見ず。

On a slightly different topic.

nadiatims Wrote:... I'm going to be better at it next year than I am now. My point mainly is to get out of the habit of trying to understand everything completely and instead trust in the process a little.

I my sediment is similar, but slightly different.

This topic reminds me of something Heisig said he did to learn to speak Japanese:

"One of the secretaries at the institute asked me how I was going to learn to speak the language, and I said that I would play with children as the adults were too polite to correct my mistakes. So the secretary suggested that I stay with her sister’s family in Nagano. The two young children in the family I stayed with became my teachers and that’s where I learnt to speak Japanese." – James Heisig @ NihongoCentral

Not baby talk but playing with young children; it worked for him.

Omoishinji Wrote:Maybe, it is time to be more objective towards language learning. However, the choice is always up to the individual now isn't it. 木を見て森を見ず

?

gdaxeman Wrote:This topic reminds me of something Heisig said he did to learn to speak Japanese:

"One of the secretaries at the institute asked me how I was going to learn to speak the language, and I said that I would play with children as the adults were too polite to correct my mistakes. So the secretary suggested that I stay with her sister’s family in Nagano. The two young children in the family I stayed with became my teachers and that’s where I learnt to speak Japanese." – James Heisig @ NihongoCentral

Not baby talk but playing with young children; it worked for him.

I'd like to do that as well but I don't know anyone that would let me stay with their family and play with their children LOL. That'd be kind of weird too, but I'd certainly love the idea

Thora Wrote:What dialect are children who are still learning their first language speaking in? They haven't heard these non-standard variations anywhere, they're engaging in grammar (over)generalizations and sometimes making stuff up based on erroneous pattern assumptions. So would they be an example of people not proficient in any dialect yet?

Yes. Now, if a child says "I seen it", they may be making an overgeneralizing mistake, or they may be speaking a dialect. It depends on their environment. Things that are mistakes in one dialect are standard in another (however, there are things young children say that are standard in no dialect).

Quote:I consider this an overstatement. But we needn't to-and-fro about it. I recall you've already had a discussion with nest0r who linked to their preferred articles.

Unfortunately, yes. Sometimes I regret that I forced myself to stop responding to nest0r's linguistic-related posts, but I think it was for the best.

Here's a 2010 book, in which the author (Mark Smith) documents his daughter's acquisition of the Japanese language from 2 years to 3.5 years old, and suggests that learning language in the same way that children do may "allow the reader to communicate effectively in a much shorter time" as compared to textbook / course learning approaches.

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Japanese-Lear...766&sr=1-1

You can get the gist of the book from the "Look Inside!" preview.