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How the words we teach English language learners changed

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Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed

#71

Post by PsylentKnight »

WalterBright wrote: post #56
ninjahawk1 wrote: post #47

When I was in high school at a private school, I was surrounded by students who were religious but didn’t have much curiosity. I got into a debate with basically my whole class about how languages shift and change over time, and everyone was saying that languages stay the same and that they were all determined at the Tower of Babel. I used the examples of Latin to Spanish and English, or Old English to new English. I…

Huh, English has changed perceptibly over just my lifetime.

And animals have evolved perceptibly in my lifetime, they still don't believe in evolution. I grew up in a culture of Jesus Freaks. The way they place faith above evidence and logic is so disturbing and irritating to me

Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed

#72

Post by [deleted] »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #20
crazygringo wrote: post #16

I tried to organize vocab by difficulty level for an English language-learning app once. It shocked me how there is absolutely no "right" answer. If you are teaching English for travel, then you're prioritizing a lot of stuff around bathrooms, transportation, menu items, etc. If it's for understanding TV, it's a lot of words like "murder", etc. Depending on which TV shows you want to understand. If it's for reading t…

> While if you are living somewhere, it's really important to know a lot of basic supermarket items that you wouldn't prioritize for other usages. Why? Having spent a good amount of time living in Shanghai, I found it important to be able to understand menus. But there's no pressure to know the words for supermarket items; you can just go to the supermarket and look for the item. Otherwise your point is correct; all…

[deleted]

Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed

#73

Post by TacticalCoder »

coliveira wrote: post #36
DC-3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot about this. It's funny how there are certain domains of language, familiar to all native speakers, but that you are simply not likely to learn as an adult language learner, at least not without diligent and focused study. I live and work in a foreign country, and have a modest but functional grasp of the language here. Which is to say, I know how to say 'sustainability', 'union-negotiated collective agr…

When you're a foreigner learning a language your experience is mostly from reading. There are words, however, that are much more common at home and in spoken language. So you'll probably never learn the words that a 10 year old kid knows.

I started learning english around 1984, when I began to learn programming. Back then most books were, by very far, in english. I also spent some time in the US (about one year altogether).

Copying lyrics from my favorite songs of the 80s was helpful. And then later on TV series and movies in english.

I've watched Friends, HIMYM and Californication* more than once (it's probably the reason I swear so much) and those really helped.

Now I raised my kid in english: from the beginning she was only ever allowed to watch TV shows in english. And she's always been to international schools, in english too.

The other day she taught me a simply word which, surprisingly enough, I didn't know: a "coaster" (a drink coaster).

My absolute favorite is when she uses english grammar and applies it to french: the rules about where adjectives do go vary between french and english and she regularly messes it up in french (supposedly her "native" language but at this point I wonder whether english ain't a first language, and french second).

And one thing she has that I'll never have is a beautiful, proper, english accent. Mine shall forever be a strong french one.

Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed

#74

Post by fasterik »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #27

> It’s as if the world now requires you to be more precise about everything. This is something I've been thinking a lot about. We have trended from subjective language to objective language. Why? Computing. Software is written with objective language. Everything is clearly unambiguously defined. Blue is no longer a category, it's #0000FF. Logic must always reduce to a binary truth value. Most of what we have to talk…

I don't agree with the assumed equivalence between precision and objectivity. Language can be precise when describing a subjective perspective, and it can be imprecise or ambiguous when describing objective facts. The tendency toward increasing precision is a good thing, in my opinion. If anything, precision in language allows writers to tell better, more nuanced stories about subjectivity.

Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed

#76

Post by WalterBright »

PsylentKnight wrote: post #71
WalterBright wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, English has changed perceptibly over just my lifetime.

And animals have evolved perceptibly in my lifetime, they still don't believe in evolution. I grew up in a culture of Jesus Freaks. The way they place faith above evidence and logic is so disturbing and irritating to me

Most people can't accept reality.

Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed

#77

Post by joshdavham »

calpaterson wrote: post #4
delichon wrote: post #2

At the moment this story has 2 upvotes in a half hour and is in the 8th position on the front page. Apparently HN has a fairy godmother algorithm that randomly promotes posts.

That is indeed how it works https://news.ycombinator.com/pool But not in this case. It's a slow Sunday afternoon and getting a few upvotes quickly is enough

Interesting! I didn't know about the 'pool' section of HN.

Would you mind explaining to us how it works?

Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed

#78

Post by conductr »

dadie wrote: post #49
crazygringo wrote: post #16

I tried to organize vocab by difficulty level for an English language-learning app once. It shocked me how there is absolutely no "right" answer. If you are teaching English for travel, then you're prioritizing a lot of stuff around bathrooms, transportation, menu items, etc. If it's for understanding TV, it's a lot of words like "murder", etc. Depending on which TV shows you want to understand. If it's for reading t…

Beware though that only learning words may leave you confused as in my experience Americans tend to overload the same word with a different meaning depending on the context. They also often resort to idioms and cultural references. For reasons unknown to me, instead of using the word with the meaning they probably are trying to convey, they rather use vague analogies or metaphors. It always made me question if Americ…

I always hear a phase that goes like “we have a word for it in Language, …”. You almost never hear it said where English is that language. We just don’t have many words or don’t like adding new ones very frequently, it seems.

Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed

#79

Post by WalterBright »

dredmorbius wrote: post #68
WalterBright wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new fad I've seen more and more lately is removing the scroll bars. Arrgh.

Not only have they killed the scrollbar, but they've attempted to kill my scrollbar-killing rant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21356511 >. That seems not to be available at either the Internet Archive nor Archive Today: https://web.archive.org/web/20200000000000*/https://ello.co/... > https://archive.is/https%3A%2F%2Fello.co%2Fdredmorbius%2Fpos... > Sic transit gloria data. Update: At least some of the Waybac…

My Mac mini has that wretched problem with every window.
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