On Grammar and Meaning

[livingdeb]

In DuoLingo, they often show you a sentence written out while also saying it and then ask you to provide a translation. I have started not looking at the sentence to practice figuring out what they are saying just by listening. (Which I stink at.) Then I check by looking at the sentence. And only then do I type out the requested translation.

Sometimes the sentence makes little or no sense, but if I check the grammar, it can help me out. For example, recently I heard what sounded like they were saying "You need your name" in Spanish, "Tu necesita su nombre." At first I thought that was an odd sentence. Then I realized that grammatically, it should be either "Tu necesitas tu nombre" or "Usted necesita su nombre," so I must have been hearing it wrong. In fact, they were saying "Tu necesitas un hombre," which means "You need a man."

However I still can't tell the difference between the queen (la reina) and the sand (la arena - the first and second a's blend together) except via context.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Ha! Even after all these year studying Spanish, I still sometimes get tripped up trying to understand when one word ends and the next begins. But you know, I don't think that spoken language was necessarily meant to be understood in isolation. I think we take for granted how much we rely on context to understand what we hear, even in our native tongue.

And we assume that we understand our native language as a series of words, but really, that's not how we learn language as children - it's more like a series of sounds that has meaning. Just look at how many common phrases are misunderstood even by adults - not misunderstood in the sense that people don't know what the phrase is supposed to convey, but misunderstood in terms of which words are actually in the phrase.

For all intensive purposes... Let's nip this problem in the butt... There before the grace of God go I... I'm on tender hooks waiting for the answer...

It's not that the words don't matter, but I don't think that's how we learn spoken language. Anyhow, I guess my point is that I don't think it's terribly important to try to understand words and phrases out of context like that. IMHO it's much more valuable to use television or skits or whatever so that you can understand what's being said in the context of a scene, because that's how language works anyhow.

Just my 2 cents!
:-)
Cat

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Ha, I love your examples. And I had to ask my boyfriend to learn about "There, but for the grace of God go I."

Of course we often get the words AND the meaning wrong. ('Scuse me, while I kiss this guy.)

I do plan to get into more natural practice, but I'm still enjoying these training wheels for now.

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Found another example. I heard "Usted estuvieron un perro," You were a dog. But the noun is singular and the verb is plural. Really they were saying, "Ustedes tuvieron un perro," You *had* a dog. Slight difference!