Mark J. Alves, explains that the roll of a pronoun in Asia is very different than the European languages. In Asia common proper nouns are often used when pronouns would be considered appropriate in European languages. According to the author Southeast Asia's "pronoun" systems are made up of terms of address having to do with family relations. Asian ESL students may also struggle with prepositions because they are "words which show a relationship between a noun or pronoun and some other word." It would be difficult to translate and learn prepositions due to how differently pronouns are used in the two cultures.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Blog Summary 3: Chinese Learners of English
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I would agree with the author of this article. The Asian language is very different in these two instances, referring to the pronoun systems and the prepositions. My aunt is Vietnamese, so this article makes sense to me. While my aunt can speak English very clearly, some things she phrases together are hard to understand. It's almost backwards in phrasing. To understand what message she is trying to get across uses some intense thinking. In my mind, I have to change wording around to completely make known of what she is trying to say and how she is trying to say something.
ReplyDeleteI agreed with the author on the point about neither point fully explains which is more basic than the other. I really believe that culture has a lot to do with grammar of course so its all based on what you were thought. It may seem repetitive to us Americans if "she" is used to many times to get a small point across.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mark Alves that the Asian language and they way the use the pronoun is very different than other European languages. Of course, not all languages have the same structure; especially grammatically. When you learn a different language, one of the hardest things is learning that language's sentence structure and grammar.
ReplyDeleteby: CJ Armstrong
ReplyDeletePronouns and prepositions are both an important aspect in English. How and the way we use them depend on the sentence that we construct. Even though we often use them in everyday life, people from different cultural backgrounds use them either differently or don not use some of the words at all. Two languages that have been used as a comparison in this article are both European and Asian. Pronouns used in Southeast Asian terminology, are very different format.
This is because; they are somewhat disagreeable when it comes to common and proper nouns, they are not as precise, and in some ways strange. There are four rules in which to use pronouns in the Asian format, which basically give people of the western world, a better understanding.
Rule 1: Pronouns are frequently invented from other nouns. Rule 2: Southeast Asian pronouns can be used with determiners. Rule 3: The same type of pronoun used in Asian grammar terminology can be used in the Western world in the first, second, and third person. Rule 4:
When addressing a speaker, listener, or third party, personal names can be used.
When it comes to prepositions, there have been many different facts and opinions from different linguists, that sometimes contradict each other. The way Southeast Asians use prepositions depend on the translation of their own native language. Each language has their own format and grammar rules that basically stand out from other procedural rules. I believe the reason why Asian students have a hard time with English prepositions and pronouns is because, their language and grammar system is a lot different. It takes a while to not only learn a whole different grammar system but also keeping track of the grammar knowledge that they were
taught at home.
Translating any language to another is a hard task to be bestowed upon a person. From reading this article it is clear that the Asian and English languages differ especially when we speak of pronouns. So it is hard to even argue with anyone who says that two countries languages are hard to be translated to the other.
ReplyDeleteI can only imagine the difficulties a non native English speaker must encounter when trying to learn English. It has to be especially tough to learn prepositions. Rather than translating a sentence word for word, one must learn the different structure in English. Now I can understand why Asian people structure sentences funny, it is just straight up a pain to understand.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the author of this article. Trying to translate an Asian language to English or vice versa seems to be a very difficult task. Quite frankly, any language is difficult to translate correctly. The entire structure of each languages sentences are backwards to one another so there is going to be some confusion.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the author. The translation of the Asian language to the English language is a difficult task. All languages are difficult because they use different alphabets, syllables, and pronunciations. No language is the same although they all probably derived from a specific language.
ReplyDeleteIt is very difficult to learn another language in general. English is a very tough language, and any foreign study who attempts to learn it usually has to put in more than 10 years of learning. Where as in America, we can learn other languages in less than 3 years. I think the author is making a great point, by showing the differences in languages. We need to value the education that we have, and help those around us in college from other countries.
ReplyDeleteKaleb Cook
I agree with the author because regardless of what language you are learning, it will be difficult.
ReplyDeletei agree with the author. if the Asian students aren't fond of pronouns in their first language, then how will they have an English counterpart to compare with.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the author. When people of different background speaks differently then they wil have to learn the language that is the most common. For example, if an Hispanic or Asian student came to America and didn't speak fluent English, then they will need to learn the English language.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it's true or not, but when I was growing up I was always told that English was one of the hardest languages to learn. It is definitely stuctured way differently than any other language I've studied. It makes me wonder how badly I mess up in other languages.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the author. Learning different languages and how they use different grammar can be difficult. Even the sentence structuring is set up completely different in most foreign languages. I'm sure people have a hard time learning English when we have a lot of lingo and different accents.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the author learning a second language is very hard in certain instances for certain languages. In this case it's pronouns for the Asian culture. I'm taking spanish right now and I find that the most difficult part of learning it is learning how they set up their sentences grammatically. I would rather learn whole phrases and be able to break them down from there rather than learning everything individually and building it into bigger sentences. I tend to know what the words are, but I'll set a sentence up like we do in english which is usually backwards.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with the author understanding another language's use of grammar is hard. about two summers ago I student taught in an ESL class. The students were native Spanish speakers and I watched those kids struggle with the English. I watched them struggle with the grammar and trying to reason with the way English is.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the author because regardless of what language you are learning, it will be difficult, it will be hard for a person to learn a second language. i know from experience, i took Spanish in High School, and i had a hard time learning it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mark Alves in that learning new languages can be difficult. To show this, he chose to highlight the differences between pronoun usage in Asian and English. The article shows that learning a new language goes far beyond understanding the words. This is because in addition to having to learn the translations of English words, you have to learn the grammatical rules of the other language. This may be even more difficult considering the fact that whatever language you speak before trying to learn a new one, has already engrained its rules into your normal writing and speaking practices to the point that it has become second nature. Having to adopt not only new words, but new rules and usages can prove to be tedious, I know this from experience as well after taking Spanish for 3 years in High School.
ReplyDelete~Justin Jones~
I agree with the author of this article. The Asian language is significantly different from the English language. It is difficult to translate the Asian language into English because the stucture of the sentences are set up differently.
ReplyDeleteAlthough different in a lot of instances, most languages are similar to each other. They may differ in letters and announciations but the foundation is the same. Visuals are needed and strong basis is required for it to be effective.
ReplyDeleteby kenneth dixon