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b-hebrew - Re[4]: Hebrew & Aramaic again

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  • From: peter_kirk AT sil.org
  • To: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re[4]: Hebrew & Aramaic again
  • Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 21:24:47 -0400


I'm sorry, Ian, but it is you who are playing with words. Please can
you explain the difference between "extract meaning" and "understand"?
Or perhaps you mean "partially understand". It is of course possible
to understand (and speak, even at native speaker level) a language
without ever having "learnt" a language in the formal sense of taking
lessons, studying grammars etc which seems to be what you are talking
about. But you have in one way or another learned enough French to
partially understand a French newspaper, and that makes you
multilingual, to a certain degree, in French as well as several other
languages.

So, no I do not "admit that it is possible to extract meaning without
having in any sense learnt a language" because the ability to extract
meaning (however it may be acquired) is one of the major parts of
learning a language, and all human language ability is learned. It is
of course much easier to learn a language closely related to one's
mother tongue than to learn a very different language, but that does
not mean that acquiring that ability is not a form of learning.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator
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Subject: Re[3]: Hebrew & Aramaic again
Author: mc2499 AT mclink.it at internet
Date: 20/07/1999 19:11

<snip>

The idea that I have put to you is simple enough. What is it that is not
clear about a person speaking a language that the other does not know,
while that other person is able to *extract significance* from the language?

The first example I gave was that I could, though never having learnt
French, extract the significance from a French newspaper. Would you in any
sense term my "ability" bilingualism? Do you admit that it is possible to
extract meaning without having in any sense learnt a language?

<snip>





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