Thursday, May 8, 2014
Thinking like Yoda
One of the hardest things about learning Spanish has been learning to form sentences in reverse. "I gave it to her" becomes "Se lo di", or literally "to her it I gave". The best I can do right now is think it in English order, reverse it, then speak it, usually at least 10 seconds late. Listening? Also decoding much too late to follow a conversation well. It turns out that changing the way your brain processes thought and language is not easy. Should I have realized this before? Maybe. But learn it I will! It will I learn! Mmm!
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the same thing used to happen to me when learning conversational english. don't do that. it doesn't work that way and it will always keep both languages separate.
ReplyDeletethink of it like germans do!
find the subject, usually by finding the subject you will find automatically the rest of the sentence or ideas. then find verb, then find to whom the action is towards (akkusativ in german) and then find miscelaneus things, like adjectives and stuff.
basically think of it as a game. plus it will make you go a lot faster.
Ahh, but Germans actually *use* explicit subjects. So really, I need to wait for the verb and ignore what comes before it until I've figured out what the subject is, then try and remember the words that came first, and by then the conversation has left me far behind in a puddle of Spanish. German sentence structure is a lot easier for me, for whatever reason. Maybe I inherited it from my mother's side.
ReplyDelete