Re:I used the internet to painlessly relearn a foreign language
by mathieuh on Wednesday September 30, 2020 @12:19PM
(#24640402)
OK I was being over-the-top with that part, yes, I remember being taught about verbs, adjectives, nouns and adverbs.
But the rest? I don't remember them being taught them at all. I went to school in Northern Ireland starting in 1999, I thought the "national curriculum" covered all of the UK but it turns out NI has its own so that may have something to do with it.
I'm an avid amateur linguist so perhaps I'm letting my own perceptions of what is important colour what I think should be important to other people.
This just isn't true. It might have been true for you, but it isn't true 'in the UK', and most likely you've just forgotten because it wasn't and hasn't been important to you; it's on the national curriculum.
> When you don’t even know formally how your own language is structured, it is very difficult to learn another language.
Absolutely agree with that, and it's worth learning more and revising what you were taught when at school in the UK if you choose to learn another language.
It's also (one reason) why 'Latin is useless' is bollocks. Latin has a more 'complete' grammar than (modern) English, by which I mean that it has more cases, conjugations, etc. that are productive, and which take differing forms. It can be difficult to get your head around two different constructions in a language being learnt if both take the same form in English; they probably don't in Latin.
I've never learnt Latin formally, but I've tried to pick a tiny bit up, and I tend to look to Latin grammar and resources rather than English in my pursuit of Hindi.