Run on sentences - How I hate thee!

Whether it is because of poor teaching or a natural love of stream of consciousness writing, many people, even the most intelligent and organized, write horrible run on sentences.  They sound like a hysterical five year old telling his mother about his day:  I walked in the class and Johnny threw a brick at me and I cried and the teacher came and asked me what was wrong and I hit Johnny and I was punished.

To set the record straight, a sentence is ONE idea structurally consisting of one SUBJECT, which may have more than one part, and one VERB, which may have more than one action as long as they all relate to the same subject.

In simple terms, the subject can be simple, as in Boys, or compound, as in Boys and girls.  The verb can simple, as in laugh, or compound, as in laugh and cry.  You cannot have two separate sets of subjects and verbs.  Therefore, Boys and girls laugh and cry is grammatically correct while Boys laugh and girls cry is incorrect.  Instead of the word and, you can use the conjunction while: Boys laugh while girls cry; Alternatively, you can use the word with and put the verb in the ing form: Boys laugh, with girls crying.    Finally, you can write two sentences: Boys laugh. Girls cry.  That is the stereotype of children’s reaction to violence.

So, the next time you write a sentence in an email or composition, make sure there are one subject and one verb.  If not, please make the changes and make your teacher/editor much happier!

Rooted Differences or Meaning What You Say

One of the personal pleasures of traveling is hearing familiar sounds that have entirely different meanings.  A sound set, a word or series of words, may come from unrelated roots in a language or language family.  In other words, regardless of the spelling, what you thought you heard is not what they meant.  For example, the sound riba in Hebrew (accent on second syllable to be exact) refers to jam while in Russian it refers, accent on the first syllable, it refers to fish.  If a host asks you if you want riba on your sandwich, you might be rather surprised if you aren’t paying attention to the language.

Of course, these plays on roots provide wonderful opportunity for puns.  It is known that un oeuf is enough for some people, although I prefer three eggs.  If you munch some cacahouètes with your beer, you are eating peanuts, not something wet and stinky from the cat box.  A relative of mine, just off the boat from France, was watching a nature movie and remarked “Look at the phoque.”  She was referring to a seal, not to the mating activity.

This phenomenon of multiple meaning to similar sounding roots is an ideal way of learning vocabulary.  I took an intense Russian course which required me to learn some 50 words a day, an extremely difficult feat considering that all of the roots were new to me.  We had the word гордится [gorditcya], which means to be proud.  Faced with the fact the English root was so distant from the Russian root, I connected the Russian word to the name of a California town, Gardenia, where I would not be so proud to live in, for no particular reason.  The result is that I still remember that name.

I would love to hear other examples from people who have run into confusing root pairs and have lived to laugh at them.

The Future Is Obvious

Native language speakers, especially ESL teachers, quickly learn to identify non-native speakers.   Accent is less important than what is termed translation errors, meaning structures translated literally from the speaker’s native tongue.

A classic Hebrew speaker mistake is the use of the future tense in temporal clauses, i.e. after the words when, after, as soon as, etc.  Hebrew is a quite straight forward language regarding tenses.  When the meaning is in the future, you put the verb in the future.  By contrast, English avoids use of the future tense as much as possible, almost entirely limiting to the use in the independent clause, the main verb in the sentence.  Dependent parts are assumed to be in the same tense as the main verb and are thus written in the present simple.  Native speakers take this fact for granted, but English as a second language speakers often struggle with this tendency.

For example, in Hebrew, one would write .כאשר אבין את המאמר הזה, אסביר לך, with the two underlined verbs in the future, as compared to the English version:  When I understand this article, I will explain it to you.  The independent part of the sentence is the future, making it obvious that the whole sentence is in the future.

Isn’t that clear?

Reflections on a Trip to L.A.

It would seem to imply that to live in a country over a long period of time would encompass all aspects of that country, including speaking the language.  That would seem especially true for an immigrant country like the United States, where the only factor in common among people could be speaking English.

In fact, what struck me on my trip was the lack of “English immersion” in the United States.  I knew that many people lived in Spanish or other language ghettos, but to see it in practice was a bit shocking.  Large numbers of people who have lived in the United States for 20+ years are unable to understand a simple conversation in English.  In many cases, these English non-functional people came in the 20’s or 30’s or even were born there!  As an immigrant to Israel, I made it my highest priority to function in Hebrew.  It seems to me to be a basic part of participating in society.

By contrast, I saw some Turks at the airport in Istanbul who spoke German like a German because they were German in the sense of fully living in Germany.  I have seen Africans speak much better French than most French people themselves.  In Israel, there are older immigrants, such as Ethiopians and Russians, who because of their surroundings and age, find it difficult to speak Hebrew.  However, most younger immigrants quickly and willingly learn to function in Hebrew. 

I would be curious to hear other people’s reaction and exposure to this phenomenon.

Outdated Language and Relationships - Vocabulary

Once upon a time, all boys and girls automatically met (or were matched) somewhere between the ages of 16-20, got married, and lived happily (or not) ever after.  Needless to say, those days are over, replaced by divorced once or multiple times, latch key kids, being single to 30, 40, or more, and even two father or mother households. Life is not so simple anymore.

Many languages, alas, are behind the time.  For example, English has a nice pair of words: girlfriend and boyfriend.  These are very adequate words until somewhere around 30 when the “boy” has a pot belly, expanding face, and a salary higher than the father while the “girl” may be a high-level executive who has already given birth.  They are clearly not “16 going on 17” as the song says.

So, faced with this challenge, English has come with plethora of alternative words.  There is the more adult versions lady friend and male friend.  There is gender and relation ambiguous partner (the one I am currently using) or, slightly more specific, life partner.  For invitations that want to ignore legal status issues, significant others includes everybody.  I feel obliged to mention She-who-must-be-obeyed, although I would never actually use it. 

The problem with all these terms, many of them quite appropriate, is that the speaker has to think which is the most politically correct to use.  They all have some gender/legal status/age context.

Contrast this with approach taken by Hebrew.  There, we have חבר [haver] and  חברה [havera], which mean simply friend, masculine and female.  The voice inflexion and context let you know how friendly they are, but that really isn’t your business, is it?  Older couples can use the terms בן זוג   and בת זוג  [ben zug / bat zug], which means male and female of the pair, a bit like spouse without the requirement of marriage.  The beauty of these words is that there no connotation of age or status, just stating the essential: friendship and togetherness.  Those are never outdated.

I would be interested in knowing how other languages deal with the older friendships.

My next post will be at the end of the month.

Why Read in a Foreign Language – Not because it’s there

The hardest task in a foreign language, even harder than talking on the phone, is reading books in that language.  Even many long-term residents of a country never read books in the language of their adopted country, no matter how well they speak the language.  In this sense, a person can live 50 years in a country and not become completely bilingual.

There are many good reasons for this attitude to foreign language books.  Many people read at night in bed.  This activity is supposed to be pleasurable and relaxing.  Straining your brain and using a dictionary are definitely not fun and restful.  Also, the learning curve for reading is very long and steep.  In other words, it takes a lot of practice before you can read a book in a foreign language as easily as in your mother tongue.   Finally, depending on your native tongue, there may be plenty of reading material available as is.  For example, if English speakers have no problem finding reading material wherever they are.  There are always English books in libraries and second-hand stores, not mention English books in retail book stores.  Therefore, it is clearly very easy not to avoid reading foreign language.

However, if you ever really want to master a language, whether you live in a country that speaks that language or not, you have to read it all the time.   Passively but effectively, reading a book in the language adds vocabulary, understanding, and nuance.  You see many words than you will never hear.  Moreover, over time, the reader intuitively understands what they mean without looking at a dictionary.  Differences between similar words suddenly become much clearer and easier to remember after you have seen them used hundreds of times. You learn like a native.  Also, the connotations of words sink in without any formal explanation. 

To reach this stage is like climbing a tall mountain.  The first part of the journey is hard and tiring, not to mention frustrating at times.  However, when a language learner reaches the peak, effortless reading of a foreign language, it all seems worthwhile.  You can understand Goethe, Zola, and Orwell in the original, or anybody else who wrote in that language.  That is a natural high, like climbing a mountain.  However, unlike Sir Hillary, you never have to go down.  You can enjoy the view all of your life.  That's a good reason to learn how to read in a foreign language.

Past Progressive – Use it wisely

Students of English often fall in love with specific tenses.  English teachers are somewhat guilty in that they overemphasize certain forms of the verb because they are either easy to teach or demonstrate.  The classic example is the present progressive, am/are/is ___ing, but the past progressive is also generally over and misused by Israelis.

To clarify the matter, the past progressive, was/were ____ing, has three specific meanings:

a.      The most common – an unfinished action that must be completed by a verb in the past tense:  I was walking home when I saw an elephant.  I was on my way home, but did not reach it.  You cannot have just the past progressive.  It is like throwing one shoe and leaving the listener/reader waiting for the other shoe.

b.      Two or more simultaneous actions, all in the past progressive:  you were sleeping while I was cleaning the house.

c.       Rare: asking about a specific action at a specific time in the past, as the police or your parents would do:  What were you doing at four o’clock in the morning in the park? (Parents really don’t want to know!)

In terms of other languages, the French imparfait is not really the equivalent.  It emphasizes repeated actions, such as Je dormais toute la journée quand j’avais 15 ans (I used to sleep all day when I was 15 years old).  The closest in terms of the first meaning is j’étais en train de rentrer chez moi quand je suis tombé.  Russian has the imperfect aspect in the past tense (несовершенный вид).  One of the uses is for unfinished actions as in я открывал окно [ya otkrival okno],  I was opening the window, which implies that the window has not been opened.

As a rule, do NOT use the past progressive unless you want to say that the action was not completed.  The other two uses are in fact very rare.