[B-Greek] Re: Natural Language Acquisition and learning Greek

Chet A. Creider creider at uwo.ca
Wed Jun 2 08:38:13 EDT 2004


Hi Randall--

I have some familiarity with Krashen's work and the distinction between
learning and acquiring a language but am not familiar with the fate of
this distinction in the light of research.  I'll try to find out and
let you know.  I'm somewhat dubious of it, despite its plausability,
because of my own personal experience.  However, that experience is
flawed, so the bottom line is that I don't know.  You may be able to
help us and yourself in the light of your own experience learning
Semitic languages.

My own experience has been the following: At quite different stages in
my life (but all adult), I learned to speak Spanish, Swahili and
Norwegian comfortably (to the point of thinking, dreaming, etc. in
these languages).  I did this by intensive study of textbooks and
grammars at the same time as being immersed in the languages to the
extent that this was possible (avoiding the use of English, etc.).  In
each case, I found that an extensive period (several years) of active
reading (active in the sense of looking up unfamiliar words in a
dictionary, writing them down and studying them) was necessary before I
could read anything rapidly and comfortably in these languages.  I'm
not entirely sure that my knowledge of the spoken language was a
particularly big help here.  As partial evidence I may cite French, a
language that I read with more or less complete comfort but speak and
understand only haltingly.

Greek is a far more difficult language than any of the above, and I
confess that it bothers me that I don't think much in it or use it
actively the way I would like to.  And I do wonder if the fact that I
haven't, to use Krashen's term, "acquired" it, is a factor in the
relative slowness with which I read it.  (As you know, I'm using your
language lessons in an attempt to get a more multi-modal experience of
the language.)

Can you tell us something of your experience learning Semitic languages?
I imagine you knew Hebrew long before you spoke it, but what about Arabic?
Did you learn to speak it (i.e. acquire it) before learning to read it?  
Was speaking it a big help?

Chet Creider





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