[B-Greek] what does "internalizing" mean?

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sun Aug 2 18:34:30 EDT 2009


On Aug 2, 2009, at 5:56 PM, Jeffrey T. Requadt wrote:

> I'm confused with regards to a few of the recent posts. Someone  
> mentioned
> that they had a hard enough time internalizing their own native  
> language,
> English.
>
> What I'm confused about is that I thought "internalizing" a language  
> means
> that you can understand it and communicate in it proficiently. I.e.,  
> it's
> impossible to NOT internalize a language if you are already fluent  
> in it.
> You have internalized it by becoming fluent. I don't feel like I  
> need to
> internalize English anymore, because I can talk (a lot) in it. My  
> French, on
> the other hand, is not at the same level of fluency, although I can  
> speak
> and understood when I am spoken to with a large degree of success.  
> So I
> would say that I have internalized English to a greater degree than  
> French,
> but I have internalized both of them to some degree.
>
> But since I don't have much education in linguistics or SLA  
> (although I do
> have to help children learn English while teaching them math),  
> perhaps I am
> misunderstanding the technical aspects of the term. Thanks to those  
> of you
> who can clear it up for me.

Curiously, I find this definition for "internalize" in my dictionary:  
"acquire knowledge of (the rules of a language)." For my part, I  
wouldn't understand this as knowing what the rules are but knowing  
them in practice.  "Do you know German?" means, "Do you use German?"-- 
Do you speak it or read it? Internalization of a language to me means  
thinking in the language without converting it into another language.



Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu or cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/




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