"Lies my Beginner Courses Taught Me" (about the language, not marketing lies)

General discussion about learning languages
vonPeterhof
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Re: "Lies my Beginner Courses Taught Me" (about the language, not marketing lies)

Postby vonPeterhof » Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:33 am

leosmith wrote:
Le Baron wrote:Did they literally say that or indicate that 'hour two' was just equal to eight in time as we know it?
They literally said mbili means "eight". It was isolated, and they never used it in other contexts, but still very misleading.

Could have sworn that they did use it in other contexts, like "Pombe mbili, tafadhali", and that they did explain the whole Swahili time thing when first introducing it. I also don't really recall them literally saying the phrase "mbili means 'eight'", although I do recall them not always making it clear which exact numeral they were using in time expressions, expecting the student to figure it out based on previously introduced knowledge. I might have listened to a more recent version of the course, I guess.

As for lies in beginner courses, while I can't recall any notable examples in courses I personally learned from (other than maybe "things are always pronounced the way they are spelled" for far too many languages ;) ), I remember once looking at two beginner Latin textbooks from the same Russian publisher, one aimed at philology and linguistics students, and another for law and medical students. Both books started with an introduction to the alphabet and pronunciation, but the former book would always include both the classical and the modern-day conventional Russian pronunciation, while the latter would introduce the conventional one as the only option (ce = [t͡sɛ], tio = [t͡sɨo], etc.).
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Re: "Lies my Beginner Courses Taught Me" (about the language, not marketing lies)

Postby Querneus » Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:08 am

Latin textbooks teach -āvistī, plural -āvistis, for the 2nd-person perfect endings of the -āre conjugation, but in practice -āstī and -āstis are much more common (but are not taught!). -āvistī(s) are mostly found just in Plautus and Cicero.

I once saw that meme of a (crudely drawn) shy guy in the corner of a house party, standing by himself while others are enjoying talking, as he thinks "nesciunt -asti saepius accidere" ("they don't know -asti occurs more often").
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Re: "Lies my Beginner Courses Taught Me" (about the language, not marketing lies)

Postby leosmith » Sat Mar 25, 2023 6:08 pm

vonPeterhof wrote:Could have sworn that they did use it in other contexts, like "Pombe mbili, tafadhali"
There's another one - pombe means alcohol or liquor, not beer. You would be understood, but everybody says bia.
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Re: "Lies my Beginner Courses Taught Me" (about the language, not marketing lies)

Postby Sizen » Sun Mar 26, 2023 12:29 am

I remember reading in a number of the courses I used for Japanese that particles cannot come after a verb. This is mostly true... but in actual usage there are a number of cases where this is just wrong, somewhat misleading, or maybe just ignoring Classical Japanese which can sometimes bleed into modern Japanese. Ignoring conjunctive particles (eg. が, のに, etc), te-form + particle constructions (eg. ても, ては, てでも) that tend to not be considered exceptions to this rule, there are other cases, some more common than others, that go against this "rule."

Examples I found doing a quick search online:

緊張して話しかけようにも話しかけられない (kinchou site hanashikakeyou nimo hanashikakerarenai) "Even if I wanted to talk to them, I'm so nervous I can't."

このホテルに行くにはこっちですか (kono hoteru ni iku niwa kocchi desu ka) "Is it this way to the hotel?"

死ぬいい (shinu ga ii) "Die."

バスで行くより、タクシーで行くほうが早いです (basu de iku yori, takushii de iku hou ga hayai desu) "It's faster to take a taxi than to go by bus."
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Re: "Lies my Beginner Courses Taught Me" (about the language, not marketing lies)

Postby Cainntear » Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:52 am

Just curious: are English courses still teaching nonsense about not ending sentences with prepositions? And to whomwho should we be complaining to? :D
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Re: "Lies my Beginner Courses Taught Me" (about the language, not marketing lies)

Postby Le Baron » Sun Mar 26, 2023 1:40 pm

Cainntear wrote:Just curious: are English courses still teaching nonsense about not ending sentences with prepositions? And to whomwho should we be complaining to? :D

In writing I always preferred to keep to that rule. Not so much in speech unless being jocular or talking to a judge. The other 'rule' which has been shot down is 'don't split infinitives'. However disregarding this entirely leads to sloppy, meandering sentence formation. You can get away with it in novels, but for non-fiction/academic writing it makes the prose torturous and like reading German. :)
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Re: "Lies my Beginner Courses Taught Me" (about the language, not marketing lies)

Postby CarlyD » Wed Mar 29, 2023 6:52 pm

My very first brush with German was the Rosetta Stone course that came free with my new desktop computer. I worked through it until I got to the picture of the monk, labeled as der Erwachsene. Ok, I dutifully put that Erwachsene meant "monk" in my vocab book.

When I found out it mean "adult" I couldn't ever trust Rosetta Stone again. How many other times did they lie to me? :P
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