How do you approach learning new word inflections/conjugations

[jimmyy]

Hi,

I've been reading on the other thread that it is important to learn the new words in a context.

I would need your advice on two questions:
1) Do you start first with a simple pair of the new word and its translation and then move to see/learn the new word in the context?
If on the one hand you would start with a simple word pair in the target language and the translation in your native language, this would focus your learning process on the new word and then in a second step to see the new word in a context, will make it easier as you have seen already the word, and you would focus on the context around that word

On the other hand, if you see the new word for the first time in a context (e.g. a sentence), then you are saving some time, because you are combining the previous two steps into one, but I have a feeling that your attention would need to be distributed and you might give a little less focus to the target word, as you might find the rest of the sentence more difficult and you might focus on that part.

2) Some languages have many inflections for the same word. English and French a bit less but others more.
How would you go about learning all the forms of the same word.

I find learning the dictionary form of a word way too little for being able to use it later on in a context, but learning all the forms of a verb for example can be quite a challenge, especially for the irregular ones, and then coupled with the first point of learning it in a context it can take quite some time, so basically you would spend a lot of time for only one word (with all its forms/inflections)

Waiting to encounter all the forms of a new word in context can become a lengthy process and you will have forgotten the initial form(s) that you might have already seen, whereas if you see them one next to the other it can also help you better spot the differences between the forms.

I'm curious how do you approach it? because eventually to be able to use it (and not only recognize it) you will need to know all the forms of an word, and that is my target to be able to actually use a word.

Many thanks for your input

[mcthulhu]

Looking for a separate context sentence for each and every inflected form of every word, which you seem to be asking about, seems remarkably inefficient to me; and as you say, it would take forever. Multiple example sentences make more sense for multiple meanings than for grammatical endings.

Learning lots of vocabulary is hard enough; when you have common grammatical patterns shared by many words, you should take advantage of that repetition. I've always just memorized the grammatical paradigms separately, of course starting with the regular declensions/conjugations, and then branching out to irregular ones as needed. It's usually done using a representative word for the given paradigm (amo, amas, amat...). Then when you learn a new word, you can also memorize which paradigm should be applied to it, and mark your flashcards accordingly. Sometimes the dictionary form by itself already gives you all the information you need to inflect it; sometimes not.

Sometimes I've also done repetitive grammar drills, depending on what materials I'm using, to practice a pattern over and over. This can be incredibly boring, but it's reasonably effective, and can help if memorizing a declension is hard, and it gives at least some artificial context (real context isn't the point here). In any case, when you get around to reading, you're going to get plenty of grammatical endings, in context.

Regarding your first question - when I've used flashcards with example sentences, the example appears together with the base word, in one step, not as a two-step process. One flashcard per word seems like enough.

Context isn't always that useful. I've found examples more useful when there's something about the usage of the word that's non-obvious, or when it doesn't correspond perfectly to an English equivalent, or when it's for a word that I could easily confuse with similar words. Often examples just seem like pointless busywork, though, so I don't bother.

[jimmyy]

Thank you for your answer. I'm looking forward to hearing others views.

Looking for a separate context sentence for each and every inflected form of every word, which you seem to be asking about, seems remarkably inefficient to me; and as you say, it would take forever. Multiple example sentences make more sense for multiple meanings than for grammatical endings.

While I agree with you, at least in the beginning, since we're all at a certain point in time beginners, you do not know the paradigms/patterns. The patterns can be very complex, and remembering them all can be a complicated task. What I find complicated is to know when actually to apply a pattern or not. To give you an example in my Beschrelle (French conjucation book) there are 95 conjugation tables. To learn all the rules it's quite a challenge.
So my point is that in the beginning I find it useful to learn the forms of the verbs rather than the pattern. I believe though that when you are a real beginner, learning the dictionary form would be enough, while if you become more advanced you would want to learn more forms/rules.

Learning lots of vocabulary is hard enough; when you have common grammatical patterns shared by many words, you should take advantage of that repetition. I've always just memorized the grammatical paradigms separately, of course starting with the regular declensions/conjugations, and then branching out to irregular ones as needed. It's usually done using a representative word for the given paradigm (amo, amas, amat...). Then when you learn a new word, you can also memorize which paradigm should be applied to it, and mark your flashcards accordingly. Sometimes the dictionary form by itself already gives you all the information you need to inflect it; sometimes not.

What do you mean by "mark flashcards accordingly"? do you write by hand while making your flashcards all the conjugations of one verb? instead of seeing it somewhere first you would apply the rule/pattern without double checking?
The beauty of each language is that there are so many exceptions to the rules and so many illogical (at least at first sight) patterns that there are quite a few ones that you can use out of the box.

Regarding your first question - when I've used flashcards with example sentences, the example appears together with the base word, in one step, not as a two-step process. One flashcard per word seems like enough.

You mean for learning the form of "to have" you would use "John has two apples".

Context isn't always that useful. I've found examples more useful when there's something about the usage of the word that's non-obvious, or when it doesn't correspond perfectly to an English equivalent, or when it's for a word that I could easily confuse with similar words. Often examples just seem like pointless busywork, though, so I don't bother.

I was reading this thread:
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 1&start=10
and found that the prevailing view is that it is better to learn it context, but I agree with you that when there is a one to one mapping, it could be easier to learn it in a context, even though learning a simple sentence should be equally fine.

[Iversen]

I make Green sheets with the regular inflections, the most important irregular words and sometimes also some aspects of syntax. The basis is one or sometimes two grammars, and at least one should be a real grammar that covers the ground reasonably well. I can also use tables from Wikipedia or other net resources or from small language guides, but far too often they leave out some forms because they don't see them as necessary for their target groups. Or like most text book systems they serve them dripwise and in an order devoid of grammatical logic.

I think much about the way I organize the tables, and if I don't agree with the way the sources do the job then I don't use their setup - like for instance when I stick to the order Nominative, Accusative, Genetive, Dative etc. even when I use German grammars where the Accusative is placed as no. 4. Why? Well, it is the one used for Latin and the most common in Anglophone sources, but the position between the Nominative and the Genitive is also the logical one for the Accusative in the Slavic languages, because it borrows its forms from these two cases.

So far I have always managed to keep the regular nominal forms (articles, adjectives, substantives) resp. the regular forms of the verbs within max one sheet each - even in morphology rich languages like latin, Icelandic and Russian, and this is important because it is a bore to have to look through thirty or more pages in a grammar to find a certain form. The price is of course that I only show endings, not complete sample words, but since I normally use the tables in situations where I want to either recognize or find the forms for specific words it wouldn't help me to have totally different sample words. It is more irritating that I have little space for the rules of thumb that can assign specific words to specific declension or conjugation patterns - like for instance the rules that govern gender in German ... but even big grammars can't solve that problem in a short and userfriendly way. Ultimately it is a question of having good dictionaries with morphological information.

There will of course be differences between the layouts for different languages because of the structure of these languages. For instance Latin and Modern Greek adjectives are almost the same as the forms of the substantives, and then I separate them vertically. But in the Slavic languages, German and Icelandic they are very different, and here it is more efficient to put them horisontally in the same table so that you see the articles, adjectives and substantives together as they are placed in a standard nominal phrase - see the chapter about green sheets in my five-part guide to language learning, where I show my sheet for the nominal wordclasses in Icelandic. This language is a prime example of the need to find a good layout because there are both prepositioned and postclitic articles and both 'strong' and 'week' forms of substantives and adjectives and three genders and four cases- I have still to see another source which can represent the system in a more concise way than the one I have chosen.

Once I have established my system (and sometimes it takes some rewriting to get things exactly as I want them) I keep the pages within reach when I read or write something in a given language. If I am in doubt about a form I consult the pages, and because I don't change the layout I know exactly where to find a given form. Setting up the system is in itself a way of learning the forms, and when I work with texts (passively or actively) I get sufficient repetition. In other words: I don't intentionally try to learn all the tables by heart through simple rote memorization - although I may do that for parts of the system if I feel my knowledge about certain forms need a bit of reinforcing. That being said, I learned the irregular verbs in Latin with their three or four main forms through rote memoriztion, and today I'm happy that I still remember most of them. The old black school did have its bright moments...

Instead I classify forms from my texts or I do small exercises where I ask myself what I given form of a given word would look like. One useful trick for morphology rich languages like the Slavic ones is not the learn the declension for adjectives and for nouns separately, but instead look at combinations containing both. This solves the problem that some endings are used in different places in the system: when you look at combined endings for adjectives + substantives there aren't many dublicates.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I think much about the way I organize the tables, and if I don't agree with the way the sources do the job then I don't use their setup - like for instance when I stick to the order Nominative, Accusative, Genetive, Dative etc. even when I use German grammars where the Accusative is placed as no. 4. Why? Well, it is the one used for Latin and the most common in Anglophone sources, but the position between the Nominative and the Genitive is also the logical one for the Accusative in the Slavic languages, because it borrows its forms from these two cases.

Nowadays my brain thinks N-A-D-G*, but I learned Classical Greek in the N-G-D-A order.

(Isn't this what you mean, or is there really an N-A-G-D order? I just thought that A and G sometimes changes places, while N and D remain in first and third position.)

[Iversen]

Some languages also have a vocative, and that includes Latin and Russian. That irritating and useless case has a tendency to wiggle its way into the position right after the Nominative. Why? Because it has a tendency to be replaced by forms taken from the nominative, but the nominative is much too important to be removed from the first position - besides all dictionaries use the nominative for their headwords. But apart from that (and from the fact that Latin also has an ablative) the order of the cases in Latin in the English Wikipedia is the one I quoted: N A G D - and lo and behold, its the same for Ancient Greek in English, Danish and French sources. But not in German and Swedish sources, where the Accusative has been relegated to the position after the Dative - heavens know why since the dative is the one the parsimoneous languages kills off first.

Latin-cases-Wikipedia.jpg

Cases-Ancient-Greek.jpg

Cases-Latin-SwedWikipedia.jpg

[tarvos]

I always learned NGDA too.

[Iversen]

It seems the world is divided into those that place the Accusative after the Nominative and those that put it after the Dative. You just have to make the choice and stick to it - having two different orders circulating in your head won't help you to learn the declension tables.

It is of course an academical discussion for those who don't learn declensions as tables.

[Josquin]

You'll be interested to know that verb paradigms in Hebrew usually start with the 3rd person going on like this:

3rd p. masc.
3rd p. fem.
2nd p. masc.
2nd p. fem.
1st p.

If I remember correctly, it's similar in Arabic, but my Arabic is very rudimentary.

As far as cases are concerned, I learned them in the traditional German sequence N-G-D-A. For Latin, it would be N-G-D-Acc-Abl-V and for Russian N-G-D-A-I-P. Only Icelandic has a traditionally different sequence, which is N-A-D-G. Also, Anglo-Saxon scholars tend to group cases according to this pattern, so I got used to it.

[Jar-Ptitsa]

Definitely always Nominative -> Accusative -> Genitive -> Dative.

and they are Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

not exactly those colours, but approximately (the selection was limited for the font colours). The Dative is purple. I don't see letters with colours so I don't know why the cases have got those colours haha. When I learned them the first time, maybe I had those colour pens (I love highlighters and different pens with different colours).

I find the declensions truly impossible to do, and I muddle up the cases' endings, but nevertheless I love German.