the natural order of natural language acquisition

On Wednesday evening I started watching 西太后の紫禁城 for the 5th time and I just finished it this morning. I believe I learn something new every time I watch the series and everything I already learned gets reinforced. This time I believe I learned the words for prince and princess, although I can't be 100% certain because I didn't consult a dictionary. The reason I couldn't figure this out before is because the word that I believe to mean 'princess' is not used as often. I already knew that the word for 'prince' referred to a son, simply from exposure to it. There is one young woman who is always called by what I now believe to mean 'princess', but her father is not the emperor, although he does have a high status which I can tell by the clothing he sometimes wears, but I cannot figure out what exactly his relationship is to the ruling family. At first, I thought that maybe this word was her name, but I found it to be a rather weird name, so I thought it was a nickname because the word sounds similar to the word for big brother in Chinese. So naturally in the beginning I thought it was that word for older brother since her brother is retarded, I thought she must have had to take on the role of the oldest male offspring for her family. But then during this fifth viewing of the drama I heard one of the characters ask something to the equivalent of "she is the princess of whose place?" In other words, I heard the word "where" used with her title and obviously in reference to her. I have long suspected that her father might be the brother of the queen/empress but I'm still not sure. Anyway, by the way the question was phrased, I could rule out that the word was definitely not "brother" and thinking about "princess" I figure that would work well in that sentence. Then later in the series, there is a woman who gives birth to the next heir to the throne and the queen was wanting to know if it was a boy or a girl. So it was at this point that I heard the two words together that paired them up and made perfect sense. "Do I have a prince or a princess?" she says. Before I had never really caught the last word, or I hadn't linked it to the woman who is always called this. Once I had enough pieces to the puzzle I could validate my suspicions. And with respect to the other TV drama that I have watched 5 times, the word "prince" makes perfect sense because in that drama the Emperor/King has many sons whom are all called this word from time to time. This is not the only thing I learned this time but it is the biggest one for me. I kept wondering why and couldn't understand why they kept calling that young woman a name which sounds to me like older brother!

The other thing I couldn't keep from thinking about was how helpful it is to be able to hear the language. If you think about your native language, it is so easy to hear what's being said. You don't even have to be fully paying attention! In your native tongue, you don't listen for words. You don't need to have your ears perked up. You can follow what's being said even if your mind wanders a little bit. After 300 hours of the TV method, that's what I'm starting to be able to do. There are those sentences and words that are so familiar to me that I can't miss them so easily. Even when the audio seems a bit muffled, I can understand those sentences that I'm totally familiar with. And I do it without even trying. There's no effort. The familiar words don't even trigger a reaction. I'm so used to them.

What is the order of language learning in a typical classroom course? Perhaps it goes like this: First learn to read the alphabet/writing system of the language. Then associate some words to meanings through vocabulary. Next learn to pronounce those words. Then learn to speak/reproduce some sentences while learning grammar. And finally learn to hear the language. And no doubt, all of this attempted on the first day!

What is the natural order? Hearing comes first! The most important thing is to be able to hear the language as well as you hear your native language. With the ease of hearing comes the ease of attaching meaning to words. The more you can hear, the more you can understand. When I started out on the TV method and I could only understand 1%, that was because I couldn't hear all the words which I had already studied. They were there! But I just couldn't catch them. And what I did catch, I was pulling up translations for, which made me miss out on the rest of the sentence as well as the following sentences.

Second in the natural order is meaning. You're going to find out the meaning of what you hear. The wonderful thing about this order is the fact that you may have been hearing the word for a long time before you learn its meaning. That means you are quite used to that word. When you hear a word you are used to hearing but don't know the meaning of, you don't even react. You are trained not to respond. After you add the meaning, you just relax and understand. You don't get excited, because you've already been hearing that word for quite some time. Your relaxed state of mind allows you to keep listening.

What happens when you study new words? You catch the word and then you react. You're like,

hey there's a word I was just studying!! Now what does it mean? Let me think. Oh yeah, now I remember... it means ______! Whoohoo! I'm really learning now!

And all the while you completely miss out on everything else that has been said. The next time you hear the word you do the same thing. You've got yourself trained to react. Maybe you don't hear the word for a while and then it takes you longer to recall it. That means you tried learning a word you weren't ready to learn. If you're cramming vocabulary then you're just getting way ahead of yourself and setting yourself up for a long, slow journey.

The third step of the natural order is speaking. I'll have to write about that when I get there with Chinese. But hopefully by now you can see the aim of my method is to not get bogged down by thinking about the language.

西太后の紫禁城 4

I finished another complete viewing of 西太后の紫禁城 (the Japanese name). I can't believe this is only the fourth time I've watched this drama. And every time it ends the same way!

There's no doubt about it. I'm making progress in my understanding of Chinese. And that's without the help of dictionaries, subtitles, explanations, notes, grammar rules, and studying. I'm putting together more 2+2's every time. I can't seem to help but figuring out some things. Especially as I get to know the story better and better. When I know a certain scene is coming up and that the dialog in that scene will probably provide the answer to why the following actions occur, I perk up and try to hear the answer. Many times with no luck, though, because I don't understand enough or any of what is being said.

But you see, when you do understand three quarters of the sentence, you can start guessing what the other part means. Once you've figured out what the missing part means, the next time you hear it you can pick up the word for the meaning. As Dr. Brown wrote, the words don't carry the meaning, the meaning carries the words.

And that is what I discovered this time around. I figure out the meaning first and then I can hear the words. The funny thing is, in one instance, I already knew the words but I couldn't hear them until after I knew the meaning. It may sound strange, but in a language like Chinese with a lot of one syllable words, some of them are not distinct enough to register in my mind unless I know what the meaning is.

西太后の紫禁城 3

I did it! I finished the third viewing of this Chinese drama before the end of the month. Just an hour to spare! Each episode is 50 minutes long. I had to watch 13 episodes yesterday and the remaining 11 today in order to finish it off this month because unfortunately, I couldn't watch any on Wednesday and Thursday.

I just like to have things wrapped up so that it's easy to calculate numbers. This month, I watched about 106 hours of Chinese. That's 2 viewings of this drama and almost 2 viewings of the other one. Shall we say that's too too much? Even though I watch one whole drama in between each, it feels like there is no time between viewings of the same drama.

I've ordered 2 more Chinese dramas online that I'm waiting for. I don't think either of them is as long as one of these two because they don't have as many discs. But we'll see when they arrive. Neither will have Japanese subtitles. Yaay! They both have Simplified Chinese subtitles, but I hope they can be turned off. It's easy to get the wrong idea when seeing subtitles, especially since I know Japanese Kanji. But also, I'd be likely to think of the meaning of the words if I see their characters.

I've been trying to not think about the meaning of the words I hear and I believe I'm making some progress in that area. You can hear more too, when you don't think about the meaning. It's encouraging for me to hear sentences that I can understand but never picked up on in previous viewings.

I believe the most basic words in a language are the ones that are constantly repeated and that those are the words you should firmly know and easily be able to hear before expecting to add more vocabulary to your knowledge. I also think that natural acquisition is the only way to accomplish this correctly. Any kind of deliberate study would force too many words on you too quickly. Through natural language acquisition, you do more reinforcement than addition. You understand new words when you are ready. Could I have done 106 hours of study in one month? Never! But I did get 106 hours of input. Even though natural methods seems to require a lot of hours, they require less toil than traditional study methods. It's just a matter of priorities.

西太后の紫禁城 2

I just finished my 2nd viewing of this Chinese TV drama at 11 AM. As I said before, I can understand a lot more in this drama than my first one. I probably understand double. It makes me feel like my Chinese is really improving a lot, but I know it's just a difference in the two dramas. At any rate, my Chinese understanding is definitely improving. Knowing what is going to happen next in the drama allows me to pick up on the meaning of more words. The first time I watched the drama, I never picked up on the word for "to run away." This time I caught the word and then it showed up several more times after that. It makes me wonder why I didn't catch it on the first viewing. When I picked up on it for the first time, it was very obvious that one person was telling the other person to run away. He had captured the guy and then let him go but of course the man will say he escaped. So he was telling that guy to run away. I could see the action. It made sense. Did I need a dictionary? No, of course not. Later times in the drama when the word was used again about another person who ran away, there was no action to be seen, but I knew the story and recognized the word. I was able to reinforce the meaning and reassure myself that I had understood correctly.

The thing I like about Chinese is that the words have only one form. Whether it is a command or a statement of the future, past or present, the word itself is always the same. In English, verbs may have up to 3 forms, for example, see, saw and seen. In Romance languages there are more conjugations. In Japanese, there are tons of forms. I posted an example of this when I counted 31 forms of the verb "speak" in Japanese.

Well, that's another 25 hours down. How many more to go? Lots for sure. It seems like I can do about 100 hours a month. I do need to get some more dramas though. Since my 3rd one is not suitable for repeated viewing, I only have 2 dramas. I did find what looks to be a great site online for ordering videos. I will let you know about it after I have tried it out.

It has been 3 months since I started on the TV method. Not every month has been the same number of hours. In the beginning I used only online TV but found myself spending too much time searching for stations that were airing something good. Then I bought a Chinese drama on DVD. I watched it the first time in a week, but the second viewing took 3 weeks. Then I bought a 2nd drama and then a 3rd. I also bought a portable DVD player. I like to call it a language acquisition device. Now I feel like I'm going at full speed. The next 3 months should yield some big improvements.

西太后の紫禁城

It is 11:13 PM Friday night. I just finished watching my second Chinese drama for the first time. Being packaged and sold in Japan, it has this name: 西太后の紫禁城. It looks like the original Chinese title is 日落紫禁城. There are 30 episodes. Each one runs for 49 minutes. 3 per disc, 10 discs.

This one was set around the late 1800s I think. There was an early camera and an early car in the drama at one point. While most of it took place in the same location as the first one I watched, the story was quite different.

It was much easier to follow than the first drama I watched. There were personal relationships as the main story, so the dialogue had a bit more that I could catch and understand. Whereas the first drama was more about political power struggle, it was harder to tell what was going on.

Since it was a different story, it is hard for me to make a comparison and to be able to tell whether my understanding of Chinese has improved or whether the improved comprehension was due to the more transparent storyline and simpler dialogue. But of course, with all the repetition of basic words, that part of the language which I had previously encountered while studying is sinking in deeper and deeper into my brain.

The more I hear Chinese, the more I feel it is becoming a part of me. When I've watched 5 or more hours (perhaps less) in one day, and then I lie down to sleep at night, anytime that I relax and am not thinking about something, I hear these Chinese sentences in my head. They just pop in there. I'm not making any intentional effort to think about Chinese and suddenly I realize that I'm hearing Chinese in my head. And it just goes on and on. My head is just full of Chinese. Sometimes I just want to speak Chinese and I don't even know why. I know I don't have enough vocabulary right now to get very far. But once I've acquired a significant amount, I know I'm going to speak quite well, and without hesitation.

Even while writing this post, I keep hearing those Chinese sentences or phrases in my head. Dialogue from the drama is so full of emotion. Those strong emotions seem to keep playing back in my head. They are so rich with feeling. I think it is having a strong effect.

I knew I was going to finish that drama tonight, so I bought my next one earlier this evening. My next one precedes the one I just watched. It is called The Last Emperor.