In previous entries, I discussed how grammar and pronunciation issues can affect how difficult it is to learn a language. In this post, I'll discuss some issues that can occur with vocabulary that I find to be difficult.
There is some discussion among language educators about whether language learning should be grammar focused or vocabulary focused. For the longest time, learning a language meant learning grammar. You would spend hours upon hours studying verb paradigms and case tables, then once you had mastered the grammar you could start plugging vocabulary into it. For many, this might seem obvious and intuitive, but the argument that language learning is more about vocabulary is quite compelling. For instance, I can make a sentence that is grammatically incorrect, but that is still comprehensible, like "I go store." It's missing aspects the grammar says should be there, like "I am going" instead of "I go", or "to the store" instead of just "store." Nevertheless, I'm sure most individuals who are familiar with English could decode the sentence's meaning despite the lack of grammar.
The same isn't true if we reverse it, that is, create a sentence that is grammatically correct but where the vocabulary isn't. An example of this comes from the famous linguist Noam Chomsky: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." It's a fun sentence, especially because the grammar is completely correct, but no real meaning can be derived from it.
It is because of examples like this that those within corpus linguistics (i.e., those who study language using real world texts) argue that language should be taught focusing on language that people actually use rather than grammar for grammar's sake. For instance, in the English verb system there is something called the future perfect progressive tense. It goes something like "I will have been doing..." Ask yourself, just how often do you express this kind of idea? Probably not very often. It's generally used to express that in the future you'll have been doing something that you started in the past for a certain amount of time, like "10 years from now I will have been studying French for 11 years." It's a structure and an idea that simply doesn't come up very often. In fact, while I was teaching in Hungary, another English teacher came to me and said, "Be honest. You never real use the future perfect progressive." I told him that if you need to express that kind of an idea, it's the only way to do it, but we really don't need to express that idea very often. Nevertheless, it is generally given equal weight to other tenses and structures when using a grammar focused approach even though it is not used frequently.
This idea of frequency is important and suggests that we should be focusing on high frequency vocabulary and grammar instead of just treating all grammar equally. For instance, a phrase that entered modern parlance, say, about 10 years ago is "I'm on the bus," obviously because of the invention of the cellphone. (Before that, you would have seemed quite mad if you had uttered this phrase out loud to everyone within earshot).
So ultimately, what this means is when deciding whether a language has difficult vocabulary or not, we should be considering the most frequent vocabulary. I remember back when I was in Argentina, and someone made the claim that Spanish was the hardest language in the world to learn because it had a larger vocabulary than most languages. To which I simply ask, okay, sure, but how many of those words do you really need to know in order to use the language?
I've spent most of this series badmouthing the Semitic languages, Arabic and Hebrew because of their seemingly random grammar and unhelpful spelling systems. Lest anyone think I'm anti-semitic (and I really want that pun to work more than it actually does), I'm actually going to say some nice things about both languages regarding their vocabulary. In general, if a language is hard in one aspect, there's usually another aspect where it's incredibly easy that makes up for it. In this case, semitic languages use a root system for forming their vocabulary, often where a 3 letter root represents a basic concept, then puts them in different structures to form new words. For example:
Hebrew Arabic
root: ספר (s-f-r) "write" root: كتب (k-t-b) "write"
a book: סֵפֶר (sefer) book: كتاب (kitab)
library: סִפְרִיָּה (sifriah) library: مكتبة (maktabah)
writer, or author: סוֹפֵר (sofer) writer, or author: الكاتب (al-katib)
My Hebrew teacher when I was an undergraduate actually gave this as an example to demonstrate how easy building vocabulary could be in these languages. While English has several different unrelated forms that have to do with writing, in Hebrew and Arabic they're all based on the same root. This makes building vocabulary in the language very quick, since once you know the root you're able to learn several other words with it. (By the way, I got the Hebrew script with the vowels written in by looking the words up on doitinhebrew.com. I really recommend it over Google Translate as an online Hebrew dictionary).
When I was learning Spanish, I felt like once I had learned all the basic vocabulary, I was able to quickly learn more advanced vocabulary because of the high number of cognates. This is because both languages are part of different branches of the same language family, Indo-European. In addition, a lot of more advanced English words were borrowed directly from Latin, so there are again a lot of cognates. On the other hand, when I was learning Hungarian, which is a Finno-Ugric language, not Indo-European, I didn't have the same luxury because new vocabulary rarely has a cognate form in English. Here's some random words to prove my point:
Of course, I recognize that the more related languages are, the more likely it is that there will be some faux amis, or false cognates, between them. But even then, I'd rather take having to learn that "Soy embarazado" means that I'm pregnant (not embarrassed) instead of having to learn the majority of new vocabulary one by one because of a lack of cognates.
I know it's hard to believe, but I actually shared something I think is hard about Hungarian but is easy in Arabic. Absolutely shocking.
Grammar or Vocabulary Focused Instruction?
There is some discussion among language educators about whether language learning should be grammar focused or vocabulary focused. For the longest time, learning a language meant learning grammar. You would spend hours upon hours studying verb paradigms and case tables, then once you had mastered the grammar you could start plugging vocabulary into it. For many, this might seem obvious and intuitive, but the argument that language learning is more about vocabulary is quite compelling. For instance, I can make a sentence that is grammatically incorrect, but that is still comprehensible, like "I go store." It's missing aspects the grammar says should be there, like "I am going" instead of "I go", or "to the store" instead of just "store." Nevertheless, I'm sure most individuals who are familiar with English could decode the sentence's meaning despite the lack of grammar.
The same isn't true if we reverse it, that is, create a sentence that is grammatically correct but where the vocabulary isn't. An example of this comes from the famous linguist Noam Chomsky: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." It's a fun sentence, especially because the grammar is completely correct, but no real meaning can be derived from it.
Frequency
It is because of examples like this that those within corpus linguistics (i.e., those who study language using real world texts) argue that language should be taught focusing on language that people actually use rather than grammar for grammar's sake. For instance, in the English verb system there is something called the future perfect progressive tense. It goes something like "I will have been doing..." Ask yourself, just how often do you express this kind of idea? Probably not very often. It's generally used to express that in the future you'll have been doing something that you started in the past for a certain amount of time, like "10 years from now I will have been studying French for 11 years." It's a structure and an idea that simply doesn't come up very often. In fact, while I was teaching in Hungary, another English teacher came to me and said, "Be honest. You never real use the future perfect progressive." I told him that if you need to express that kind of an idea, it's the only way to do it, but we really don't need to express that idea very often. Nevertheless, it is generally given equal weight to other tenses and structures when using a grammar focused approach even though it is not used frequently.
This idea of frequency is important and suggests that we should be focusing on high frequency vocabulary and grammar instead of just treating all grammar equally. For instance, a phrase that entered modern parlance, say, about 10 years ago is "I'm on the bus," obviously because of the invention of the cellphone. (Before that, you would have seemed quite mad if you had uttered this phrase out loud to everyone within earshot).
So ultimately, what this means is when deciding whether a language has difficult vocabulary or not, we should be considering the most frequent vocabulary. I remember back when I was in Argentina, and someone made the claim that Spanish was the hardest language in the world to learn because it had a larger vocabulary than most languages. To which I simply ask, okay, sure, but how many of those words do you really need to know in order to use the language?
Word Formation
I've spent most of this series badmouthing the Semitic languages, Arabic and Hebrew because of their seemingly random grammar and unhelpful spelling systems. Lest anyone think I'm anti-semitic (and I really want that pun to work more than it actually does), I'm actually going to say some nice things about both languages regarding their vocabulary. In general, if a language is hard in one aspect, there's usually another aspect where it's incredibly easy that makes up for it. In this case, semitic languages use a root system for forming their vocabulary, often where a 3 letter root represents a basic concept, then puts them in different structures to form new words. For example:
Hebrew Arabic
root: ספר (s-f-r) "write" root: كتب (k-t-b) "write"
a book: סֵפֶר (sefer) book: كتاب (kitab)
library: סִפְרִיָּה (sifriah) library: مكتبة (maktabah)
writer, or author: סוֹפֵר (sofer) writer, or author: الكاتب (al-katib)
My Hebrew teacher when I was an undergraduate actually gave this as an example to demonstrate how easy building vocabulary could be in these languages. While English has several different unrelated forms that have to do with writing, in Hebrew and Arabic they're all based on the same root. This makes building vocabulary in the language very quick, since once you know the root you're able to learn several other words with it. (By the way, I got the Hebrew script with the vowels written in by looking the words up on doitinhebrew.com. I really recommend it over Google Translate as an online Hebrew dictionary).
Cognates
When I was learning Spanish, I felt like once I had learned all the basic vocabulary, I was able to quickly learn more advanced vocabulary because of the high number of cognates. This is because both languages are part of different branches of the same language family, Indo-European. In addition, a lot of more advanced English words were borrowed directly from Latin, so there are again a lot of cognates. On the other hand, when I was learning Hungarian, which is a Finno-Ugric language, not Indo-European, I didn't have the same luxury because new vocabulary rarely has a cognate form in English. Here's some random words to prove my point:
Of course, I recognize that the more related languages are, the more likely it is that there will be some faux amis, or false cognates, between them. But even then, I'd rather take having to learn that "Soy embarazado" means that I'm pregnant (not embarrassed) instead of having to learn the majority of new vocabulary one by one because of a lack of cognates.
I know it's hard to believe, but I actually shared something I think is hard about Hungarian but is easy in Arabic. Absolutely shocking.
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