Learning like a native

[WoAiJolinTsai]

I just finished reading this blog post

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/learning-like-a-native-%e3%81%a9%e3%82%93%e3%81%a0%e3%81%91%ef%bd%9e

I wanted to ask if any of you guys have had this experience with your Chinese learning. I know I have. The only ones I can think of at the moment are... about 5-6 months ago, I didnt really know how to use 才 in the since of "until" and then all of a sudden when speaking with my girlfirend, I used it perfectly without ever really understanding it before. Ever since then, I've had no trouble with it.

[JimmySeal]

I think that this can happen at any stage in the learning process - in fact, it's essentially the only kind of language learning I do. One case where I picked up on something someone was saying to me was when I heard 兩個 a few times where I would have thought I'd hear 二個. Word learned, thank you very much.

[imcgraw]

Sounds to me like the difference between "acquiring" a language and "learning" a language. This is a difference that is stressed in a lot of Second Language Acquisition theorythough not often stressed in the classroom. There's a lot of interesting reading out there about "communicative" methods of language learning which attempts to address this issue. Much of it was started by a guy named Krashen by way of "The Natural Approach." All very Google-able if you're interested.

[wrbt]

Definitely many triumphs like this, my favorite surely is using "了" in a sentence yet not really being able to explain why you were supposed to other than it just felt like the right thing to do.

Another is "就" because it doesn't really translate very well directly like a student would prefer to gain an understanding of usage. One day you just blurt it out in the middle of a sentence and it's just because you've heard it enough times in that context that it worked.

[Ari 桑]

Oh, yeah, totally. Not a new thing for me, but one that I had this feeling with was 可. "哇，那雪可脏可脏!" Hehe, that was from last winter.

[DarkerBlue]

"哇，那雪可脏可脏!" Hehe, that was from last winter.

I'm afraid it's not so natural as "哇，那雪可真脏！"or"哇，那雪好脏啊！".