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Pedants' corner

Any linguists here? Or other hobby pedant?

4 replies

QuintessentialShadows · 07/05/2008 21:27

I am hoping to get some help here about my six year old who is learning to read and translate between norwegian and english.

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Hassled · 07/05/2008 21:32

Fascinating question and I wish I could help - will watch with interest.

Has your van shown up?

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QuintessentialShadows · 07/05/2008 21:44

no, hopefully tomorrow or friday, we will see.....

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JaneHH · 07/05/2008 21:44

Hi QS, hope you're settling in well (has it been a month and a half already????)

I'm in no way an expert on these things... but I think children absorb a lot more than you think and learn to suss out the grammar themselves at that age. (Hence all the funny threads in the Bilingual topic with DC's getting their languages mixed up while they sort it out in their own minds!) What I mean is: I think a serious explanation of prepositions etc might actually confuse? If I can speak from my own experience of learning Dutch from scratch as an adult then I would suggest looking for repetition of certain phrases in the same book and see if that helps. Hearing the same sequence of sounds (or reading the same words) in different contexts was how I learnt what things meant. The fact that the prepositions (or whatever) were in a different place in the sentence than I was used to was something I sussed out (and bothered to think about) later on.

Um... on rereading I'm not sure I've been ANY help whatsoever but will keep an eye on this thread to see who comes along with much better advice!

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morocco · 07/05/2008 21:50

agree with janehh, he will be learning instinctively rather than analytically at that age,esp if you want him to be genuinely bilingual, analysing language might be better suited to an older child not immersed in another language
but it's great he's asking, without going too indepth you could do a quite flick through an english grammar book aimed at the efl/esol market for example for some simple explanations

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