Posted by Hym
(here)
As you say, Mashika, nothing compares to seeing and hearing a person speak.
We can imitate the sounds so much easier when we absorb the presence of language in person.
Speech naturally carries so much of the color and resonance of our personalities that focusing on the person themselves, without distinction about the technical properties that defines each language and it's differences, usually teaches us more than the mere study of linguistics. I say this to you because you are that much more aware of the heartbeat of a culture, than many.
Also, every person carries a song list in their speech patterns, a rhythm full of personality that we understand when they are speaking in our presence. That awareness can be taught, but I have seen it awaken in many people without much instruction, when they are simply listening and sharing who they are and what their life is all about.
Singing here....
About the pluses and minuses of language and linguistics, meaning and insight, value and abuse.
And speaking about English....Good Golly, Miss Molly !!!
What a cluster fluster of this and that.....
I don't envy anyone learning English from most any other language base, because it is so nuanced and unnecessarily complicated.
It has been manipulated, sometimes by plan, yet more often by some guy named Stan who was really confused and only codified his confusion by putting it down on paper, and maybe accidentally getting an English degree, 'cuz there wazn't anything else he wanted to do with his life.
When I hear college educated people mispronounce a word, like Kerry saying 'ecsetera' instead of 'etcetera' I wonder what happened there.....and even then I am aware that language can change in the most peculiar ways, often in defiance of any recognizable pattern, and then again I often say F the rules.....
You can see my defiance of anyone restricting my creativity when I deliberately play with the words and the sentence structure as I write, and I am amongst many on this site who do so.
It is the humanity that defines language and gives it life, and not the language that restricts our humanity.....but only if you allow yourself to write freely, which we here recognize that you have always done.
If you can ever get in a way of talking with anyone here who speaks English I think it would do wonders for your understanding of the language, and wonders for anyone who gets to learn Russian or Spanish from you..