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So let’s talk about moving. It’s a real challenge to get all of your stuff from one
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place to another. The thing is, even if you decide to leave lots of junk behind, one thing
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you’re always stuck with is your old language. It might clutter up the brain space you want
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for your fresh new language, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Some things, you can’t leave
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behind. I’m Moti Lieberman, and this is The Ling Space.
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So the biggest difference between learning your first language and any other one is also the most
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obvious: when you’re learning a second or third language, you already have a whole linguistic
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system inside your head. And as much as we’d like to forget everything we know about our native
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language, when we learn a new one, we just can’t. Once your system’s been wired
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with the grammar of your first language, that knowledge is very sticky. It’s like caramel,
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except inside your brain.
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But people still learn new languages, right? It’s not like there’s a sign that says,
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if you’re over two years old, you can’t ride the new language roller coaster. The
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difference, though, is this: if you already have a grammar in your head, and you start
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learning a new one, your first guess about whatever your new language will do is based on
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however your old language did it. In other words, you transfer knowledge over from your first
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language, or L1, into your second language, or L2. As you get more information about your
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L2, you’ll revise all those ideas and make a new grammar, but transfer happens first.
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So how do we know there has to be transfer? Well, if everyone started from scratch for
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their L2, they would all follow the same path, right? All people would pick up their new
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language in the same way, no matter where they were coming from. Use the same language
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recipe, get the same language cake. But that’s not even close to what happens! We see different
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patterns in what mistakes people make depending on what their first language was. And we know
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they can’t be getting it from speakers of whatever it is they’re learning, because
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native speakers would never say those things.
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For example, take an English word like “have.” French doesn’t have that [h] sound at the
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beginning, but it's totally fine with a sound like [v] coming at the end of
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a word, so a French learner of English will usually say something like [æv]. A German
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speaker, on the other hand, comes equipped with a language that already has [h], but doesn’t
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let sounds like [v] show up at the end of a word, so they’ll usually say something like [hæf].
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We even see changes in how you’ll pronounce things depending on what dialect of a language
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you speak! So no version of
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French has that [ð] sound that you get in English in words like [ði] (the) or [ðɛɹ] (there).
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It’s a really hard sound for L2 speakers to learn, and so they’ll often switch
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it up for a different consonant. But European French speakers will fix it by saying [z],
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like “Go over zere.” Quebec French speakers on the other hand will get around it by using [d], like
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“Go over dere.” Even though it’s the same language! But they’re not the same dialect,
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and that change is enough to make the English pronunciations they end up with different, too.
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So how much do you transfer from your native language? Well… pretty much everything!
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Yeah. Everything. You fully transfer over that whole native grammar. You leave the words
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behind, mostly, but you take everything else. We’re able to say this because we can find
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evidence of transfer in every part of the L2 grammar, from the phonemes all the
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way up through semantics.
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We’ve already talked about some phonological examples, but only for single sounds. We can
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also find plenty of cases where whole words are affected by transfer. Like, take groups
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of consonants. Some languages are totally fine with bunches of consonants clumping
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together in a word, and others firmly disapprove of it. But even if you disapprove, there are
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lots of different ways to fix it.
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Take a word like “sparkle.” If you’re a Spanish speaker, you don’t like that [sp]
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at the beginning of the word. Spanish fixes this by putting an [ɛ] at the beginning of the word,
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so that [s] and [p] belong to different syllables. So a Spanish learner of English
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would probably say something like [ɛspɑɹkəl].
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But Japanese, which also hates consonant clusters, takes a different tack. Between the pairs
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of consonants, Japanese shoehorns in this extra vowel, [ɯ]. If there’s a vowel in between,
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no more bunch of consonants, so problem solved! That’s why a Japanese speaker wouldn’t
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say “sparkle” or “esparkel”. They’d say [sɯpɑ:kɯɾɯ] (スパークル). So
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from this, you can tell that non-native accents are a result of transfer. Your accent is
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different based on what the phonology of your native language was, because it got moved
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over with everything else. This can be some of the toughest stuff to fix, but it IS doable.
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But transfer goes beyond phonology. We can see it in syntax, too. So, no surprise, sentences
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get built differently in different languages. For example, in English, adverbs come before
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the verb, so like “Barney frequently wears suits,” but in French, it comes after the
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verb. “Barney porte fréquemment des costumes.” And sure enough, the word order here transfers.
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In English, L1 French speakers will say “Barney wears frequently suits”. Similarly, in French,
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English speakers will say “Barney fréquemment porte des costumes.” You just get what your
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native language would have done.
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Or maybe you’re a Greek learner of English, and you want to say “Ted married the woman
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that he met at the wedding.” Well, in Greek, you’d put the equivalent of her in that
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lower sentence, like this: Ο Θοδωρής παντρεύτηκε κάποια γυναίκα
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που τη γνώρισε στον γάμο. So in English, you wouldn’t leave that “her”
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out, right? No, you’d probably say “Ted married the woman that he met her at the wedding.”
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And transfer strikes again.
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We can even see this in the way that L2 learners interpret sentences. So consider the sentence
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“Lily didn’t drink the beer or the whiskey.” In English, this sentence means that Lily
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couldn’t have drank either of the alcoholic beverages. But in Japanese, the exact same
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sentence would mean that Lily drank either the beer, or the whiskey, but not both of
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them. So the same sentence, with the same structure, but a different interpretation.
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So what happens when you ask a Japanese learner of English whether Lily had either
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of the drinks? They’ll tell you that she drank one or the other of them, but not both. So even the
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way you want to interpret a sentence gets transferred over.
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That’s because L2 transfer is everywhere. It’s helpful in a way, because you don’t
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have to start from scratch with each new language. That’d take way longer! But
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it’s so pervasive, it colors everything you do in your L2. You can work at
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getting beyond it, but sometimes you’re just stuck with what you have. If you look
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at your first language, you can find what sorts of mistakes you’ll probably make in
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your new one. For better or for worse, it’s the linguistic baggage you carry around with you.
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So we’ve reached the end of the Ling Space for this week. If my word order seemed natural
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to you, you learned that when we learn a new language, we transfer over our whole native
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grammar; that depending on what language you’re starting from, the mistakes you’ll make
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in the L2 will be different; and that transfer effects can be found all over linguistics,
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from phonology to syntax to semantics.
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The Ling Space is produced by me, Moti Lieberman. It’s directed by Adèle-Elise Prévost,
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and it’s written by both of us. Our production assistant is Georges Coulombe, our music and
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sound design is by Shane Turner, and our graphics team is AtelierMuse. Write down in the comments
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below, or you can bring the discussion back over to our website, where we have some extra material
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on this topic. Check us out on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, and if you want to keep expanding
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your own personal Ling Space, please subscribe. And we’ll see you next Wednesday.
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Ekosi maka Kawi asamēna ka wāpimitin!