Partial false friends and answering the question asked

[Benjamin Barrett]

I'm working with an Italian speaker right now. He thinks LH is a waste of time for me, but when we resume tomorrow, I plan on using it anyway to get the confusing Italian pronoun system down.

Here are two problems I'm facing.

A. One is partial false friends. A few examples:

1. course - as in class. He likes to say, "I'm going to my diving course," which isn't wrong per se, but it's a partial false friend that just isn't normal English.
2. certo - sure, certainly. The scope of "sure" as a response in English is much narrower than in Italian. Typically in English, "sure" is used in response to "Do you want to do X?"
3. pasta types - non-count in English with the plural being the borrowed form, countable in Italian.
4. telequiz - game show. English speakers won't blink if you say "quiz show," but that's not the word that we typically use. (Some in Japanese: kuizu bangumi.)
5. OK - great. "The meal was okay" means something completely different in English than it does for speakers of probably most other languages in the world.
6. marason - Japanese for long-distance race (just because this is such a good example). A 10-K is a marason in Japanese and while that also qualifies as a marathon in English, it's the normal meaning in Japanese, whereas 26.2-mile race is the normal meaning for marathon in English.

One of the problems with partial false friends is that bilingual dictionaries generally won't help you, so discovering them is really hard, and when you do find them, you have to work hard to figure out the scope. Also, between many languages such as Italian and English, and Japanese and English, there are hundreds of pairs, a formidable hurdle.

Learning the scope of words in another language is hard work. I found that "epiphany" doesn't work in Italian with the meaning of "satori," but I had expected that; when I asked up-front if it worked in Italian, it sent my Italian friend into confusion and he started texting me in English about the meaning of "epifania" thinking that would be productive instead of irritating, lol. (The Italian word, BTW, turned out to be illuminazione.)

Does anyone have insights on how to tackle partial false friends?

B. Another problem I've been facing is the inability of my Italian language partner to answer the question that I asked. I ask, "What is your favorite X?" and the response is, "I love Y." I ask, "Where do you work?" and the answer is a rambling message about how long he's worked at X and where he worked before that. This goes on and on and on. I suspect this stems from a personality type plus a cultural leeway in Italian that is counterproductive to learning a 2L.

My solution to this has been to ask random questions. You can find them at, for example:

http://eslquiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Animals
http://findenglishteacher.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1410

They mix up wh-questions, yes/no questions and informational questions, and all of them are about normal, every day sorts of things. One of my favorites is spelling questions like, "How many o's are in 'London'?" a sort of question not common in phonetically spelled languages.

Generally, I ask the question and if the answer is incorrect, I just provide the correct answer and move on, returning to a similar question a few questions later. I've found this is a really powerful technique in getting my Italian partner to focus on what's being said.

Again, any other insights are greatly appreciated.

Ben Barrett
La Conner, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos

[Willem Larsen]

Ben,

Your first question, regarding partial false friends, is difficult, because that is built in to language hunting from the get go - creating settings and experiences that will elicit appropriate language from a speaker. It sounds like you're having this problem from the far end - after you or another speaker has already had loads of language experience and all their false friends are "baked in".

A good way to avoid these guys once the damage is done, is do your best not to use any cognates at all - none! This is an application of a more advanced move we call "Say It A Different Way" - once you can say something one way, see all the other ways you can accomplish that same interaction. In this case, a way free of cognates.

While you practice speaking without cognates (false or otherwise), you can notice when they are used by native speakers and start building a context from there.

I could also point out "Book of Questions" - treat every word in the dictionary as a mini-hunt, seeing how fluent speakers react to its supposed use (according to the dicitonary). This could generate endless amusing games on its own!

Your second question is connected to the first of course. I like where your experiments are going - sounds good. If there are no agreements for correction and building fluency ("When I make this hand-sign, it means "game on" and I'm going to correct a piece of your english by playing through it copy-cat style") it's pretty tough. 

For me, I keep going back to the game board, back to basics, making sure there is informed consent that we are here to play, to hunt language, not "learn" anything, applying free play moves and structuring the conversation, asking the 8 questions, stacking sentences trying to build towards paragraphs, at paragraph level loosely chatting with periodic games to correct this or that, and so on.

yrs,

Willem

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[Benjamin Barrett]

Thank you for the response, Willem.

In my case, false friends are not such a problem. Having learned Japanese, which is filled with English false friends, I'm quick to suspect any cognate I hear and watch it carefully. That's why I asked about "epifania" up front. But I find it rare for English learners to be aware of the problem. 

What's more, to take the "marathon" example, there's no way to avoid using that word if you want to talk about a marathon. If you say, "a 41-km race," a Japanese speaker is going to respond with "furu marason?" (full marathon).

Best regards

Ben Barrett

La Conner, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos

[Willem Larsen]

Ben,

Okay, thanks for clarifying who was having the challenge.

Your japanese exchange sounds like a perfect example of eliciting language from a speaker - if they force you to use the false/true/partial cognate, then perfect, you've learned a little more of the language. 

In the end, the most important thing is to elicit natural language out of situations, and the close runner up is corrections, which speakers can be reluctant to do for cultural, formality, or other reasons. 

yrs,

Willem

[Benjamin Barrett]

I recall now how I became so suspicious of similar-sounding words. When I went to live in Japan, I decided I would ignore English borrowings, which are probably more prevalent in Japanese than any other language. One day, though, my interlocutor didn't understand the word "business" which is pronounced "bijinesu" in Japanese.

At that point, I realized I would have to study borrowings just like all other words. Although there are still some words I don't know, like "hai tenshon" (high tension, perhaps, "energy-filled atmosphere"), and my pronunciation is still lousy on a lot of borrowed/Japanese coinages of English, I successfully learned a lot of faux amis, like rabaa (<lover) = boyfriend/girlfriend, kuizu (quiz) bangumi = game show.

I just started an exchange with an Italian speaker. One of the first things I did was introduce the word panini. His first reaction was to try and correct me, telling me it's "one panino," "two panini."

I held firm and told him that's not what we say in English, and then described what a panini is and sent him a link to a picture from Google Images.

Next up, I'll introduce biscotti/biscottis. Maybe introducing words like this will sink in so speakers learn that all words have to be treated with care, no matter how much they sound like a word in their own language.

Ben Barrett

La Conner, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos

[Willem Larsen]

Thanks for the story Ben!

-w

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