In my present study of German, as happened while I was learning Spanish, I became more aware of certain features of English, things that I just did because that’s what I knew to do. This is just what happens with familiar languages, particularly someone’s native language. They think in that language, and have a brain wired to put the component parts together.
Evidence of this can be seen by using a very simple rule to determine if the grammar of a phrase is correct. Does it sound natural? If it does, it’s probably right, if it doesn’t, it’s usually wrong.
Last night I stumbled on this page about adjectives in English. The first part talked about adjective order, to which I responded, “I don’t remember learning anything about that in school!” While this may have been the case, or I might have just forgotten, because without studying the proper order, I was able to take some online quizes testing this at 99% accuracy just by judging if it was natural or awkward.
One example I found that appears to be related is from a commercial put out by Sprint for its mobile broadband product. (you can hear it if you want http://audio.wwl.com/m/audio/22435241/6-5-9am-jim-hawthorn.htm?pageid=238910&seek=179) The annoying part is a certain word choice at “Your crew gets what’s most important to them whenever they need it. Practically instantaneously“
My problem is the bold portion. When I first heard it while in the car, I stopped listening after that point due to the awkwardness. I tried to think of better constructions and came up with two alternatives. “Practically instantly” which is a slight improvement, and “Practically in an instant” which sounds much more natural. On top of that, my second solution emphasises the immediately following words “an instant internet…”
Another aspect of language that is intuitive are the existance of certain common elements to similar words in languages developing separately. Like how the term for “Mother”/”Mom”/”Mama” in American English, particularly the equivalents of the last, are typically represented by “easily pronounced syllables”, because that’s what babies first learning to talk are able to do. While not enough to divine the key to translation between the two, it gives insight on how concepts are formed in the mind and how a language develops into existance.
One Comment
I enjoy your logic with your study of language.