Bibles as a language learning resource

Originally posted by twhitehead
I have found with Chinese that I can follow a tv series quite well because I have learnt the vocabulary for that, but if I try a documentary or News I am totally lost. So if you really want to learn a language it is best to learn from a variety of sources.

It's the other way around for me. The TV here is dominated by soap operas and celebrities talking about themselves and other stuff and, with its ultra trendy idioms, plus strong Jakarta dialect and accent: I find this aspect of TV difficult ~ sometimes just as difficult as [foreign] Malaysian TV presenters rabbitting away on breakfast TV.

Indonesian documentaries and news, on the other hand, I find much easier and don't really have to 'work' to keep up with them, like I do when motormouth, code-switching, one-hit-wonder, brattish son-of-a-General is blathering on about why he's divorcing his celebrity wife after 6 months!

Originally posted by FMF
I don't think it is, not all of it anyway. It's a version of history of the Hebrews and of early Christians. Some of the claims it makes about the significance of Jesus [for instance] may be manufactured or imagined, depending on your beliefs, but it is not the same as a novel which was the type of "fiction" I had in mind.

I get what you meant by 'slip of th ...[text shortened]... equivalent of the communicative approach ~ much better than the translation approach, I feel. 🙂

Fair comment, my woeful language skills (only ever learnt French at school and dropped it the moment I was allowed to) probably means that I really have no idea how people pick up new languages. The English culture of expecting other people to accommodate me and believing that languages are hard is ingrained!

--- Penguin

Originally posted by FMF
Indonesian documentaries and news, on the other hand, I find much easier and don't really have to 'work' to keep up with them, like I do when motormouth, code-switching, one-hit-wonder, brattish son-of-a-General is blathering on about why he's divorcing his celebrity wife after 6 months!

My point is that if you really want to be fluent in the language you need to use a range of sources as input as particular sources have a particular set of vocabulary and usage. For example News will have a lot of place names that you will not be getting from the Bible, and soap operas will have those 'ultra trendy idioms' that you will also not get from the Bible.
You also won't learn much about cultural aspects (of Indonesia) from the Bible.
Of course you have the advantage of actually living there, so you will pick up a lot from personal experience.

I must say that I am not learning Chinese to be fluent but for the sake of interest so I tend to go for the easy route, or most interesting route rather than the most effective route.

Originally posted by twhitehead
You also won't learn much about cultural aspects (of Indonesia) from the Bible.

Well, looking back, I now fully appreciate how much I learnt about the language element of Indonesian culture, because the Bible I had [I still have it] was a meticulously and carefully translated book which used the Indonesian language in a very sure-footed and authentic way. Also, its content was deeply culturally relevant to many millions of people (and countless people I have met) in Indonesia for whom it is the one and only holy book!