to teach vs. to learn

[Ser]

I've noticed some languages have interesting was to distinguish "to learn" and "to teach", besides the boring approach Spanish and English have by simply using different lexemes (aprender and enseñar respectively in Spanish).

In French, "to learn" is apprendre used intransitively or transitively, and "to teach" may be either enseigner (used intransitively, transitively or ditransitively) or apprendre (but used ditransitively (only?)).

To learn (intrans.)
Tu as appris l'espagnol si vite !
you_have_learned the-Spanish so fast 'You've learned Spanish so fast!'
Ils ne veulent pas apprendre sur l'histoire de la France
they not want not learn about the-history of the France 'They don't want to learn about the history of France.'

To learn (trans.)
J'apprends l'anglais.
I-learn the-English 'I'm learning English.'


To teach (intrans.)
J'ai enseigné depuis 10 ans.
I-have_taught since 10 years 'I've been teaching for 10 years.'

To teach (trans.)
J'enseigne le français. 'I teach French.'

To teach (ditrans.)
Je leur ai enseigné beaucoup de choses cette année.
Je leur ai appris beaucoup de choses cette année. (less formal)
I_to.them_have_taught many of things this year 'I have taught them many things during this year.'

I'm not sure about how it works when "to teach" is an intransitive verb with an indirect object. Can I say je leur avais appris pendant six ans et ils ont pleuré quant je m'en suis allé for "I had taught them for three years and they cried when I left", or should I only use enseigner here?

(Since our POV is English note I'm excluding "to learn of" as in 'I learned of what happened to you' which I've always seen as some kind of phrasal verb. For the sake of completeness Spanish uses oír or enterarse de and definitely not aprender, no idea about French.)

What about other natlangs?

[Bob Johnson]

English has colloquial/nonstandard/wrong/whatever <learn> transitive: This'll learn 'im!

Japanese is somewhat boring, 学ぶ <manabu> "study, learn" and 教える <oshieru> "teach, tell (a fact) to", both transitive. You can however use the causative of <manabu> to mean "teach", which seems a bit forceful to me.

[Timmytiptoe]

Dutch has no difference between teach and learn, both are leren. There is also one word for borrowing and lending, lenen.

[Acid Badger]

German usually uses lernen "to learn" vs lehren or beibringen "to teach". The latter is literally something like "to bring by/at".

Italian has imparare or studiare and insegnare.

[Ossicone]

English has colloquial/nonstandard/wrong/whatever <learn> transitive: This'll learn 'im!

It kinda kills me inside that this is the right way in Swedish. XD
Jag lär mig svenska.
Han lär mig svenska.

[Ser]

I've never heard that colloquialism before. Would you guys say it's common?

Could you provide a gloss for that Swedish as well? (Think of us, the poor people who don't get a thing in svenska.)

Dutch has no difference between teach and learn, both are leren.

I somewhat doubt that, maybe you'd need to look more closely at the syntax? So "I learn French" and "I teach French" would be the same?

There is also one word for borrowing and lending, lenen.

Heh, not to go too off-topic but I've noticed that's true for my dialect of Spanish at least. Le presté cinco dólares means either "I borrowed five dollars from him" or "I lent him five dollars". In prescriptivist Spanish it can only mean the latter though, and "to borrow" would be tomar prestado (algo): le tomé prestados cinco dólares.

Maybe it's a Central American thing? (I'm from El Salvador btw.) In the DPD they have an example of the former kind of sentence they mark as "wrong" from Guatemala, actually. But I really have no idea how widespread it really is. The fact that they feel the need to address this issue explicitly says a lot by itself though:

prestar. Entre sus significados transitivos está el de ‘entregar [algo] a alguien para que lo utilice temporalmente y después lo restituya’: «El que tenía el pie más pequeño [...] me prestó sus botas para que saliera» (Orúe/Gutiérrez Fútbol [Esp. 2001]). El sujeto de prestar es la persona que entrega lo prestado, no la que lo recibe, de ahí que sean incorrectos ejemplos como el que sigue, en el que prestar se emplea erróneamente con el sentido de ‘pedir o tomar prestado’: *«Aparte del apoyo de la familia, nos vemos obligados a prestar dinero por varios lados o a pedir pequeños adelantos para ir cubriendo las necesidades básicas» (Prensa [Guat.] 18.1.97).

(Source: http://buscon.rae.es/dpdI/SrvltConsulta?lema=prestar)

...so it may be more widespread than that.

[Ziz]

I tried to explain this (minimally) in Chinese in the other thread, but here I'll do a better job.

Hebrew uses one trilitteral root for both verbs ל.מ.ד (L-M-D, which I guess could translate as "transference/flowing of knowledge"). However, Hebrew maintains a distinction between the two verbs by plugging the root letters into different word shapes, called binyanim (literally "constructions"). The two binyanim that are relevant in this case are binyan paʕal and binyan piʕel. What's odd about this case is that there's really no definable difference between these two binyanim that accounts for all or even most of the differences in what they encode—both are plain, active voice verbs.

The one thing that I can think of that can be used to differentiate paʕal and piʕel is that the latter is sometimes used as an "intensive" of the former. For example, the root Š-B-R "break" in conjunction with paʕal forms the verb שָׁבַר (šāḇar, /ʃaˈvaʁ/), quite simply "he broke"), whereas with piʕel it forms the verb שִׁבֵּר (šibbēr, /ʃiˈbeʁ/), meaning "he smashed" or "he destroyed"). Perhaps this usage of piʕel is a vestige from a time when it actually was an intensive, but for whatever reason the vast majority of piʕel verbs today are functionally equivalent to paʕal. This reality is made apparent by verbs like דִּבֵּר (dibbēr, /diˈbeʁ/) from D-B-R "speak;" dibbēr isn't anything like, "to speak vociferously" or "to speak passionately;" it's just "to speak." As a matter of fact, AFAIK Hebrew doesn't even have a verb דָּבַר* (*dāḇar, /daˈvaʁ/).

(Hebrew actually does have two causative binyanim, hifʕil and hufʕal, so you'd think it would use L-M-D in the active hifʕil causative to convey "to teach" (i.e. "to cause to learn"), but I don't think the root L-M-D exists in use with these binyanim. All this just goes to show how often Hebrew binyanim are divorced from their canonical usages.)


Quasi-irrelevant rant aside, this is how Hebrew does it:

L.M.D + paʕal = לָמַד (lāmaḏ, "he learned," /laˈmad/)
L.M.D + piʕel = לִמֵּד (limmēḏ, "he taught," /liˈmed/)

Interestingly, L.M.D is used with other binyanim, like reflexive hitpaʕel (i.e. הִתְלַמֵּד hiṯlammēḏ, "to study, apprentice," or, stretching it, "to teach/learn oneself," /hitlaˈmed/). Yet in this case the implication of reflexivity is still kinda maintained; hiṯlammēḏ takes no direct object. Rather, the thing that is being studied is prefixed with -בְּ (bə, /be/), a preposition frequently translated as in...

~~

I've never heard that colloquialism before. Would you guys say it's common?

In my (American English) dialect, not at all. I, and I'd be willing to bet most GenAm speakers, perceive it as extremely basilectal.

[Ossicone]

I've never heard that colloquialism before. Would you guys say it's common?

Maybe for hillbillies...

EDIT: I think I said in one of the podcasts 'learn me some Swedish.' But that was a joke...
A joke with an audience of my one person - myself.

[Ziz]

English has colloquial/nonstandard/wrong/whatever <learn> transitive: This'll learn 'im!

It kinda kills me inside that this is the right way in Swedish. XD
Jag lär mig svenska.
Han lär mig svenska.

Is there a way to capture the nuance that distinguishes "learn" and "teach oneself" in English? Like jag lär mig + however you say, "from a teacher" versus jag lär mig + "by myself." Or I guess the question is, is that a natural kind of distinction to make?

[Bob Johnson]

Is there a reflex of <teach> in other Germanic languages that means more than "show, point out"?

I've never heard that colloquialism before. Would you guys say it's common?

Less common than <ain't>, I guess? People will joke with it but I can't remember hearing it used seriously.

(And <ain't> ain't a word.)

[Jipí]

Indonesian forms both from the root ajar, so belajar (ber-, intransitive prefix, ajar irregularly takes bel-) is 'learn' and mengajar (meN-, transitive prefix) is 'teach'. However, I googled for this before, and in fact you find belajar with a direct object, e.g. Dia belajar Bah. Ind., 'He/She learns Ind.' in spite of the intransitive prefix.

[Zhen Lin]

English has colloquial/nonstandard/wrong/whatever <learn> transitive: This'll learn 'im!

Japanese is somewhat boring, 学ぶ <manabu> "study, learn" and 教える <oshieru> "teach, tell (a fact) to", both transitive. You can however use the causative of <manabu> to mean "teach", which seems a bit forceful to me.

There's also 教わる, which is a transitive passive verb meaning ‘to be taught’ or ‘to learn from’. And 習う, which I haven't really learned the nuances of. But actually, the most common word for learning, as far as I know, is 勉強する, no?

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Is there a way to capture the nuance that distinguishes "learn" and "teach oneself" in English? Like jag lär mig + however you say, "from a teacher" versus jag lär mig + "by myself." Or I guess the question is, is that a natural kind of distinction to make?

You could use jag lär mig for 'I learn' and jag lär mig själv for 'I teach myself', but it's not as common an idiom in Swedish as in English.

-----------------------------

Swedish has the ditransitive verb lära for 'teach'. For 'learn', there's the reflexive lära sig.

jag lär henne spanska
I teach her Spanish
'I teach her Spanish'

If context makes the direct object obvious, you can omit it, but you can never omit the indirect object:

jag lär henne
I teach her
'I teach her' (is this grammatical in English?)

* jag lär spanska
I teach Spanish

To express 'I teach Spanish', you'd use the phrasal verb lära ut, which can't take an indirect object other than via a prepositional phrase:

jag lär ut spanska (till småbarn)
I teach out Spanish (to little_children)
'I teach Spanish to little children'

There's no way to express just 'I teach', without objects, with any variation on the verb lära. You'd have to rephrase it to 'I am a teacher', 'I teach things' or something like that.

lära sig takes an optional direct object:

jag lär mig (spanska)
I learn me (Spanish)
'I learn (Spanish)'

-----------------------------

The perfect participle of apprendre is appris, by the way, not *apprendu.

[johanpeturdam]

I hope I get the terminology correct:

Faroese and Slovak (AFAIK, Czech aswell) tend to make the verb for 'teach' reflexive when meaning 'learn', as in you teach something to yourself, so you get:

teach = at læra = učiť
learn = at læra seg = učiť sa

In practice though, Faroese very often drops the reflexive pronoun for learn, and instead of 'teach' uses 'to be a teacher/lecturer in (something)', so this becomes the most common way to say this:

Eg læri føroyskt = I learn Faroese (even though "I teach Faroese" is the 'more proper' way to say this)
Eg eri lærari/lektari í føroyskum = I'm a teacher/lecturer in Faroese (no ambiguity here)

[Bob Johnson]

Japanese is somewhat boring, 学ぶ <manabu> "study, learn" and 教える <oshieru> "teach, tell (a fact) to", both transitive. You can however use the causative of <manabu> to mean "teach", which seems a bit forceful to me.

There's also 教わる, which is a transitive passive verb meaning ‘to be taught’ or ‘to learn from’. And 習う, which I haven't really learned the nuances of. But actually, the most common word for learning, as far as I know, is 勉強する, no?

Sure, 勉強する <benkyou suru> is fine -- I tend to stick to Yamato words, I guess. 習う <narau> I haven't seen that much, and 教わる <osowaru> I haven't seen ever. <oshieru> in -ru form (rather than -te) looks weird enough.

If you want to get into obscure vocab, there's 悟らせる <satoraseru> the causative of 悟る <satoru> too, but I can't help but read that as "cause to reach enlightenment."

jag lär henne
I teach her
'I teach her' (is this grammatical in English?)

Yes, though a little limited -- it would have to be an answer to "What does she pay you for" or "What do you do with her", or maybe "Who do you teach", I think. Otherwise it feels like you're leaving something out.

[Magb]

In Norwegian we often say lære bort, i.e. "learn away", for "teach". However, akin to johanpeturdam's Faroese example, the typical way of saying "I teach English" would be Jeg er engelsklærer, "I'm an English teacher". Lærer can theoretically mean "learner" as well as "teacher", but in practice there would be no confusion. Jeg er engelsklærende could be used instead to mean "I'm learning English".

Is there a reflex of <teach> in other Germanic languages that means more than "show, point out"?

There's kenna "to teach" in Icelandic, which also means "to feel". Diachronically it's a causative form of "to know", cognate of German kennen.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

jag lär henne
I teach her
'I teach her' (is this grammatical in English?)

Yes, though a little limited -- it would have to be an answer to "What does she pay you for" or "What do you do with her", or maybe "Who do you teach", I think. Otherwise it feels like you're leaving something out.

Yeah okay, that's about the same as in Swedish then. I think it's even more limited in Swedish; answering jag lär henne to any of those questions feels a bit off. I could only see it used when both speaker and listener know very well what I'm teaching.

[Zhen Lin]

Japanese is somewhat boring, 学ぶ <manabu> "study, learn" and 教える <oshieru> "teach, tell (a fact) to", both transitive. You can however use the causative of <manabu> to mean "teach", which seems a bit forceful to me.

There's also 教わる, which is a transitive passive verb meaning ‘to be taught’ or ‘to learn from’. And 習う, which I haven't really learned the nuances of. But actually, the most common word for learning, as far as I know, is 勉強する, no?

Sure, 勉強する <benkyou suru> is fine -- I tend to stick to Yamato words, I guess. 習う <narau> I haven't seen that much, and 教わる <osowaru> I haven't seen ever. <oshieru> in -ru form (rather than -te) looks weird enough.

If you want to get into obscure vocab, there's 悟らせる <satoraseru> the causative of 悟る <satoru> too, but I can't help but read that as "cause to reach enlightenment."

I assure you 教わる is not obscure! (I heard it used colloquially in anime, so it's not high-register either.) But I struggle to remember the last time I saw 習う.

As for 悟らせる, I think that's a little bit too forced...

[Mecislau]

What's odd about this case is that there's really no definable difference between these two binyanim that accounts for all or even most of the differences in what they encode—both are plain, active voice verbs.

The one thing that I can think of that can be used to differentiate paʕal and piʕel is that the latter is sometimes used as an "intensive" of the former. For example, the root Š-B-R "break" in conjunction with paʕal forms the verb שָׁבַר (šāḇar, /ʃaˈvaʁ/), quite simply "he broke"), whereas with piʕel it forms the verb שִׁבֵּר (šibbēr, /ʃiˈbeʁ/), meaning "he smashed" or "he destroyed"). Perhaps this usage of piʕel is a vestige from a time when it actually was an intensive, but for whatever reason the vast majority of piʕel verbs today are functionally equivalent to paʕal. This reality is made apparent by verbs like דִּבֵּר (dibbēr, /diˈbeʁ/) from D-B-R "speak;" dibbēr isn't anything like, "to speak vociferously" or "to speak passionately;" it's just "to speak." As a matter of fact, AFAIK Hebrew doesn't even have a verb דָּבַר* (*dāḇar, /daˈvaʁ/).

Except you need to look at this historically as well. The Semitic D-Stem (from which piʕel derives) can form causatives, particularly from stative verbs (which lamad "learn" is). From a historical perspective the Hebrew situation makes perfect sense, it's just when you look at the modern language in complete isolation that it looks odd.

Also, Hebrew does have a verb davar, but it's archaic. It's most commonly seen in its active participle form, דובר dover, meaning "spokesman".



The two most basic verbs of teaching and learning in Russian are учить učit' "teach" and учиться učit'sja "learn"; the latter is simply the middle voice form of the former. The one weird thing that people always notice about these verbs, however, is that their arguments take unusual cases: the person being taught (in the case of "teach") appears in the accusative case, while the subject/information being taught or learned (for both verbs) appears in the dative case, a seemingly backwards situation. The reason for this ultimately becomes clear if you look at the history: the verb "teach" was originally a causative along the lines of "accustom someone to something", so that something like I.NOM am teaching him.ACC Russian.DAT historically was more like I.NOM am accustoming him.ACC to Russian.DAT.

[Mr. Z]

What's odd about this case is that there's really no definable difference between these two binyanim that accounts for all or even most of the differences in what they encode—both are plain, active voice verbs.

The one thing that I can think of that can be used to differentiate paʕal and piʕel is that the latter is sometimes used as an "intensive" of the former. For example, the root Š-B-R "break" in conjunction with paʕal forms the verb שָׁבַר (šāḇar, /ʃaˈvaʁ/), quite simply "he broke"), whereas with piʕel it forms the verb שִׁבֵּר (šibbēr, /ʃiˈbeʁ/), meaning "he smashed" or "he destroyed"). Perhaps this usage of piʕel is a vestige from a time when it actually was an intensive, but for whatever reason the vast majority of piʕel verbs today are functionally equivalent to paʕal. This reality is made apparent by verbs like דִּבֵּר (dibbēr, /diˈbeʁ/) from D-B-R "speak;" dibbēr isn't anything like, "to speak vociferously" or "to speak passionately;" it's just "to speak." As a matter of fact, AFAIK Hebrew doesn't even have a verb דָּבַר* (*dāḇar, /daˈvaʁ/).

Except you need to look at this historically as well. The Semitic D-Stem (from which piʕel derives) can form causatives, particularly from stative verbs (which lamad "learn" is). From a historical perspective the Hebrew situation makes perfect sense, it's just when you look at the modern language in complete isolation that it looks odd.

Also, Hebrew does have a verb davar, but it's archaic. It's most commonly seen in its active participle form, דובר dover, meaning "spokesman".



The two most basic verbs of teaching and learning in Russian are учить učit' "teach" and учиться učit'sja "learn"; the latter is simply the middle voice form of the former. The one weird thing that people always notice about these verbs, however, is that their arguments take unusual cases: the person being taught (in the case of "teach") appears in the accusative case, while the subject/information being taught or learned (for both verbs) appears in the dative case, a seemingly backwards situation. The reason for this ultimately becomes clear if you look at the history: the verb "teach" was originally a causative along the lines of "accustom someone to something", so that something like I.NOM am teaching him.ACC Russian.DAT historically was more like I.NOM am accustoming him.ACC to Russian.DAT.

This Russian case reminds me that, in Modern Hebrew, the verb לימד (to teach) takes two direct objects. Both the person being taught and the thing being taught to him are direct objects. So, for example, "He taught me the rules" would be like he taught ACC I ACC DEF rules, or, with a bit of reorganization for the sake of clarification (reorganization not present in the actual language, but rather, only in this new analysis made for easier understanding for those not familiar with Hebrew sentence structure): he taught I.ACC DEF rules.ACC.

[Ziz]

What's odd about this case is that there's really no definable difference between these two binyanim that accounts for all or even most of the differences in what they encode—both are plain, active voice verbs.

The one thing that I can think of that can be used to differentiate paʕal and piʕel is that the latter is sometimes used as an "intensive" of the former. For example, the root Š-B-R "break" in conjunction with paʕal forms the verb שָׁבַר (šāḇar, /ʃaˈvaʁ/), quite simply "he broke"), whereas with piʕel it forms the verb שִׁבֵּר (šibbēr, /ʃiˈbeʁ/), meaning "he smashed" or "he destroyed"). Perhaps this usage of piʕel is a vestige from a time when it actually was an intensive, but for whatever reason the vast majority of piʕel verbs today are functionally equivalent to paʕal. This reality is made apparent by verbs like דִּבֵּר (dibbēr, /diˈbeʁ/) from D-B-R "speak;" dibbēr isn't anything like, "to speak vociferously" or "to speak passionately;" it's just "to speak." As a matter of fact, AFAIK Hebrew doesn't even have a verb דָּבַר* (*dāḇar, /daˈvaʁ/).

Except you need to look at this historically as well. The Semitic D-Stem (from which piʕel derives) can form causatives, particularly from stative verbs (which lamad "learn" is). From a historical perspective the Hebrew situation makes perfect sense, it's just when you look at the modern language in complete isolation that it looks odd.

Also, Hebrew does have a verb davar, but it's archaic. It's most commonly seen in its active participle form, דובר dover, meaning "spokesman".

Interesting! It seems I definitely need to get a few books on Semitic historical linguistics; the first time I heard mention of G-stems and D-stems and stuff was when I was perusing through an Akkadian grammar the other day, and I had no idea what he was talking about...

[Qwynegold]

In Finnish we have:

oppia
learn
learn

opettaa
learn-CAUS
teach

[Yng]

Welsh has dysgu with both meanings. It also has the same verb for 'borrow' and 'lend', benthyca, but rhoi benthyg and cael benthyg (give a borrow and have a borrow) are more common colloquially.

[Viktor77]

IIRC Latvian distinguishes the two by to learn being a reflexive verb maciities (but these are not your standard reflexive verbs) and to teach is not, maciit.

[Niedokonany]

The two most basic verbs of teaching and learning in Russian are учить učit' "teach" and учиться učit'sja "learn"; the latter is simply the middle voice form of the former. The one weird thing that people always notice about these verbs, however, is that their arguments take unusual cases: the person being taught (in the case of "teach") appears in the accusative case, while the subject/information being taught or learned (for both verbs) appears in the dative case, a seemingly backwards situation. The reason for this ultimately becomes clear if you look at the history: the verb "teach" was originally a causative along the lines of "accustom someone to something", so that something like I.NOM am teaching him.ACC Russian.DAT historically was more like I.NOM am accustoming him.ACC to Russian.DAT.

My dic says учить has actually both meanings.