to teach vs. to learn

[Mr. Z]

As several people have also posted about the verbs for "lend" and "borrow", I'm doing so as well. Hebrew uses the same root for both: ש.א.ל, š-'-l. However, it's pa'al form is used for "borrow" (שאל, ša'al) and it's hif'il causative form is used for "lend" (השאיל, hiš'il). This is a subject of great confusion in spoken Hebrew, and most use "hiš'il" for both "lend" and "borrow". It's the same with the verbs for rent: one for renting something, and one is for renting something to someone.

[Jashan]

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?

In my experience (non-native Dutch speaker), you'd just phrase it differently:

Ik leer Frans vs. Ik geef lessen in Frans ("I give lessons in French / French lessons") or something like that

However, you can also say this:

Ik leer Frans ("I am learning French")
Ik leer hem Frans ("I am teaching him French")
Ik leer hem ("I am teaching him")

The only difference is that one takes an indirect object and one doesn't -- and that if the direct object is animate, it's assumed you're teaching rather than learning.

[Timmytiptoe]

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?

In my experience (non-native Dutch speaker), you'd just phrase it differently:

Ik leer Frans vs. Ik geef lessen in Frans ("I give lessons in French / French lessons") or something like that

That's about right, I'd say it like ik ben Frans aan het leren, and Ik geef Franse les, but that's nitpicky.

However, you can also say this:

Ik leer Frans ("I am learning French")
Ik leer hem Frans ("I am teaching him French")
Ik leer hem ("I am teaching him")

Ik leer hem is at best questionable. Ik geef hem les would be the correct alternative. Leren needs two objects to have the "teach" meaning. Only an animate object just seems imcomplete.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

To the OP :

I'm not sure about how it works when "to teach" is an intransitive verb with a direct object. Can I say je leur avais apprendu 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?

First, it's appris not **apprendu.

Then, you can only use "enseigner". You also have the lexical expression "être [leur] professeur(e)".

Also, we use apprendre as in English :

J'ai appris pour ce qui s'est passé avec ton grand-père.

However, we can also use savoir here.

J'ai su pour...

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...

As for the difference between 習う "narau" and 学ぶ "manabu", the first one is about experience, while the second is more about scholarship (learn/study), I have heard 教わる a lot, but I was never taught it formally in school. The meaning, however, is pretty straightforward, being a intransitive form of "teach".

学習する also exists.

[Izambri]

In Catalan is ensenyar (lit. "to show", "to point", "to indicate") vs. aprendre (from prendre "to take"), although the latter is also estudiar "to study" which doesn't have exactly the same meaning as aprendre when applied to the concept of learning.

[hwhatting]

My dic says учить has actually both meanings.

That's true, although from experience I'd say that учить meaning "learn" is much rarer than учиться.
For disambiguation, one can use the prefixed verbs изучать "learn, study" and обучать "teach, train". There's also преподавать which means "to teach" in a school or academic setting.

[Simmalti]

In Maltese, both "learn" and "borrow" are actually the reflexives of "teach" and "lend" (the 4th form of the verb)

Root GĦ-L-M
I teach English - Jien ngħallem l-Ingliż
I learn English - Jien nitgħallem l-Ingliż

I taught English - Jien għallimt l-Ingliż
I learned English - Jien tgħallimt l-Ingliż

Root S-L-F
I lend money - Jien nsellef il-flus
I borrow money - Jien nissellef il-flus

I lent money - Jien sellift il-flus
I borrowed money - Jien ssellift il-flus

[Niedokonany]

In Polish, there's uczyć "teach" and uczyć się "learn" is its 'reflexive' modification. Their rection is a bit unusual (and different from Russian) and can be schematized as:

teacher.NOM uczy student.ACC subject.GEN

student.NOM uczy się subject.GEN (od teacher.GEN)

The semantically most basic perfective forms are respectively nauczyć and nauczyć się. As for "teaching oneself", it's the same as "learning", if need be you could add sam lit. "alone".

There's also nauczać "teach (at school)", a rather formal word.

[äreo]

IIRC the Old English cognates for German lernen and lehren both became 'learn', and that's the source of the (yes, much less common) second meaning.

[Skomakar'n]

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

Same in Northern Germanic, but the difference can be (and is often) expressed through reflexives; the forms with the reflexives mean 'to learn' and the ones without them mean 'to teach'.

[sirred]

A scholarly piece about the use of "learning someone" in American English.

[Grunnen]

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

And of course there is leren van "learn from" and leren aan "teach to". Or did someone already mention this?

[Cathbad]

Not unlike other Slavic languages already mentioned, Slovene uses the reflexive of "to teach" to render "to learn":

učim - I teach
učim se - I learn

Plus the perfective derivatives naučiti, poučiti, izučiti, proučiti (although this latter one, roughly meaning 'to examine', has no widely used reflexive form), etc.

The weird thing here (perhaps) is that the teach-verb takes two simultaneous objects in the accusative case; that is, both the "recipient" of learning and the thing being "taught" are direct accusative objects. However, there is a strict word order whereby the "recipient" must not occur after the "thing taught", blocking even the possibility of extraction for emphasis. Cf. the following two sentences (the first of a pair is always without emphasis, the second with emphasis on the bolded word):

dal sem mu svinčnik -> svinčnik sem dal njemu
give.PART.MASC be.SING.1 he.DAT pencil.ACC -> pencil.ACC be.SING.1 give.PART.MASC he.DAT.EMPH
"I gave him the pencil" (if the recipient is emphasized, the pencil is usually understood to be known/topical, hence "the pencil", with the definite article, in translation)

učil sem ga ruščino -> njega sem učil ruščino (*učil sem ruščino njega)
teach.PART.MASC be.SING.1 he.ACC Russian.ACC -> he.ACC.EMPH be.SING.1 teach.PART.MASC Russian.ACC
"I was teaching him Russian"

I'm not sure whether this is true of all double-accusative-object verbs in Slovene; I'm not even sure whether there are any others.

[Nesescosac]

In Bengali, the word for "to teach" is just the causative of the word for "to learn". Simple enough.

[Skomakar'n]

I decided to check the documentation of Kozea in this regard. I found that 'go' + 'know' were combined in order to learn, and while 'go' serves many, many purposes in this language, it is not used to convey anything progressive or the like, so this was an odd combination. I decided to extend the meaning of a word of which the basic meaning is 'pull'; 'drag' (many words of Kozea have lots and lots of meaning packed into them and can be used for many things). The word for 'teach' also means things like 'help' and 'instruct', and even to 'raise' and 'bring up'. However, I also found that this same word, meaning to 'teach', much like in many of the languages exemplified in this thread, can be used reflexively in the sense of 'learn'.

isôinnir mrandyān iddinoin; I teach Kozea to [the] children ("teach"; "instruct"; "help")
isôinnēasix iddinu mrandyān; the children study/learn Kozea ("teach oneself" [though not literally; it means "learn"])
hwaltāe ōsa iddinu mrandyān – || – ("go know")
nohîkāe iddinu mrandyān – || – ("take in")
pēlyāe iddinu mrandyān – || –; the children practice [their] Kozea ("practice")

The statement about Bengali now makes me want to put the causative particle of the language into use here as well. Something not impossible could perhaps be fēad ēsar mrandyān iddinog; I teach Kozea to [the] children ("make know").

[Khvaragh]

In Maltese, both "learn" and "borrow" are actually the reflexives of "teach" and "lend" (the 4th form of the verb)

Root GĦ-L-M
I teach English - Jien ngħallem l-Ingliż
I learn English - Jien nitgħallem l-Ingliż

I taught English - Jien għallimt l-Ingliż
I learned English - Jien tgħallimt l-Ingliż

Which is cognate to Arabic علم /ʕal:ama/ "learn" and تعلم /taʕal:ama/ "teach." In fact, it's almost the same:
I teach English - أنا أعلم اللغة الانجليزية
I learn English - أنا أتعلم اللغة الانجليزية
Of course, the pronoun "I" is optional, since it's indexed on the verb, and my addition of اللغة "the language" sounds more natural here. The Maltese use of n- as opposed to a-/u- is likely a marker of Maghrabi influence, since this is the usual inflection for the first person in these dialects (in Standard, it's the marker for first person plural)

The word comes from علم /ʕalima/, which means "to know," (and might, and I do mean "might," be cognate to Hebrew למד via an original l-m bi-consonantal root, with different extensions added to the beginning as opposed to end, respectively). /ʕal:ama/ is an "intensive" derivational form, loosely, "make [s.o.] known," whereas /taʕal:ama/ is a reflexive thereof, roughly, "to be made to know [s.o.]" This is an example of the D-Stem that Mecislau was referring to (/taʕal:ama/ is in the Dt-Stem); while it's original use has somewhat fossilized in Hebrew (I believe it's now a closed class? I might be wrong though), it's still rather productive in Arabic, and is used for two basic purposes: to "intensify" or create a causative, or as a denominalizer, i.e. عين /ʕajn/ "eye" > عين /ʕaj:ana/ "to specify, particularize." The d-b-r root seems to be an old one; Arabic has دبر /dabara/ meaning "to follow," with D-Stem /dab:ara/ "to consider, arrange." Note that the G-Stem is rather archaic as well; I've never seen it in print; whereas the D-Stem is more common.

(As an aside, I tend to think the basic difference between the two primary Arabic roots for "to know," ʕ-l-m and ʕ-r-f is that the latter denotes a more intuitive kind of knowledge (i.e. عرف "custom" and عرفان "gnosis"), while the former is more a kind of erudition or "learnt knowledge.")

[Ser]

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 apprendu 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?

Urghhh, I meant "an intransitive verb with an indirect object". "An intransitive verb with a direct object" makes no sense.

First, it's appris not **apprendu.

Thanks! All examples have been corrected.

Then, you can only use "enseigner".

I see.

You also have the lexical expression "être [leur] professeur(e)".

For some reason I hadn't thought of people just using workarounds... Same goes for the Dutch examples above.

Also, we use apprendre as in English :

J'ai appris pour ce qui s'est passé avec ton grand-père.

However, we can also use savoir here.

J'ai su pour...

Good to know. Spanish doesn't have any parallel construction like "saber por/para" or "apprender por/para" used like this either.

/ʕal:ama/ is an "intensive" derivational form, loosely, "make [s.o.] known,"

Analyzing it as a causative works better: "to make sb know sth" (علّم فلانا شيئا), and from there "to make sth known" (علّم شيئا). I don't think it's intensive in the same way that كسّر 'to smash sth to little pieces' is in comparison to كسر 'to break sth'.

[Khvaragh]

/ʕal:ama/ is an "intensive" derivational form, loosely, "make [s.o.] known,"

Analyzing it as a causative works better: "to make sb know sth" (علّم فلانا شيئا), and from there "to make sth known" (علّم شيئا). I don't think it's intensive in the same way that كسّر 'to smash sth to little pieces' is in comparison to كسر 'to break sth'.

I'm just using "intensive" as part of the parlance this form is usually given (this is how it's described in the literature; I suppose to distinguish it from afʕala), which is why I later specified that that faʕ:ala is basically either a causative or denominalizer in use.