How to Learn Any Language 41
Last Words Before the Wedding
It is my hope that this volume will help those who’ve never yet dared to make the commitment, march to the altar, and “marry” another language. If you’ve already studied other languages, perhaps tried for years with disappointing results, let’s look at your next effort as a second marriage, fortified, this time, with the foregoing advice.Best men and bridesmaids traditionally utter inanities to grooms and brides before they march down the aisle. As your avuncular advisor, who at this writing has studied foreign languages as a hobby for forty-six years, let me use this precious final opportunity to hammer home some points – some repeats and some leftovers – that will ensure your success and ensure that you enjoy yourself as you succeed.Plunge InWhen an interviewer asked the famed bank robber Willy Sutton why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Using the language is where the real learning is. There’s a direct analogy to sports and war. Ask any ball player to give his views on the difference between watching the coach diagramme plays on a blackboard and facing the opponents in a real game. Ask any soldier the difference between basic training and actual combat.The same difference exists between language study and language use. Try recalling the words and phrases you’ve learned most recently the next time you meet by surprise a speaker of the language. Your mind is likely to be a frustrating blank. Once you’ve used your knowledge in real life, however, your chances of recall are much greater.Go out, then, and “pick” conversations in the language you’re learning, like a belligerent drunk picks fights.Certain words, phrases, idioms, and grammatical constructions will remain unmeltable lumps. They will defeat your best efforts to learn them. Many students accept such unscalable heights as proof that “I don’t have an ear for languages!” (That, by the way, is the most pernicious myth of all. If you have the motivation and discipline toproceed through the system, it doesn’t matter what kind of “ear” you have, so long as it can hear.)Once you score your first victory over one of those “unconquerable” fortresses, an emotional momentum is released that will carry you forward. Grab hold of the nearest holdout word and beat the hell out of it. Bite at it one syllable at a time or even one letter at a time. Throw fits of irrational energy against it until it’s yours.There is something truly serene about encountering a word that used to be a hideous holdout – and is now as familiar to you as your middle name!Point of sale is to good a term to be limited to disposable razors and other sundries arrayed near the cash register at convenience stores. Let’s apply it to getting ahead in a foreign language.The quickest and easiest time I ever had learning a phrase in a foreign language was Molim za ples, which is Serbo-Croatian for “May I have this dance?” I was a college student visiting Yugoslavia. An unforgivably attractive young woman smiled at me across the gym floor at a student dance. I asked Darko, my interpreter companion, how to say, “May I have this dance?”“Molim za ples,” he replied.I had no idea whether the mo or the lim or the za or the ples meant “May” or “I” or “have” or “this” or “dance.” Nor did I waste time worrying about it. I simply strode across the floor, said “Molim za ples,” and enjoyed my first dance in Yugoslavia!Darko was giving me point of sale instruction.Use it! When you know you’re going to a restaurant the day after tomorrow where the waiters speak the language you’re trying to learn, don’t use your hidden moments in the meantime on general vocabulary. Sit down and compile a restaurant vocabulary of food items and utensils and let that be your focus from that moment until you leave the restaurant after the meal.Are you headed for a party over the weekend where you’re fairly sure at least one guest speaks your target language? Start carrying your phrase book as well as your flash cards and review the “getting to know you” phrases, such as “Where are you from?” “How long do you intend to stay in America?” etc.Whenever you see an impending opportunity to speak the language, get a head start by sizing up the news of the day and going into your dictionary for the terms you’ll need that you don’t yet know. (“Election,” “proposal,” “tariff,” “amend,” “hostage,” “coup,” etc.) Focus your learning effort opportunistically to make the best possible showing when you reach the point of sale – the conversation you can anticipate.The “show,” by the way, is not to impress others. It’s to impress that part of you that, when you hear yourself doing so well, will inspire you to proceed with your broad front general advance through the language.A policeman is a policeman twenty-four hours a day. So is a fireman, a spy, a marine, and a language learner. Learn to catch yourself several times a day, indoors or outdoors, and look around. What are the first five things you see that you don’t know how to say in your target language? Write the English down on a blank flash card and fill in the target language words when you get home to your dictionary.At least once a day pretend you’re a United Nations interpreter simultaneously interpreting what somebody is saying to you in your target language. When he gets to the fifth word that you wouldn’t know how to say in your target language, abandon theexercise and write those words down, again, on a blank flash card. Fill in the foreign side of the flash card as soon as you get back to your dictionary.
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How to Learn Any Language 40
FORMS OF ADDRESSEnglish is deceptively easy in forms of address. Everybody in second person singular and plural is you. Your spouse is you. Your four year old child is you. Your interior decorator is you. The President of the United States is you. Your cocker spaniel is you. In almost every other language, speakers differentiate, sometimes sharply, between the FAMILIAR form of address (French tu, German du) and the FORMAL form (French vous, German Sie). The usual rule is that you use the familiar form of address only when addressing (talking to) intimates, children, and animals. All others take the formal form.There comes a moment in the affairs of humans when someone who started out formally as a stranger or casual acquaintance becomes, with time and congeniality, so familiar that the formal form of address seems almost stilted and even offish or insulting. In some countries – Norway, for instance – the tension is broken by the suggestion Skal vi drikke dus? (“Shall we drink to a new era in our friendship?” one in which we’ll address each other as the familiar du rather than the formal De?) That’s a speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace moment in the relationship. If there’s no objection, the two friends take a glass and toast their graduation from formal to familiar with their drinking arms intertwined!DIMINUTIVESA charming trick almost every language has is this “shrinking” of someone or something you like by the use of diminutives. The diminutive of Charles is Charlie. The diminutive of William is Billy. The diminutive of star is starlet. The diminutive of pig is piglet or piggy. The Olympics of diminutives is won hands down by the Italians, who have literally dozens of different forms of the diminutive, each conveying its own special nuance of feeling for the noun undergoing the shrinking.IDIOMSIdioms are expressions that may not make sense but have clear and specific meanings anyhow because the speakers of the language have “agreed” that, rules notwithstanding, those particular words shall have a particular meaning. An idiom has a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meaning of its elements.In English, we say “Let’s take a walk!” What are you taking? In Spanish, that becomes “Damos un paseo,” which literally means “Let’s give a walk!” What are you giving? Neither makes much sense but both are correct. Both are idioms.Some English idioms, at random, are: at first blush, at one’s wits end, axe to grind, beat around the bush, break the ice, chip off the old block, crack a joke, fit as a fiddle, forty winks, get in one’s hair, give a piece of one’s mind, keep the wolf from the door, red tape, and with flying colours.All languages have idioms. They’re fun and enriching and they illustrate differences and similarities among cultures. How philosophically distant is the Norwegian who says about a dim witted person, “Han er darlig utstyrt i oeverst etasje” (“He’s poorly equipped on the top floor”), from the American Southerner who says, “He’s three pickles shy of a barrel”?Learn to diagnose idioms in English and make sure you never try to translate them literally into any other language. If you try to tell a Spanish friend, “I’m on a roll,” do not say “Estoy en un panecillo.” He will look under your feet for signs of crumbs without any comprehension that what you really meant to express is that things are going extremely well for you at the moment.Likewise, be attentive to idioms as they come at you in other languages. The German who tells you to “break your neck and your leg” is really wishing you luck. So is the Italian who seems to be sending you “into the mouth of the wolf”!The foregoing is by no means the whole of the mechanical vocabulary you’ll need to conquer every other language on earth. You’ve got some dandies waiting for you inside whatever language you choose to tackle. In French and other languages you’ll meet the double negative. In Finnish, it’s worse: you’ll meet the inflecting negative! German will be watching to see if you can handle its double infinitive. Russian can’t wait to hit you with its perfective and imperfective verb aspects. Gender in Hebrew is so complex you have to know the sex of a dog before you can command it to quit biting you.These are not monsters in the woods. The lovely people who speak all those languages descend from people who found every single one of those Bermuda Triangles of grammar utterly logical and useful, and they’ve never felt the need to change.The old school grammarians, the ones who assassinated the desire of young Americans to learn foreign languages, were right in their insistence that knowledge of grammar is vital.They were wrong, however, to insist that all grammar must be learned here and now before we take our first step into conversation and the fun of learning another language.Again, grammar is best attacked from the rear. When you read the rule in your grammar book you may say to yourself, “Oh, so that’s the reason I’ve been saying it that way all along, the way I learned from my phrase book, my cassettes, my newspaper, and my Italian friend at the pizzaria!”When you come upon an explanation of a grammatical wrinkle and you don’t understand all the terms in English, pick up a dictionary (not a language dictionary, but an English only dictionary). You’ve got to know something of your own language before you can efficiently learn another.
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How to Learn Any Language 39
ADJECTIVESAdjectives are words that describe nouns. In the phrase “the green pen,” green is the adjective that describes pen. You’ll encounter some fuss about them because in many languages adjectives have to AGREE WITH (appear in the same form as) the nouns they MODIFY (refer to). In those languages adjectives must agree with the nouns in gender and number (and sometimes case).A little Spanish will quickly make it clear. El libro es rojo (“The book is red”) shows the adjective rojo (“red”) in masculine singular form to agree with libro (“book”). La pluma es roja (“The pen is red”) shows the adjective roja (“red”) in feminine singular form to agree with pluma (“pen”). Los libros son rojos (“The books are red”) shows the adjective rojos (“red”) in masculine plural form to agree with libros (“books”). Finally, Las plumas son rojas (“The pens are red”) shows the adjective rojas (“red”) in feminine plural form to agree with plumas (“pens”).ADVERBSAdverbs describe verbs – they tell how. “He mastered the easy parts of the language easily.” Easily is the adverb telling how he mastered the easy parts (Easy, of couse, is the adjective.)PREPOSITIONSPrepositions are words that precede nouns and pronouns to form phrases (groups of words) that can act as adjectives or adverbs. Prepositions show relationships among nouns; they often indicate position or direction, and they are often short words: to, at, by, for, with, from, toward, on, over, behind, between, etc.DEFINITE ARTICLEThe definite article in English is the word the.INDEFINITE ARTICLEThe indefinite article in English is the word a or an. English has both the definite and indefinite article. Some other languages also have both. Some have one but not the other. Some have neither.SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECTWords like these symbolise the grade school “nerve gas” which deadens the desire to proceed through grammar and parts of speech, and diagramming sentences, and all related yawn provokers that once seemed to float too far over our heads ever to zoom down and give us discomfort. Those concepts may have seemed like distant enemies in the eighth grade when you had no intention of becoming an English teacher, but they’re close friends and necessary allies when you’re learning another language.Briefly, in the sentence “He hits the ball,” the word he is the SUBJECT, hits is the VERB, ball is the OBJECT, the DIRECT OBJECT. If we lengthen the sentence to “He hits the ball to him,” then him is the INDIRECT OBJECT.ACTIVEThe verb is ACTIVE or in the ACTIVE VOICE if the subject is performing the verb action. In “He hits the ball,” the verb hits is in the active voice because the subject he is the one (the AGENT) doing the hitting.PASSIVEThe verb is PASSIVE or in the PASSIVE VOICE if the subject receives or is subject to the action of the verb. Thus in “The ball is hit by him”, the subject ball doesn’t do any hitting. Rather, it gets hit. Therefore, we say that the verb hit is in the passive voice because the subject ball is not performing the action of the verb but is rather having that action performed upon it.REFLEXIVEThe verb is reflexive when its action bounces back upon itself. In the sentence “I dress myself,” the subject I both performs the action and has it performed on itself.IMPERATIVEThe imperative is the command form of the verb. The imperative of the verb to go is go! The imperative of the verb to watch is Watch!COMPARATIVE AND SUPERLATIVEThough not as flighty and volatile as verbs and nouns, English adjectives and adverbs can’t sit entirely still.Good, better, and best are really the same word in escalating degrees. Good is the simple, the base form of the adjective. Better is the comparative form. Best is thesuperlative form. Good-better-best is an example of an irregular comparative-superlative construction. If it were regular, it would be good, gooder and goodest, like the regular neat, neater and neatest.The comparative and superlative of adverbs in English is formed with more and most: “He progressed rapidly. He progressed more rapidly. He progressed most rapidly.”CARDINAL AND ORDINAL NUMBERSCardinal numbers are one, two, three, four, etc. Ordinal numbers are first, second, third, fourth, etc.
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How to Learn Any Language 38
NOUN CASESJust as ice, water, and steam are merely different forms of the same thing, I, me, my, and mine are merely different forms of the same word. You pick the form according to what CASE you need. (Yes! You already do this in English.) Let’s advance on case now and destroy its mystery before it destroys your enthusiasm.Noun (and pronoun) cases turn more people away from learning languages than boot camp turns away from joining the marines. And the same reason underlies both. Those who’ve been there enjoy boosting their own glory by exaggerating the difficulties involved to the intimidated uninitiated.“Wait until those drill instructors at Parris Island get a hold of you!” is essentially the same comment as “Wait until you run into all those noun cases!” You may recall with distaste the trouble you had with Latin’s six noun cases. Russian also has six noun cases. Serbo-Croatian has seven. Other languages have even more.Anyone studying a language bristling with noun cases knows the sinking feeling of leaving warm, shallow water and running into wave after wave of charts showing nouns that change their endings for no apparent reason!You can ride those waves. Those nouns, in fact, change for very good reasons, reasons that are easy to catch on to provided you’re not labouring under the spell of a showoff know-it-all who tells you, “Finnish! Forget it. They have fifteen noun cases in the singular and sixteen in the plural!”Fortunately, English has just enough of what we call noun cases to prove they’re nothing to fear.Let’s play with the word house. “The house is large.” “The exterior of the house us green.” “Let’s go to the house.” “I see the house.” In all of those sentences, the form of house remains mercifully (for anybody learning English) the same. If there were any reason to strain a point and prove that plain English nouns can have case too, we could confect the sentence “The house’s exterior is green,” and point out that house’s is the genitive case of house.To get a fuller example of case, we have to go to our English pronouns. “I have a pen.” “My pen is good.” “Give the pen to me.” “Do you hear me?”Look what happened to I as it changed roles in the various sentences. In the sentence “I have a pen,” I is the subject of the sentence. In the sentence “My pen is good,” I has changed to my to express the concept of possession. In the sentence “Give the pen to me,” I becomes the indirect object of the giving, and in the sentence “Do you hear me?” I becomes the direct object of the verb hear.If I wanted to discourage you instead of inspire you, I would say, “We have now met the NOMINATIVE case, the GENITIVE case, the DATIVE case, and the ACCUSATIVE case, and we’re all going to stay right here and not come up for air until you can decline (giveme the lineup of) 189 nouns in all those cases in the language you’d like to learn!” Instead I say let’s move forward and learn how to say things and read things and understand things in the language. You can learn about noun cases and other grammatical complexities exactly the way you learned your uncles and aunts when you were a baby – one hug, one kiss, one lollipop at a time.When we carry the noun through all its cases we say we’re DECLINING that noun. Noun cases tip you off to the role of the noun or pronoun in a sentence. Many languages need them to tell you who is doing what to whom. Approach them with a good attitude and you will feel the wisdom of Mark Twain’s little sermon, “Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. No one was there.”
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