How to Learn a Language

How to Learn a Language

 

          It is common for people- at least for American’s- to say, “Isn’t English enough? Everybody speaks it today so, why should I learn there's?” or “It’s just too hard to learn another language”. The first problem leads us into a lot of dirty history which I don’t want to go into. But to say the least, it is not good that English is becoming a necessary language.

          It is not only making people whose mother-tongue is English arrogant and disrespectful towards other languages/cultures, but the spread of English is destroying the world’s cultures. There are too many people from around the world who learning English or any language for that matter for ‘practical’- reasons, then there are those learning for the beauty of the language, its poetry, people, history or culture.

 

 

 

         At least among polymaths and other intellectuals from the past, it was very common for people to speak multiple languages. It was a sign of respect towards other people, widened people’s cultural awareness and just their overall knowledge as well. If, as I argued in many past blogs, we need cultural understanding and unity of love amongst all peoples and countries, learning a language is the most direct way of learning about a culture.

 

 

 

        To say that learning a language is difficult, is something I think we all can almost all unfortunately relate to. Whether it be orals, tests, quizzes or whatever, all of those who teach a language in a primary or secondary school assume that their students can fit the basics of a language, in their short-term memory. Not only does this only create an over-amount of stress, but it defeats the whole purpose of learning a language.

          It may be true that the languages we learn in school pretty much have to do with what country may be starting trouble with us or have started trouble with us- I think Americans will all be learning Arabic and Chinese quite soon-, but the whole point of learning a languages is to communicate. And let’s be realistic, can you fit your entire mother-tongue in your short- term language, or even more, retrieve the exact word or thought you wanted right when you needed it?

 

 

 

 

          If not, then the way that we have been trying to learn a second language in school is taking away the passion that we could have for learning languages. In this blog, I will explain how one can learn a language and I’ll be basing it off of what I do for my own language learning. The process of learning a language may seem daunting, but once you see the steps that are required, it won’t seem as such a big deal.

 

1. Motive

 

What motive do you have for learning another language? Do you find the history interesting? Do you want to travel? Or do you have a French, German or Russian heritage that you want to become closer to? Whatever the reason, you should always remind yourself why you are doing it because, if you want to dedicate yourself to this challenge, there are going to be days where you either don’t feel like practicing your language, or where you feel like you are running a tread-mill and not making any progress. Reminding yourself of where you are going will help keep you focused.

 

2. Listening and Imitating

 

Before I decided to start learning German, I would listen to either YouTube videos of people talking or get into German music. This will help get you used to the special aspects of the way the language sounds-rolling your tongue, pursing your lips, making noises back in your throat, etc.

In conjunction with this, try imitating some of the sounds you hear. Even if it’s in a stereotypical voice, try to get the feel for the language. This stage should maybe last two to maybe three weeks, but you should definitely continue to listen to music- or even watch movies.

 

3. Speaking the Alphabet

Either by looking it up on the internet or buying a book with a CD, practice the alphabet for possibly two to three weeks, probably either during or after you started imitating the language. 

If it is a language with either new letters or with a completely different alphabet from your mother-tongue, expect learning the alphabet to take you maybe a month- it took me about 4 weeks to learn the Modern Greek alphabet. I would make notecards and or write the letters repeatedly in a notebook for maybe once a day for 15 minutes, while saying them out loud a couple times. I’d say spend one or two day’s per letter.

 

 

4. Chunking

 

Chunking will be a relief compared to what you probably had to go through with when you were in school. Instead of pounding a nail into your head in order for something to stick, chunking is taking a word, sentence or phrase and looking at the word and it’s translation without trying to remember what the word means. By making a note card with the mother tongue on one side and the foreign tongue on the other- or filling a whole notebook with vocab- spend 15 minutes a day reviewing the list of vocab you have.

You will see that this will not only be less stressful, but it is a more realistic method of learning. When you were in infant, did your parents have to test you using notecards and made sure you remembered a word/phrase? Of course not: you learned through casual exposure, not through brainwashing or drills.

5.  Reading

 

Take maybe ten or fifteen minutes whenever you are free- I prefer to do it as I’m having breakfast- and read at least one article on the internet in the language you are learning. It doesn’t matter whether you understand it or not: just like listening to music and watching a movie, this will give you plenty of exposure you need in the language and the magical thing about this is, it will help you learn new words by seeing it in relationship to other words you may know. If you are learning say French, German, Spanish, Italian or Gaelic and your mother- tongue is English, you’ll be surprised by the amount of vocabulary words you will recognize.

 

Once your vocabulary starts to grow, go into some poetry and novels. Better yet, either by a translation of a book and a it's original or buy a bi-lingual version of the book and compare the mother-tongue with the foreign language. But be wary of reading old novels/poetry that goes back over a century: if your goal is to speak to a foreigner, thou tongue mayst sound oldeth to thy hearers!  

If however you are learning a language whose alphabet is different from what you aren’t used to, try reading in your foreign language once you feel you have been exposed yourself to enough of the vocabulary. Learning a song and then printing out the lyrics, is another option. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Grammar

Teachers would gasp to find that I put this last. But I am not going to say that grammar is unimportant. Rather, the way that schools have taught us to learn grammar, is a waste of time. Teachers assume- including your literature teachers- that you must be a linguist: you have to know future-perfect, the definite and indefinite for all the cases, when and how the syntax/order of a sentence will manifest itself, before you even begin learning how to speak the language. To be fluent in a language does not mean to be a linguist, grammarian or syntaxologist: it means to be able understand and communicate in a language, where two or more participants can both give and receive a message.

And so, when you approach the grammar of your language, think of it like a board game: sure, you can learn the very basics in order to make the  most elementary moves, but don’t except to memorize or know what to do until you get to the point where you actually need to know or be reminded of a rule. In other words, spread the pain: try learning one or two grammar lessons a week- or even every three weeks as I do.

Conjugations of verbs as well as learning cases and rules should be learned like vocabulary, through exposure rather than through short-term memorization.

 

7. Learn the Culture

    

Learning the culture should be something you do right from day one: if you plan to live or travel to another country, knowing beforehand the social norms, how formal and informal situations function and getting insight about holidays are essential.

     Not only that, but learning about the history, music, art or literature can give you more motivation and inspiration to learn your language. For example, I was taking French classes from 4^th grade to my 1^st semester of college and I loathed every second. But when I discovered French Music like Eths and Zaz and fell in love with writers like Charles Baudelaire, Guy de Maupassant, Andre Breton, Albert Camus, Andre Gide and many others, I became inspired to learn French on my own.

 

 

One of my favorite French novels.

 

 

The question of what it means to be fluent, is tricky. The question is almost relative. Some people claim it can take a month to learn a language and others that it will take a very long time to be able to speak. I think both are wrong. Six months should be all that one needs to reach a level of competency in a language- knowing basic vocab/phrases- but if you are looking for fluency, it will take longer. But that’s okay because, if you learn your language through chunking and exposure rather than through intense memorization, the process of learning won’t be nearly as stressful as you think.

     In the end, we aren’t even fluent in our own language: there is a hierarchy of vocabulary which still waits to be explored by many of us and the journey will probably be a long one. But my soaking one’s self in music, movies and literature, reading a article a day and spending 15 minutes a day on reviewing vocabulary, you’ll be speaking and comprehending faster than you know it.

   Auf Wiedersehen! Au revoir! Adiós! Ciao! Vale!