How to Learn Any Language 16
In cases 3 and 4, either the word’s not in the dictionary or it’s not there in any form recognisable to you. Enter the word on a question card.
You may have four or five complete cards, eighteen or twenty words defined and ready to be learned, from the first paragraph in your text alone. Put those cards in clear plastic and carry them with you at all times. Don’t mix them up with the question cards. Keep them separate. The cards with the dictionary forms of the foreign words from the text you didn’t know, with their English equivalents on the reverse side, are the beginning of your collection of linguistic growth protein.
Advance!
Now you’re ready for paragraph two. Between paragraphs one and two, you’ve been glancing at those flash cards during your hidden moments – waiting in line, on elevators, etc. With highlighter poised like a sword, you now sally forth into the second paragraph.
The going will probably be noticeably easier, because paragraph two will likely be dealing with much the same subject matter as paragraph one and many of the words will be repeats. Step back and note how many fewer coloured lines marking unknown words there are in paragraph two. Never mind that those are repeat words. If you knew them from flashing your cards in the interval between tackling paragraph one and tackling paragraph two, then it’s clean conquest. Bask in it, and move on to paragraph three.
No cheating! Don’t let your possible lack of interest in the subject matter of the text tempt you into junking it and jumping across the page to another article that looks like it’s about something that interests you more. No soldier fighting in the arctic would dare ask his commanding officer if he might be excused to go fight in the tropics. Advance! Charge! Slog through it one step – one word – at a time.
By the time you reach the end of page one, if it’s a newspaper, you will note with glee that the coloured markings indicating words you didn’t know, almost solid in the early paragraphs, will have diminished precipitously by the end of the page. That page is a progress chart.
And you’ll have what seems like a ton of flash cards loaded with words in varying degrees of surrender to you. Carry as many flash cards with you as possible, and rotate them regularly so your attention is evenly parcelled out among them.
Tradition bound teachers would have problems with that kind of “ice plunge,” a naked leap into a foreign language newspaper after only five lessons of grammar with nothing for help but a dictionary, which in many cases can’t help because you won’t know the various disguises (changing forms) of many of the words. What’s the point?
There are several. America is a nation of people who make straight A’s in intermediate French and then get to Paris and realise they don’t speak intermediate French! The knowledge that the text – newspaper, book, magazine, whatever – is a real world document that does not condescend to a student’s level is a tremendous confidence builder and energiser for your assault upon your target language. The awareness that you’re making progress, albeit slowly, through typical text, genuine text, the kind the natives buy off their newsstands and read in their coffee shops, gives even the rank beginner something of the pride of a battle toughened marine.
Memorise Your Part
You are now, let’s say, beginning chapter six of your grammar book and fighting your way valiantly down the first column of your text. Keep going on both these fronts, and pick up another tool.
Open your phrase book and read the introduction carefully, paying particularly close attention to the rules of transliteration. All such books will have three columns: the English word or phrase, the foreign language translation, and then the transliteration, which is your guide to proper pronunciation using the English alphabet.
When you get the hang of the language, you won’t need the transliteration crutch. Until you do, you need it totally. But note that there is no recognised standard system of transliteration. The International Phonetic Alphabet is supposed to be, but nobody uses it because learning it is almost as hard as learning another language itself.
There are at least half a dozen ways to transliterate the capital of China. The Chinese communists prefer Beijing. The Chinese nationalists prefer Peking. If that were the only word you wanted to learn and there were no need for you to learn transliteration systems, we could write it Bay-jing, adding that the Bay is pronounced like the English word for the body of water and the jing like the first syllable of “jingle.”
Your phrase book will take mercifully little space to tell you how to pronounce the words according to their chosen system of transliteration. Usually in less than a page you’ll be told to pronounce ai like the y in “sky”; ei like the eigh in “weigh” and so on through all the needed sounds. Some phrase books indicate which syllable gets the stress by placing an accent mark on top of it, others by capitalising every letter in the syllable. Don’t be impatient because you suddenly feel you’re called upon to learn another written language which is neither English nor the language you’re trying to learn. Look upon the transliteration guide as your opportunity to learn the combination to a safe that will let you help yourself to the correct pronunciation of every word in that book!
Advance now to the first page of phrases in the phrase book. Your newspaper didn’t teach you how to say “How are you?” and it’s a good bet the first five lessons of your grammar didn’t either. Here it comes! This is your first chance to learn how to actually say things.
“Yes.” “No.” “Please.” “Thank you.” “You’re welcome.” “Good morning.” “Good afternoon.” “Good evening.” ”I’m very pleased to meet you.” “How are you?” “Very well, thanks; and you?” “Fine.”
You’ll master these precious nuggets of real life communication quickly. But don’t stop with merely mastering them. Use that phrase book and plot a conversational pattern, a routine you go into when you meet someone who speaks your target language. Treat it as though you’re memorising your part in a play.
”How do you do?” “My name is _______.” “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “How long have you been here?” “I don’t speak your language well.” “How do you say that in your language?” “May I get you something to drink?” “I don’t understand.” “Would you please repeat?”
Here again, traditionalists would frown. “That’s not learning a language,” they’d protest. “That’s just learning how to parrot a few phrases!”
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