How to Learn Any Language 21
WAIT A MINUTE!
An enemy, a skeptic, even a queasy ally at this point could say, “Wait a minute. I’m trying to learn a language. I’m not sure I want to walk around with a headful of images of wives who keep moles, chickens that play polo, angry people emitting cold air, and VA hospitals you can knock over with a hoe!”
You won’t! One beauty of the system is, the association that helps you capture the word falls away and disintegrates. Once you’ve learned the words, the “crutch” obligingly disappears.
A common form of the verb “to speak” in Hebrew is medaber, pronounced meda-BEAR. There it is: you were walking through the newly planted forests of Israel and suddenly you “med” a bear who could speak!
In Indonesian, “movie screen” is lajar, pronounced almost exactly like “liar” (LI-ar). Easy. The man is rapidly winning the woman’s heart in the movie, but you don’t wish him well because he’s such a lajar!
“Horse” in Russian, transliterated into English script, is lo-shod, pronounced almost exactly like LAW-shod. You try to bring your own horse with you into the Soviet Union, but at the border the Soviet customs officer tells you Sorry, he’d like to accommodate you, but your horse doesn’t have horseshoes and, according to Soviet law, all horses must be shod.
“Horse” equals LAW-shod.
The Greek word for “grape” in English transliteration is stafilya, pronounced sta-FEEL-ya.
You’re in a Greek vineyard in the mountains near Albania. You see the most luscious grape you’ve ever laid eyes on. As you reach for it, the air is split with a squeaky voice screaming “Don’t touch me!”
“I’m sorry,” you sputter, retreating in shock and shame. “I wasn’t going to eat you. It was just to FEEL you (jus’ sta-FEEL-ya).”
Grape equals sta-FEEL-ya.
The Serbo-Croatian word for “lunch” is ruak, pronounced almost exactly like RUE-chuck. You’re having lunch in a restaurant in Yugoslavia. The waiter overhears you making a political remark he doesn’t appreciate, so he throws you out bodily. Never one to go quietly, you pick yourself up out of the gutter, dust yourself off, and, just before you head for the American Embassy to protest, you shake your first at the waiter through the window and vow he’ll rue the day he chucked you out while you were having lunch.
“Lunch” equals RUE-chuck.
“Plate” in Indonesian is piring, pronounced exactly like the English “peering” (PEER-ing).
Your Indonesian restaurant experience is a bit more pleasant than the one in Yugoslavia. You walk in and find yourself suddenly becalmed by the serenity of the dining room. All the Indonesians seem to have their heads bowed in prayer. You ask the headwaiter if you’ve interrupted some sort of religious service.
“Not at all,” he assures you. “They’re not praying. We just got our new plates with mirrored surfaces and they’re all peering at themselves to see how they look!”
“Plate” equals PEER-ing.
The Farsi word for “cheaper” transliterated into English is arzontar, pronounced our-zone-TAR.
The hotel in Tehran is filled, but the clerk tells you it’s a warm night and he’d be happy to rent you sleeping space on the roof. You’re delighted to learn you’re paying only half what the other roof sleepers are paying, until you get to your designated spot on the roof, at which point you exclaim to your spouse, “Now I see why our spot is cheaper. All the other tourists are sleeping on those nice ceramic tiles. Our zone, the spot assigned to us, however, is tar!”
“Cheaper” equals our-zone-TAR.
“Potato” in German is kartoffel, pronounced exactly like cart-AW-ful.
You buy potatoes from a cart and they turn out to be awful. “Potato” equals cart-AW-ful.
Stop right here! Do you remember the Spanish word for “old?” Or the French word for “anger,” the Italian word for “wife,” the Serbo-Croatian word for “lunch,” or the Indonesian word for “movie screen?”
When we display this system of word capturing at seminars for the Learning Annex, there’s a collective gasp when, after spelling out an association to capture the tenth word, we suddenly stop and ask how many can recall word number one, four, and so on. At no point did we suggest that the students try to recall the words used as examples as we laid out the system. When they see that almost everybody recalls every single one of them anyhow, the students realise this system contrasts well with the kind of rote learning they’d tried earlier. One grateful participant exclaimed, “This system teaches you words you’re not even trying to learn. The old way doesn’t teach you no matter how hard you try!”
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2007/3/20 15:14:00
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[分享]How to Learn Any Language 21
