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How to Learn Any Language QuicklyEasilyInexpensivelyEnjoyably and On Your Own [复制链接]

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发表于 2009-1-1 16:42:27 |只看该作者 |正序浏览

How to Learn Any Languagefficeffice" />

Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and On Your Own

by

Barry Farber

Founder of the Language Club/Nationally Syndicated Talk Show Host

To Bibi and Celia, for the pleasure of helping teach them

their first language, followed by the pleasure of having them

then teach me their second!

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: My Story

A Life of Language Learning

Part II: The System

Do As I Now Say, Not As I Then Did

Psych Up

French or Tagalog: Choosing a Language

Gathering Your Tools

The Multiple Track Attack

Hidden Moments

Harry Lorayne’s Magic Memory Aid

The Plunge

Motivations

Language Power to the People

Back to Basics

Last Words Before the Wedding

Part III: Appendices

The Language Club

The Principal Languages of the World

Farber’s Language Reviews

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my editor, Bruce Shostak, without whose skill and patience much of

this book would have been intelligible only to others who’ve had a blinding passion for

foreign languages since 1944. I further thank my publisher, Steven Schragis, for

venturing into publishing territory heretofore officially listed as “uninteresting”. Dr.

Henry Urbanski, Founder and Head of the New Paltz Language Immersion Institute, was

good enough to review key portions of the manuscript and offer toweringly helpful

amendments. Dr. Urbanski’s associate, Dr. Hans Weber, was supremely helpful in

safeguarding against error.

I further wish to thank all my fellow language lovers from around the world who

interrupted their conversations at practice parties of the Language Club to serve as

willing guinea pigs for my questions and experimentations in their native languages.

How to Learn Any Language

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63#
发表于 2009-1-1 17:01:15 |只看该作者

Indonesian still has nothing that will be regarded as grammar by anybody who’sfficeffice" />

done battle with Latin or Russian. There are suffixes and prefixes aplenty, neat and

regular, that convert verbs into nouns and give verbs additional meanings and the like,

but no inflections according to person, number, tense, aspect, or anything else.

Indonesian uses the Roman alphabet and is delightfully easy to pronounce. If

you’ve ever studied any other language, you’ll marvel at how quickly and clearly you’ll

understand and be understood.

Indonesian is closely related to Malayan, the language of Malaysia and Singapore,

and gives you a head start in Tagalog, the major language of the Philippines.

Hindi and Urdu

The spoken languages of India and Pakistan, Hindi and Urdu, are so close that the true

language lover is tempted to take the plunge even though both languages use different

and, to us, unfamiliar scripts (Devanagari, and a mixture of Persian and Arabic). Though

other languages abound on the Indian subcontinent, Hindi-Urdu united their respective

nations and whoever jumps in (despite the current lack of good learning materials) will

be able to communicate with a population second only to that of China.

Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian

Despite the grammatical complexity and the relatively small pool of native speakers, an

occasional adventurer is drawn almost masochistically to the three Finno-Ugric

languages. If you were the hated kid in ninth grade who stayed after algebra class to beg

the teacher to introduce you to calculus, they might want to try one of these.

Every word in all three languages is accented on the first syllable – every single

word, names and all, giving those languages the sound of a pneumatic jackhammer

breaking up a sidewalk. There are, in Finnish, fifteen noun cases in the singular and

sixteen in the plural. Hungarian and Estonian aren’t far behind. And that’s the easy part!

People whose language you choose to learn often ask polite questions about why

you wanted to learn their language. Let on to a Finn, a Hungarian, or an Estonian that you

know a little bit of their language and you will not merely be questioned. You’ll be cross

examined!

Swahili

Swahili enjoyed a surge of support beginning in the late ffice:smarttags" />1960’s among young American

blacks who wanted to reconnect to their African roots. Anyone who pressed on and

mastered Swahili would today speak a language spoken by fifty million people living in

central and eastern Africa, including the nations of Kenya and Tanzania in which Swahili

is the national language. Swahili is a Bantu language, and once you learn it you can

expect easy going when you decide to learn Kiganda, Kikamba, Kikuyu, Kinyanja,

Kichaga, Kiluba, Kishona, Kizulu, Kikongo, and Kiduala, all of which are spoken over

smaller areas in Africa south of the Sahara.

Swahili uses the Roman alphabet. The Say It In Swahili phrase book advises us not

to be discouraged by words like kitakachonisahilishia, because Swahili grammar is

mercifully regular and logical!

English

The mere fact that you’re reading these words right now calls for self congratulations. It

means you’re fluent in the winner, the international language, the number one language

of all time!

When a Soviet plane approaches the airport in China, the pilot and the control tower

don’t speak Russian to each other. They don’t speak Chinese. They speak English. If an

Italian plane is about to land in another part of Italy, the Italian pilot and the Italian traffic

control person also speak English.

When the Israeli general and the Egyptian general met in Sinai in October 1973 to

talk truce in the Yom Kippur War, they didn’t speak Hebrew. They didn’t speak Arabic.

They spoke English.

When Norwegian whaling ships put into the port of Capetown, South Africa, to hire

Zulu seamen, the interviewing is not done in Norwegian or Zulu. It’s done in English.

The parliaments of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway send delegates to a body called

the Nordic Council. Their official meetings are conducted – at great expense in

interpreters and simultaneous interpretation equipment – in Swedish, Danish and

Norwegian. When the meetings end, however, and the delegates from the three

neighbouring countries adjourn to the bar and the dining room, they all start speaking

English with each other!

Haven’t you noticed something odd about protestors you have seen on TV

demonstrating in Lithuania, Estonia, Korea, Iraq, Mexico, and other countries where

neither the protestors, the ones they’re protesting against, nor the local media speak

native English? In addition to the signs and banners in their own languages, they always

carry signs and banners in English. And for good reason. They want their message to

reverberate around the world.

On a map of Africa, Nigeria seems a tiny patch where the bulge of that gigantic

continent meets the body. Inside that patch, however, live between 100 and 120 million

people speaking 250 different languages, with names like Yoruba, Ibo, Hausa, Nupe, and

Oyo. From their first day of school, the children of Nigeria are taught English. Without

English, not only could Nigeria not talk to the world, Nigerians couldn’t even talk to each

other.

When a Nigerian educator, Aliu Babtunde Fafunwa, proposed in early 1991 that

Nigerian children begin their education in their 250 respective mother tongues, the

government newspaper itself wrote in an editorial, “The least luxury we can afford in the

last decade of the twentieth century is an idealistic experiment in linguistic nationalism

which could cut our children off from the main current of human development.” That’s

hardly a hate filled denunciation of former colonial masters.

Every attempt to launch an artificial international language has so far failed.

Esperanto, Idiom Neutral, Kosmos, Monoglottica, Universalsprache, Neo-Latine,

Vertparl, Mundolingue, Dil, Volapuk, even an international language based on the notes

of the musical scale, all started out weak and gradually tapered off. My guess is they

always will. You can no more “vote” a language into being the international language

than you can vote warmth into a blizzard.

Languages attain prominence something the way individuals and countries do,

through all kinds of force, including war. There’s an added element in prominence,

however. Brute force is not enough. The winning language must have a degree of

acceptability to the losers.

Russian emerged from World War II as a mighty language, but it failed to bluster

beyond the bounds of the Communist empire. Russian even failed to inspire people to

learn it inside their empire. Students in Hungary, Romania, and East Germany knew no

more Russian after eight years of schooling than Americans know French after similar

exposure.

English, on the other hand, was welcomed. Africans and Asians may not have

rejoiced at being forcibly incorporated into the British Empire, but they recognised that

the English language, if learned by all, was a unifying tool that enabled different tribes

who lived five miles apart to communicate for the first time, in a language brought down

upon them from thousands of miles away.

A wolf will lift his neck to let a larger wolf know that he accepts the other’s

dominant role as leader. The entire world has lifted its neck to acknowledge English as

the language of choice in the modern world. It wasn’t all military and commercial power,

either. American movies, songs, comic strips, TV series, even T-shirts all helped make

English the international language of the earth by acclaim.

But only the shortsighted will consider the dominance of English reason to return

foreign language materials to the bookstore and forget the whole thing. It’s precisely

because the peoples of the world honour our language that we get so much more

appreciation when we go out of our way to honour theirs.

 

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62#
发表于 2009-1-1 17:00:55 |只看该作者

Hebrewfficeffice" />

Hebrew is one of the more difficult languages, and the numerical incentives for tackling

it are not great because Hebrew is spoken only in Israel and in small communities of

Israelis in America and other Western countries. Until recently the teaching of Hebrew

was illegal in the Soviet Union, but classrooms are overflowing now across the country

as Jews prepare to emigrate to Israel or assert their Jewishness inside the Soviet Union.

Hebrew is spoken wherever Jews worship around the world, and there is a surge of

interest in learning Hebrew among young Americans who were born Jewish even though

they may not have had a strong Jewish upbringing.

If you’re not Jewish and choose to learn Hebrew anyhow, you will set loose waves

of appreciation among Jews grateful to outsiders willing to go to that much trouble.

Once you learn the Hebrew alphabet, you’ll be in command of virtually the same

alphabet used by Yiddish, a language based on fifteenth century low German that was

spoken by millions of East European Jews before Hitler’s extermination and is still

understood in a surprising number of places. It’s also the alphabet used by Ladino, the

“Spanish of Cervantes” that became the “Yiddish” of the Jews of Spanish origin who

scattered throughout the eastern Mediterranean after the beginning of the Spanish

Inquisition. There are few language thrills that can match that of an American who

learned the Hebrew alphabet in Hebrew school looking at a printed page in a language he

didn’t know existed (many Jews themselves are totally unaware of the existence of

Ladino) and discovering he can read it and understand it with his high school Spanish!

Greek

Modern Greek has a grammar slightly less glorious than that of its ancient civilisation. In

difficulty, Greek falls somewhere between French and Russian. Each verb has two forms

and verbs change according to person, number, and tense. The future tense is almost as

easy as it is in English – the word tha serving the role of our will. Adjectives agree with

their nouns according to gender (three of them) and number.

Greek enjoys a leftover prestige, not only from ancient times but from the not long

vanished tradition of the scholar who prided himself on being at home in Latin and

Ancient Greek. Every five minutes during your study of Greek you’ll be reminded of our

debt to the Greek language. Zestos means “hot” (“zesty”), chronos means “time” or

“year,” “number” is arithmo, when you want your cheque in a restaurant you ask for the

logariazmo (as in “logarithm”), the Greek word for “clear” describing weather is

katharos (as in “catharsis”), “season” is epohi (“epoch”), and so on.

Greek may be the language of one small European country only, but there are

thriving Greek communities throughout the Middle East, Egypt, and other parts of Africa,

and the United States. Enterprising Greeks have carried the language around the world.

Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

The Scandinavian languages are lumped together because of their similarity and the

reliability with which natives of one Scandinavian country can deal with the languages of

the others. That similarity is something for you to know and enjoy, not something for you

to mention to the Scandinavians themselves. They’re horrified when outsiders say, “Gee,

Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are all alike!” They prefer to dwell upon the

differences. There was a popular movement in Norwegian early in the twentieth century

to change the language for no apparent reason other than to make it less like Danish.

If your aim is to communicate in all three countries, learn Norwegian first. It’s the

linguistic centre of Scandinavia. A Dane can deal comfortably with Norwegian, but much

less so with Swedish. A Swede can deal comfortably with Norwegian, but much less so

with Danish. A Norwegian can deal comfortably with both Swedish and Danish.

The Scandinavian languages are relatively easy for Americans to learn. They’re

Germanic languages, related to English, but vastly easier to learn than German. The verbs

don’t change for person and number, and only slightly for tense. The word order follows

English obligingly most of the way. Like Dutch, the Scandinavian languages have two

genders – common and neuter – and the definite article follows the noun and becomes

one word. (For example, “a pen” in Norwegian is en penn, “the pen” is pennen.)

Holland is said to be the non-English speaking country with the highest percentage

of people fluent in English. The three Scandinavian countries are close behind. You may

never need their language no matter where you go or who you deal with in Scandinavia,

but Scandinavians are among the most appreciative people on earth if you know their

language anyhow.

Polish, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian

These western Slavic languages use the Roman alphabet. The eastern Slavic languages

use the Cyrillic (sometimes mistakenly called the Russian) alphabet. Don’t suggest it

after a few drinks in Warsaw, but Polish might be better off using the Cyrillic alphabet. A

Polish sound resembling the sh combined with the following ch in push charlie is spelled

szcz in Polish. That sound, which requires four letters in the Roman alphabet, needs only

one in the Cyrillic! Romanising Slavic languages leads to orthographical madness. A

newspaper reporter in a small Southern town went into his editor’s office and said,

“There’s been an earthquake in the Polish city of Pszczyna.” He showed the editor the

story off the wire. After a momentary frown the editor looked up and said, “Find out

what the name of the place was before the earthquake!”

Except for Polish, none of these languages has much bounce beyond its borders, but

if your reason for wanting to learn them involves family, love, or business, that won’t

matter. All Slavic languages are grammatically complex. Verbs change for reasons that

leave even those who speak Romance languages weeping over their wine and wondering

why. There are at least six noun cases in every Slavic language, sometimes seven.

The big payoff in learning any of these Slavic languages is the automatic down

payment you’re making on Russian itself. Russian will be a breeze if you already know

another Slavic language, and conversely, the other Slavic languages will come more

easily if you already know Russian.

Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Ukranian,

Byelorussian

Everything stated above about the western Slavic languages applies to these eastern

Slavic languages with one exception – they use the Cyrillic alphabet, with slight

variations from language to language.

The similarities between Serbian and Croatian, the main languages of Yugoslavia,

are so striking the languages are usually lumped together as Serbo-Croatian.

If you know any two Slavic languages, you can make yourself understood in any of

the other Slavic languages. That may be challenged by Slavic scholars, but it works well

in real life between the western border of Poland and the Ural Mountains and from the

arctic tip of Russia to the Black Sea beaches of Bulgaria.

Indonesian

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Consisting of hundreds of islands

spread out over a South Pacific area the size of the United States, Indonesia is easily the

largest country in the world about which the most other people in the world know the

least. With enough mineral wealth in the ground to make it an economic superpower,

Indonesia is still frequently confused with India or Polynesia.

Indonesian is the easiest major language in the world for a foreigner to learn. It was

called Pasar Malay (“Bazaar Malay”) by the colonial Dutch who looked upon the

Indonesian language as a kind of baby talk for servants and merchants. When Indonesia

won independence in 1948, the ruler, Sukarno, did his best to take that unstructured

language and graft some sophisticated grammar onto it to make it more regimented and

thus difficult. He failed.

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发表于 2009-1-1 17:00:37 |只看该作者

You’ve already learned some of the “middle language” essential to the mastery offficeffice" />

Chinese. Don’t fear that, because there’s a middle language, you’re being called upon to

learn two languages to acquire just one! It’s a shortcut. The middle language is English

the way a Chinese person would say it if all he could do were to come up with the

English words literally and nothing more. Thus, “Do you have my pencil?” in middle

language is ‘You have I-belong pencil, no have?” “The man who lives in the white

house” becomes “Live in white house-belong man.”

I find it helpful to look for the middle language no matter what language I’m

studying. In Russian, “The vase is on the table” becomes “Vase on table.” “Do you have

a pen?” becomes “Is by you pen?” “I like the cake” in Spanish is “To me is pleasing the

cake.” “Where have you studied German?” in German is “Where have you German

studied?” “Do you want me to help?” in Yiddish is “Do you want I should help?” – a

construction that should come as no surprise to anyone with immigrant Jewish

grandparents.

The middle language helps you get the hang of things. Once you see the structure as

revealed by the middle language, it’s easier for you to climb inside the targt language.

Learning the “interesting ways” through middle language is especially important in

Chinese.

Chinese has no alphabet. Each ideogram or character is complete unto itself and

each must be learned. There are said to be as many as eighty thousand Chinese

characters. Fear not. You can carry on fairly sophisticated conversations with knowledge

of a few hundred characters and you can carry on like a Ming orator once you compile a

couple of thousand. You can read a Chinese newspaper with fewer than six thousand.

Though lacking an alphabet, Chinese nonetheless has 214 radicals, the elements that

make up the building blocks for almost every Chinese character. The fact that there are

clusters of Chinese characters that surrender to you by the family group makes the going

quicker and easier.

One problem: the pronunciation of each Chinese character is always one syllable

and one syllable only. Therefore, the same sound has to represent a lot of different things.

We have a slight touch of that in English – a pier has nothing to do with a peer – but

imagine how much utterance duplication you’d have if each word in the language were

limited to one syllable only. (Beginners who learn that the Chinese word for “chopsticks”

is kwai dze and “bus” is gung gung chee chuh may object. I simply mean that the term for

“chopsticks” is two separate words [characters] in Chinese and the term for “bus” is

four!) A Chinese textbook for Americans that makes no pretense of being complete lists

seventy-five different meanings for the sound shih alone!

Chinese differentiates among the various possibilities of meaning by the use of

tones. Each Chinese word is assigned a specific tone, like a musical note. Mandarin

Chinese has four tones, Cantonese has nine.

The word wu in Mandarin’s first tone means “room,” in tone two it means “vulgar,”

in tone three it means “five,” and in tone four wu means “disobedient.”

Take the sentence “Mother is scolding the horse.” The spoken Chinese transliterates

as ma ma ma ma. If we want to make it a question and ask “Is mother scolding the

horse?” just add a fifth ma. Without the tones a Chinese person would hear an

unintelligible babble. With the correct tones, however, it would be as clear to him as

“Peering at a pair of pairs on the pier” is to us.

Ideally you should know the tone of each word and the circumstances under which

words shifts tones, but until you attain that lofty peak, you’ll be okay if you do your best

to imitate the tonality of the native Chinese speaker on your cassettes.

Much is made of our ability to read the Chinese soul through the Chinese language.

“Tomorrow” in Chinese is ming tien, which literally means “bright day.” The character

for “good’ literally depicts woman with child, suggesting that a mother and child are

emblematic of everything good. The character meaning “peace” depicts a woman under a

roof. The character for “discord,” however, is three women under one roof!

All that is indeed fun but hardly a cryptanalysis of the Chinese soul. After all, how

much can you tell about the English soul by noting that the word breakfast really means

“breaking” the “fast” you’ve engaged in since your last bite the night before?

Japanese

Like Chinese, Japanese conversation is fairly easy, but the written language is

complicated. In wartime, America turned out interpreters in Japanese and Chinese at a

satisfactory rate by going straight for the spoken language and ignoring the written

language completely. You may be tempted to do the same.

Certainly you can prioritise the ability to speak and understand over the ability to

read and write, but I urge you to undertake serious study of the written language and

continue steadily. If speech is to be your “hare,” let writing at least be your “tortoise.”

Written Japanese is not as difficult as you might fear. Japanese uses several

thousand characters borrowed from the Chinese, but it uses them in a different and more

limited way that makes them easy to learn. The characters are used along with two

syllabaries, sets of simple written symbols, each of which represents not one single letter

but a complete syllable.

Japanese has no tones to worry about, and Japanese grammar involves the learning

of certain speech patterns more than changes in verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

Japanese has a clarity missing from Chinese. Learn a Japanese word from your

book or cassette and your Japanese friend will understand it at your first attempt to use it.

The commercial advantages of learning Japanese are obvious and on the rise. But

even if your Japanese never reaches a level of proficiency enabling you to do business in

Japanese, your Japanese host and associates will appreciate your efforts. They, after all,

had to learn English. You did not have to learn Japanese. Yet.

Arabic

Arabic is elusive, guttural, and rewarding. Arabic script, written from right to left, writes

each letter differently depending upon whether it occurs at the beginning, the middle, or

the end of a word. Learn it, however, and you’ll be welcome from the North Atlantic

coast of Africa clear through the Middle East to the borders of Iran and Pakistan. Arabic

is also the religious language studied by millions of Muslims around the world whose

native languages are not Arabic. The Arab population of the United States is growing

rapidly. You can hear Arabic on the streets and deal in Arabic in the shops of places like

Dearborn, Michigan, where there is a substantial Arab population.

Your investment in Arabic is likely to gain in value when Israel and the Arab states

achieve a settlement allowing for commerce and development to replace a half century of

open warfare.

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发表于 2009-1-1 17:00:25 |只看该作者

Portugesefficeffice" />

Don’t dismiss Portugese as some kind of slurring, overnasalised cousin of Spanish.

The lightning population growth of Portugese speaking Brazil alone makes

Portugese a major world language. Ancient Portugese navigators carried the language to

the mid-Atlantic, the African countries of Angola and Mozambique, the enclave of Goa

in India, and even the Indonesian island of Timor.

Portugese is the ninth most widely spoken language in the world, after Chinese,

English, Hindi-Urdu, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, German, and Indonesian. Thus,

Portugese is an intelligent choice for the language “shopper” who wants to be different

without abandoning the mainstream.

Portugese nasal sounds are easier than the French and the grammar is only slightly

more difficult than Spanish. Because I learned Spanish first, Portugese will always sound

to me like Spanish that’s been damaged on delivery. (That’s just a smile, not an insult.

Dutch sounds the same way to anyone who’s first studied German, Danish sounds that

way to anyone who’s first studied Norwegian, and Serbo-Croatian definitely fits the

description to anyone who’s first studied Russian.)

German

Germany didn’t leave us a world of colonies where people still speak German, but they

may as well have. In addition to being the principal language of Germany, Austria, and

one of the three main languages of Switzerland, German is, surprisingly, the language

most natives will try first on foreigners when they come visiting in Hungary, Yugoslavia,

Czechoslovakia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia – in fact all the way from Germany’s

eastern border with Poland as far east as Moscow and from the Baltic Sea in the north

clear down to the Mediterranean. English may edge German out by the time of the next

scientific poll in Eastern Europe, but that leaves a tremendous number of German

speakers across Europe and elsewhere. Germany’s reunification, reestablishing Germany

as the central European power, can only intensify the German language’s importance.

German grammar is far from the most difficult, though you’ll be hard to convince

when you find yourself trapped in one of German’s unending dependent clauses. You can

wait through lunch for the German noun after a loop-the-loop adjectival clause that might

translate literally as “the never- having- definitively- researched- the- mating- habits- of-

the- Asian- armadillo- Dr. Schultz,” and you can wait even longer for the German verb.

It’s something you get the hang of, though, and remember, German is family. Its kinship

with English will be a boon throughout.

There are three genders in German and officially four noun cases, but they’re easy.

In only one case does the noun itself change endings, the rest being taken care of by the

preceding article, adjective, or other modifier.

German offers dividends to those interested in science, philosophy, opera, and

getting a good job in international commerce.

Italian

Everybody who’s ever wrestled with Latin deserves to pick up an Italian grammar book

just to relax. Italian is easy Latin, a delight to plunge into. There are three different types

of verbs, but noun cases have been eliminated. Unlike French, Italian pronunciation is

church bell clear, and you can read Italian off the page and be understood after mastering

the regular rules governing the sounds of letters. There are no orthographical booby traps

such as the English tough, weigh, night, though, and the dozens of other deceptive

spellings we Americans can be grateful we never had to learn as foreigners.

Opera, art, wine, cuisine, history, and archaeology are some of the motivators for

learning Italian. Italians are nicer to foreigners trying to learn their language than any

other people whose language is a major one. A passable attempt to speak French in

France is likely to bring little but grudging comprehension from the French. A passable

attempt to speak Italian in Italy will likely lead to an explosive exclamation, “Ahh, you

speak our language!” followed by an offer of a free espresso.

Dutch

It’s easy to dismiss Dutch as a slim shadow of its big language neighbour, German, and

of possible interest only to those Americans eager to ingratiate themselves with an aging

aunt in Amsterdam with a valuable art collection. Not so fast. In addition to the Dutch

spoken in Holland, there are millions of Belgians whose language may be officially

called Flemish but is actually nothing but Dutch going under an assumed name. You’ve

also got millions of educated Indonesians who speak Dutch as a historical echo from the

four hundred years of Dutch colonial rule. Moreover, Dutch is the mother tongue of

Afrikaans, the language of those white South Africans whose ancestors were the Boers

(boer is the Dutch word for “farmer”). Afrikaaners not only understand Dutch but look

up to Dutch much as an Alabaman looks up to someone who speaks British English.

Dutch is much simpler for Americans to learn than German. There are only two

genders (oddly enough, not mascuine and feminine, but common and neuter). Verb

endings don’t change as much in Dutch as in German, and its word order is more like

English than German’s is.

You need not pretend Dutch is a beautiful language. The Dutch themselves joke

about the coarseness of their language. It’s got more of a guttural sound than Arabic,

Hebrew, Russian, and Farsi. If you want a concert in Dutch guttural, ask the next person

who speaks Dutch to say, “Misschien is Uw scheermesje niet scherp genoeg.” It means

“Perhaps your razor blade is not sharp enough,” but that’s irrelevant. That short sentence

explodes with five gutturals that cause the speaker to sound like the exhaust pipe of a

Greyhound bus through a full set of gear changes!

When you learn Dutch, you can cash in on at least forty percent credit when you

decide to take up German.

Russian

Russian is the world’s fourth language in number of speakers after Chinese, English, and

Hindustani. It is extremely difficult to learn to speak Russian correctly, but the Russians

have learned to be patient with foreigners who speak incorrect Russian. Journalists and

others fascinated by discussing recent history with Soviet citizens suddenly free to talk to

foreigners get a lot of joy out of knowing Russian. The much touted commercial

advantages of learning Russian, however, have so far fallen far short of expectation.

The jobs with gargantuan salaries promised to Russian speakers as a fruit of the

resurgence of free enterprise in the Soviet Union are few and shaky as the early

enthusiasm of foreign investors gives way to wait and see attitudes. Long range, Russian

remains a good bet for those willing to learn a language for career advantage. And in the

meantime you can enjoy reading Chekhov and Dostoyevski in the original.

The Russian alphabet may look formidable, but it’s a false alarm. It can be learned

in twenty minutes, but then you’ve got to face the real obstacles, such as three genders;

six noun cases with wave upon wave of noun groups that decline differently; a past tense

that behaves like an adjective; and verbs that have not just person, number, and tense, but

also something called “aspect” – perfective or imperfective.

Knowing Russian yields a lot of satisfaction. You want to pinch yourself as you

find yourself gliding through a printed page of a language you may have grown up

suspecting and fearing. Russian, like German, crackles with good, gutsy sounds that

please you as they leap from your tongue. Russian is a high gratitude language. The new

immigrants from the Soviet Union, though they speak one of the major languages of the

world, don’t expect Americans to know it. They’ll be overjoyed to hear their language

from you.

One advantage of choosing Russian is the head start it offers in almost a dozen

other Slavic languages, should you suddenly want or need one.

Chinese

Chinese is actually more of a life involvement than a language you choose to study.

When you’re in your easy chair studying, Chinese has more power to make you forget

it’s dinner time than any other language. It has more power to draw you out of bed earlier

than necessary to sneak in a few more moments of study. There’s simply more there.

More people speak Chinese than any other language on earth. There’s hardly a

community in the world that doesn’t have someone who speaks Chinese as a native. Even

in the ffice:smarttags" />1940’s, when I first began studying Chinese, there was a Chinese restaurant and a

Chinese laundry even in our small town of Greensboro, North Carolina. You can count

on conversation practice in Chinese from the Chinese laundries of Costa Rica to the

Chinese restaurants of Israel.

The Chinese Communists on the mainland and the Chinese Nationalists in Taiwan

agree that the national language of Chinese is the northern Chinese dialect of Mandarin.

Accept no substitute. Be sure you know what you’re doing if you set out to learn any

Chinese dialect other than Mandarin! It was almost impossible to find a Chinese person

in a Chinese restaurant in America who spoke Mandarin forty years ago. They all spoke a

subdialect of Cantonese, being descendants of the Chinese labourers who came to build

America’s transcontinental railroad in the 1800’s. Today it’s almost impossible to find a

Chinese restaurant in America where the waiters don’t speak Mandarin.

Don’t let yourself be drawn into Cantonese merely because your Chinese friends

happen to be of Cantonese descent or because your new employees are from Cantonese

speaking Hong Kong. Even the Cantonese themselves are now trying to learn Mandarin!

Spoken Chinese is enthrallingly easy. There’s nothing we could call “grammar” in

Chinese. Verbs, nouns, and adjectives never change endings for any reason. I once

caught a showoff student of Chinese trying to intimidate new students by warning them

that Chinese had a different word for “yes” and “no” for each question! That’s largely

true, but not the slightest bit difficult.

The closest thing Chinese has to what we think of as grammar is what we’ll call

“interesting ways.” When you pose a question in Chinese you present both alternatives.

Thus, “Are you going?” becomes “You go not go?” or “Are you going or not?” If you

are going, the word for “yes” to that question is “go.” If you’re not going, you say “Not

go.” Likewise, “Are you going to play?” becomes, literally translated, “You play not

play?” To answer “yes,” you say “Play.” “No” is “Not play.”

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5fficeffice" />

(Thailand) ………………………………………………………………. 48

Tho (N Vietnam; S China) …………………………………………………….. 1

Thonga (Mozambique; South Africa) …………………………………………. 3

Tibetan (SW China; N India; Nepal) ………………………………………….. 5

Tigrinya (S Eritrea, Tigre, Ethiopia) ………………………………………….. 4

Tiv (SE Nigeria; Cameroon) ………………………………………………….. 2

Tong (see Dong)

Tonga (SW Zambia; NW Zimbabwe) ………………………………………… 2

Tswana (Botswana; South Africa) ……………………………………………. 3

Tudza (N Vietnam; S China) …………………………………………………. 1

Tulu (S India) ………………………………………………………………… 2

Tumbuka (N Malawi; NE Zambia) …………………………………………… 2

Turkish (Turkey) ……………………………………………………………… 55

Turkmen (S USSR; NE Iran; Afghanistan) …………………………………… 3

Twi-Fante (see Akan)

Uighur (Xinjang, NW China; SC USSR) ……………………………………… 7

Ukranian (USSR; Poland) …………………………………………………….. 45

Urdu

4

(Pakistan; India) ……………………………………………………….. 92

Uzbek (USSR) ………………………………………………………………… 13

Vietnamese (Vietnam) ………………………………………………………… 57

Wolaytta (SW Ethiopia) ………………………………………………………. 2

Wolof (Senegal) ………………………………………………………………. 6

Wu (Shanghai and nearby provinces, China) …………………………………. 62

Xhosa (SW Cape Province, South Africa) …………………………………….. 7

Yao (see Mien) (Malawi; Tanzania; Mozambique)

Yi (S and SW China) ………………………………………………………….. 6

Yiddish

6

Yoruba (SW Nigeria; Zou, Benin) …………………………………………….. 18

Zande (NE Zaire; SW Sudan) …………………………………………………. 1

Zhuang (S China) ……………………………………………………………… 14

Zulu (N Natal, South Africa; Lesotho) ………………………………………… 7

(1) One of the fifteen languages of the Constitution of India. (2) See Kabyle, Riff,

Shilha, and Tamazight. (3) See Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min, and Hakka. The

“common speech” (Putonghua) or the “national language” (Guoyu) is a standardised

form of Mandarin as spoken in the area of Beijing. (4) Hindi and Urdu are essentially the

same language, Hindustani. As the official language of Pakistan it is written in a

modified Arabic script and called Urdu. As the official language of India it is written in

the Devanagari script and called Hindi. (5) The distinction between some Thai dialects

and Lao is political rather than linguistic. (6) Yiddish is usually considered a variant of

German, though it has its own standard grammar, dictionaries, a highly developed

literature, and is written in Hebrew characters.

Farber’s Language

Reviews

We have such things as theatre reviews, movie reviews, books reviews, and restaurant

reviews to help trusting readers decide which plays, movies, books, and restaurants are

worth their time and money.

So here’s a series of language reviews – thumbnail sketches of some of the major

languages of the world with comments on their prevalence, their usefulness, the difficulty

or ease with which each may be learned, and special characteristics the potential learner

should know.

French

After English, French is the world’s most popular second language. Several other

languages are spoken by more people: Chinese, English, Hindustani (the spoken form of

Hindi and Urdu), Russian, Spanish, Japanese, German, Indonesian, and even Portugese

count more speakers than French. But French can be heard in practically every corner of

the world and is often spoken by the most influential segments of a given population. The

old French empire, though not as vast as the British, was nonetheless vast. French is

therefore spoken in what you may find a surprising number of countries. So is Chinese,

but the French spoken by the educated classes and government officials in Canada,

Africa, Lebanon and throughout the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean, and the South

Pacific outweighs in cultural influence the Chinese spoken in the Chinatowns of

America, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, London, and

everywhere else.

French no longer deserves its reputation as “the language of diplomacy” (during

how many summit meetings since World War II have the chiefs of state been able to

communicate even one simple thought to each other in French?), but never mind. French

is still respected and revered as a language of cultured people the world over.

Fully sixty percent of all those who come to practice parties at the Language Club

in New York come seeking practice in French. Efforts to convince Americans shopping

around for a language to learn to shift their attentions from French to currently more

advantageous languages like Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic are usually

unavailing. It’s French they want!

French lies in the middle range of difficulty to learn. The grammar is mercifully

simple, but correct pronunciation with a decent French accent is hard to achieve. And for

some reason, bad French comes across as much worse than bad German, bad Italian, bad

Spanish, or bad anything else. The native French ear and French attitude are unforgiving.

There are no noun cases, but verbs inflect and adjectives must agree with nouns.

There’s a subjunctive mood you’re strongly urged to learn even though the younger

French themselves increasingly ignore it.

If you’re planning to study French along with other languages, make sure you learn

French best of all. You will be judged in the world by your French, and no matter how

well you handle Dutch, Hungarian, Norwegian, or Indonesian, you will not be regarded

as a person of language accomplishment if your French is poor.

Spanish

Spanish seems to be the “natural” second language for Americans, owing to our

proximity to the Spanish-speaking centres of North, Central, and South America and the

growing prevalence of Spanish in our country. It’s easier for Americans to speak good

Spanish than good French. It’s a more phonetic language and you don’t have the problem

of the last few letters of a word being silent – as you often do in French. Also, correct

Spanish pronunciation is less difficult than correct French pronunciation.

Spanish grammar is similar to French (as is that of all other Romance languages),

and the subjunctive tense waits to test your character.

There are some happy surprises in store for Spanish learners. Of course you expect

Spanish to carry you through Latin America and Spain, but you may not expect to be able

to communicate with the older generation in the Philippines and even with Sephardic

Jews in Israel (as well as Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria) whose vernacular is

a language known as Ladino, a fifteenth and sixteenth century Spanish with a Hebrew

admixture that is written in the Hebrew alphabet. Spanish offers perhaps the grandest of

good deal opportunities. Whoever learns Spanish holds an option to acquire Portugese at

half price.

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Hindifficeffice" />

4

…………………………………………………………………………… 352

Ho (Buhar and Orissa states, India) …………………………………………….. 1

Hungarian (or Magyar) (Hungary) ……………………………………………… 14

Iban (Kalimantan, Indonesia; Malaysia) ……………………………………….. 1

Ibidio (see Efik)

Igbo (or Ibo) (Lower Niger R., Nigeria) ………………………………………… 16

Ijaw (Niger River Delta, Nigeria) ………………………………………………. 2

Ilocano (NW Luzon, Philippines) ……………………………………………….. 7

Indonesian (see Malay-Indonesian)

Italian (Italy) ……………………………………………………………………. 63

Japanese (Japan) ………………………………………………………………… 125

Javanese (Java, Indonesia) ……………………………………………………… 58

Kabyle (W Kabylia, N Algeria) ………………………………………………… 3

Kamba (E Kenya) ………………………………………………………………. 3

Kannada

1

(S India) ……………………………………………………………… 3

Kanuri (Nigeria; Niger; Chad; Cameroon) ……………………………………… 4

Karen (see Sgaw)

Karo-Dairi (N Sumatra, Indonesia) …………………………………………….. 2

Kashmiri

1

(N India; NE Pakistan) ……………………………………………… 4

Kazakh (USSR) ……………………………………………………………….. 8

Kenuzi-Dongola (S Egypt; Sudan) ……………………………………………. 1

Khalka (see Mongolian)

Khmer (Kampuchea; Vietnam; Thailand) ……………………………………… 7

Khmer, Northern (Thailand) …………………………………………………… 1

Kikuyu (or Gekoyo) (W and C Kenya) ……………………………………….. 5

Kirghiz (USSR) ……………………………………………………………….. 2

Kituba (Bas-Zaire, Bandundu, Zaire) …………………………………………. 4

Kongo (W Zaire; S Congo; NW Angola) ……………………………………… 3

Konkani (Maharashita and SW India) ………………………………………… 4

Korean (North and South Korea; China; Japan) ………………………………. 71

Kurdish (south-west of Caspian Sea) …………………………………………. 9

Kurukh (or Oraon) (C and E India) …………………………………………… 2

Lao

5

(Laos) …………………………………………………………………… 4

Lampung (Sumatra, Indonesia) ………………………………………………. 1

Latvian (Latvia) ………………………………………………………………. 2

Lingala (incl. Bangala) (Zaire) ……………………………………………….. 6

Lithuanian (Lithuania) ……………………………………………………….. 2

Luba-Lulua (or Chiluba) (Kasai, Zaire) ………………………………………. 6

Luba-Shaba (Shaba, Zaire) …………………………………………………… 1

Lubu (E Sumatra, Indonesia) …………………………………………………. 1

Luhya (W Kenya) …………………………………………………………….. 3

Luo (Kenya; Nyanza, Tanzania) ……………………………………………… 3

Luri (SW Iran; Iraq) ………………………………………………………….. 3

Lwena (E Angola; W Zambia) ……………………………………………….. 1

Macedonian (Macedonia, Yugoslavia) ……………………………………….. 2

Madurese (Madura, Indonesia) ……………………………………………….. 10

Magindanaon (Moro Gulf, S Philippines) …………………………………….. 1

Makassar (S Sulawesi, Indonesia) …………………………………………….. 2

Makua (S Tanzania; N Mozambique) ………………………………………… 3

Malagasy (Madagascar) ………………………………………………………. 11

Malay-Indonesian …………………………………………………………….. 142

Malay, Pattani (SE peninsular Thailand) ……………………………………… 1

Malayalam

1

(Kerala, India) …………………………………………………… 34

Malinke-Bambara-Dyula (W Africa) …………………………………………. 9

Mandarin (China, Taiwan, Singapore) ………………………………………… 864

Marathi

1

(Maharashtra, India) ………………………………………………… 64

Mazandarani (S Mazandaran, N Iran) ………………………………………… 2

Mbundu (or Umbundu) (Benguela, Angola) ………………………………….. 3

Mbundu (or Kimbundu) (Luanda, Angola) …………………………………… 3

Meithei (NE India; Bangladesh) ………………………………………………. 1

Mende (S and E Sierra Leone) ………………………………………………… 2

Meru (Eastern Province, C Tanzania) …………………………………………. 1

Miao (or Hmong) (S China; SE Asia) …………………………………………. 5

Mien (China; Vietnam; Laos; Thailand) ………………………………………. 2

Min (SE China; Taiwan; Malaysia) …………………………………………… 48

Minangkabau (W Sumatra, Indonesia) ……………………………………….. 6

Moldavian (included with Romanian)

Mongolian (Mongolia; NE China) …………………………………………….. 5

Mordvin (USSR) ………………………………………………………………. 1

Moré (central part of Burkina Faso) …………………………………………… 4

Nepali (Nepal, NE India; Bhutan) …………………………………………….. 13

Ngulu (Zambezia, Mozambique Malawi) …………………………………….. 2

Nkole (Western Province, Uganda) …………………………………………… 1

Norwegian (Norway) …………………………………………………………. 5

Nung (NE of Hanoi, Vietnam; China) ………………………………………… 1

Nupe (Kwara, Niger States, Nigeria) ………………………………………….. 1

Nyamwezi-Sukuma (NW Tanzania) ………………………………………….. 4

Nyanja (Malawi; Zambia; N Zimbabwe) ……………………………………… 4

Oriya

1

(E India) ……………………………………………………………….. 30

Oromo (W Ethiopia; N Kenya) ……………………………………………….. 10

Pampangan (NW of Manila, Philippines) …………………………………….. 2

Panay-Hiligaynon (Philippines) ………………………………………………. 6

Pangasinan (Philippines) ……………………………………………………… 2

Pashtu (Pakistan; Afghanistan; Iran) …………………………………………. 21

Pedi (see Sotho, Northern)

Persian (Iran; Afghanistan) …………………………………………………… 32

Polish (Poland) ……………………………………………………………….. 43

Portugese (Portugal, Brazil) ………………………………………………….. 173

Provençal (S France) …………………………………………………………. 4

Punjabi

1

(Punjab, Pakistan; NW India) ……………………………………….. 84

Pushto (see Pashtu – many spellings)

Quechua (Peru; Bolivia; Ecuador; Argentina) ………………………………… 8

Rejang (SW Sumatra, Indonesia) ……………………………………………… 1

Riff (N Morocco; Algerian Coast) …………………………………………….. 1

Romanian (Romania; Moldavia, USSR) ……………………………………… 25

Romany (Vlach only) (Europe; America) …………………………………….. 1

Ruanda (Rwanda; S Uganda; E Zaire) ………………………………………… 8

Rundi (Burundi) ………………………………………………………………. 6

Russian (USSR) ……………………………………………………………….. 293

Samar-Leyte (Central E Philippines) ………………………………………….. 3

Sango (Central African Republic) …………………………………………….. 3

Santali (E India; Nepal) ………………………………………………………. 5

Sasak (Lombok, Alas Strait, Indonesia) ………………………………………. 1

Serbo-Croatian (Yugoslavia) …………………………………………………. 20

Sgaw (SW, W, N of Rangoon, Burma) ……………………………………….. 1

Shan (Shan, E Burma) ………………………………………………………… 3

Shilha (W Algeria; S Morocco) ……………………………………………….. 3

Shona (Zimbabwe) ……………………………………………………………. 7

Sidamo (Sidamo, S Ethiopia) …………………………………………………. 1

Sindhi

1

(SE Pakistan; W India) ……………………………………………….. 16

Sinhalese (Sri Lanka) …………………………………………………………. 13

Slovak (Czechoslovakia) ……………………………………………………… 5

Slovene (Slovenia, NW Yugoslavia) ………………………………………….. 2

Soga (Busoga, Uganda) ……………………………………………………….. 1

Somali (Somalia; Ethiopia; Kenya; Djbouti) ………………………………….. 7

Songye (Kasia Or., NW Shala, Zaire) …………………………………………. 1

Soninke (Mali; countries to W, S, E) ………………………………………….. 1

Sotho, Northern (South Africa) ……………………………………………….. 3

Sotho, Southern (South Africa; Lesotho) ……………………………………… 4

Spanish (Spain; Central and South America; Caribbean) ……………………… 341

Sundanese (Sunda Strait, Indonesia) ………………………………………….. 24

Swahili (Kenya; Tanzania; Zaire; Uganda) …………………………………… 43

Swati (Swaziland; South Africa) ……………………………………………… 1

Swedish (Sweden; Finland) …………………………………………………… 9

Sylhetti (Bangladesh) …………………………………………………………. 5

Tagalog (Philippines) …………………………………………………………. 36

Tajiki (USSR) ………………………………………………………………… 4

Tamazight (N Morocco; W Algeria) ………………………………………….. 3

Tamil

1

(Tamil Nadu, India; Sri Lanka) ……………………………………….. 65

Tatar (USSR) ………………………………………………………………….. 7

Tausug (Philippines; Malaysia) ……………………………………………….. 1

Telugu

1

(Andhra Pradesh, SE India) ………………………………………….. 68

Temne (C Sierra Leone) ………………………………………………………. 1

Thai

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All those wishing more information about the Language Club may write:fficeffice" />

The Language Club

P.O. Box 121

New York, NY 10108

Our telephone number is (212) 787-2110.

The Language Club has no official handshake, club song, club motto, or club dues.

(You come when you feel like it and you pay for your own meal.)

We do, however, have an official club joke. Once you know this joke, you’re as

much a member of the Language Club as anybody else.

Two mice were hopelessly trapped. A hungry cat was poised to pounce. There was

no escape.

At the last instant, one of the mice put his little paws up to his lips and yelled, “Bow

wow!”

The cat turned around and ran away, whereupon that mouse turned to the other

mouse and said, “You see, that’s the advantage of knowing a second language!”

The Principal Languages

of the World

Source: Sidney S. Culbert, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash. 98195

Total number of speakers (native plus nonnative) of languages spoken by at least

one million persons (midyear 1989)

Language Millions

Achinese (N. Sumatra, Indonesia) ………………………………………….. 3

Afrikaans (South Africa) …………………………………………………… 10

Akan (or Twi-Fante) (Ghana) ……………………………………………… 7

Albanian (Albania; Yugoslavia) ……………………………………………. 5

Amharic (Ethiopia) …………………………………………………………. 17

Arabic ………………………………………………………………………. 197

Armenian (USSR) …………………………………………………………… 5

Assamese (Assam, India; Bangladesh) ……………………………………… 22

Aymara (Bolivia; Peru) ……………………………………………………… 2

Azerbaijani (Iran; USSR) …………………………………………………… 14

Balinese (Indonesia) ………………………………………………………… 3

Baluchi (Bakuchistan, Pakistan) ……………………………………………. 4

Bashkir (USSR) …………………………………………………………….. 1

Batak Toda (including Anakola) (Indonesia) (see also karo-Dain) ………….. 4

Baule (Cote d’Ivoire) ……………………………………………………….. 2

Beja (Kassala, Sudan; Ethiopia) ……………………………………………. 1

Bemba (Zambia) ……………………………………………………………. 2

Bengali

1

/Berber

2

(Bengal, India; Bangladesh) ……………………………… 184

Beti (Cameroon; Gabon; Eq. Guinea) ………………………………………. 2

Bhili (India) …………………………………………………………………. 3

Bikol (SE Luzon, Philippines) ………………………………………………. 4

Brahui (Pakistan; Afghanistan; Iran) ………………………………………… 1

Bugis (Indonesia; Malaysia) …………………………………………………. 4

Bulgarian (Bulgaria) ………………………………………………………… 9

Burmese (Burma) ……………………………………………………………. 30

Buyi (S Guizhou, S China) …………………………………………………… 2

Byelorussian (USSR) ………………………………………………………… 10

Cantonese (or Yue) (China; Hong Kong) …………………………………….. 63

Catalan (NE Spain; S France; Andorra) ……………………………………… 9

Cebuano (Bohol Sea area, Philippines) ………………………………………. 12

Chagga (Kilimanjaro area, Tanzania) ………………………………………… 1

Chiga (Ankole, Uganda) ……………………………………………………… 1

Chinese

3

Chuvash (USSR) ……………………………………………………………… 2

Czech (Czechoslovakia) ………………………………………………………. 12

Danish (Denmark) …………………………………………………………….. 5

Dimli (EC Turkey) ……………………………………………………………. 1

Dogri (Jammu-Kashmir, C and E India) ………………………………………. 1

Dong (Guizhou, Hunan, Guangxi, China) …………………………………….. 2

Dutch-Flemish (Netherlands; Belgium) ……………………………………….. 21

Dyerma (SW Niger) …………………………………………………………… 2

Edo (Bendel, S Nigeria) ……………………………………………………….. 1

Efik (incl. Ibido) (SE Nigeria; W Cameroon) …………………………………. 6

English ………………………………………………………………………… 443

Esperanto ……………………………………………………………………… 2

Estonian (Estonia) …………………………………………………………….. 1

Ewe (SE Ghana; S Togo) ……………………………………………………… 3

Fang-Bulu (Dialects of Beti, q.v.)

Farsi (Iranian form of Persian, q.v.)

Finnish (Finland; Sweden) …………………………………………………….. 6

Flemish (see Dutch-Flemish)

Fon (SC Benin; S Togo) ………………………………………………………. 1

French (France, Switzerland) …………………………………………………. 121

Fula (or Peulh) (Cameroon; Nigeria) …………………………………………. 13

Fulakunda (Senegambia; Guinea Bissau) …………………………………….. 2

Futa Jalon (NW Guinea; Sierra Leone) ……………………………………….. 3

Galician (Galicia, NW Spain) …………………………………………………. 3

Galla (see Oromo)

Ganda (or Luganda) (S Uganda) ………………………………………………. 3

Georgian (USSR) ……………………………………………………………… 4

German (Germany; Austria; Switzerland) …………………………………….. 118

Gilaki (Gilan, NW Iran) ……………………………………………………….. 2

Gogo (Riff Valley, Tanzania) ………………………………………………….. 1

Gondi (Central India) ………………………………………………………….. 2

Greek (Greece) ………………………………………………………………… 12

Guarani (Paraguay) ……………………………………………………………. 4

Gujarati (W and C India; S Pakistan) ………………………………………….. 38

Gusii (Kisii District, Nyanza, Kenya) ………………………………………….. 2

Hadiyya (Arusi, Ethiopia) ……………………………………………………… 2

Hakka (or Kejia) (SE China) …………………………………………………… 32

Hani (S China) …………………………………………………………………. 1

Hausa (N Nigeria; Niger; Cameroon) ………………………………………….. 34

Haya (Kagera, NW Tanzania) …………………………………………………. 1

Henrew (Israel) …………………………………………………………………. 4

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To Speak or Not to Speakfficeffice" />

Be neither too boorish nor too reticent with your new knowledge. Don’t go barrelling in

with scant command of a language if doing so causes ungainly delays in a busy

restaurant. Neither should you let shyness deny you a good opportunity to send a few

volleys of conversation across the net.

Don’t be like the beginner who took his party into a French restaurant in New York

and insisted on trying to order for everybody in French. The waiter, himself French,

quickly abandoning any hope of understanding the poor wretch, pulled a diplomatic coup

worthy of a medal and a kiss on both cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with an accent French enough to draw the truffles up out of the

underbrush of Alsace, “I don’t speak French.”

“You don’t speak French!” thundered the hapless showoff.

Non, monsieur,” said the waiter.

“Well, then,” said he, “send me somebody who does!”

Speaking of Peace

Does knowledge of other languages lead to peace? One witness says “No. Knowing the

other guy’s language merely enables you to get into more arguments of greater depth and

intensity.” Another witness says, “Of course, language knowledge breeds peace. How

could I pull a trigger and shoot a man when what I really want is a chance to sit down

with him and learn his irregular verbs?” Put me solidly in the latter category. It’s

impossible to learn a language and not learn a great deal about the country and its people,

and usually those who learn about a country and its people develop a certain empathy and

advocacy for that nation.

When Serb fights Croat in Yugoslavia, I don’t ignore it. Neither do I choose sides.

They were both so helpful to me when I was learning Serbo-Croatian. I want them all to

work together and get along.

A little knowledge of a language, then of a people, can convert even a rabid partisan

into a one man peace movement!

Keep Learning

Stay with it. Keep pressing ahead with all of the tools in all of the ways suggested, plus

whatever other ways you discover en route that seem to work for you. Keep pursuing

opportunities to use what you learn, not just in exercises and self simulation, but in

genuine, real life conversation, reading, writing and comprehension.

When will you “arrive”? When will you no longer “be studying” but “have learned”

the language?

Never! At least, pretend never. Your linguistic infancy will lead to babyhood,

childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and so on. Your fragments of knowledge will

lead to competence. Your competence will lead to fluency. Your fluency will intensify to

higher and higher levels of fluency.

The best attitude, however, is that your attempt to master the foreign language

should remain perpetually unfinished business.

You’ll succeed if you make sure you never go to bed knowing no more of your

target language that you did when you woke up!

P A R T T H R E E

Appendices

The Language Club

In 1984 some of us language lovers decided that, although there were plenty of places in

New York to learn foreign languages, there were no places to go to practice foreign

languages.

Sure, you can let fly a greeting in Italian and a request for red pepper at the pizzaria

and practice similar performances at even the busiest French restaurant, but there was no

place to sit down, have a glass of wine, open books, converse with others, and consult

with native speakers for two or three hours at a time.

So we started the Language Club with “practice parties” every Monday night at La

Maganette, a restaurant in Manhattan at the corner of Third Avenue and Fiftieth Street.

That remains our “mother club,” though we’ve extended our practice parties to other

evenings and other restaurants – even a Sunday brunch at Victor’s on Columbus Avenue

at Seventy-first Street.

Our mission is to enable men and women to practice conversation in other

languages in a pleasant, non-threatening atmosphere at fine restaurants at a minimum

price. The restaurants understand the uniqueness of the Language Club and enjoy

catering to such a high minded endeavour.

The questions callers most frequently ask about the Language Club are “What night

is French?” and “What’s your age group?”

We explain that every night is French night – all languages are welcome at all

practice parties. When you enter you go to the French table, the Italian table, the Spanish

table, the German table, the Russian table, etc. Many visitors grasshopper from table to

table, practicing three, four, or more different languages at the same practice party.

When they ask about age group, we immediately understand that their agenda is

broader than mere language practice! We first explain we’re a language club, not a

“social” club or a “singles” club. We emphasise that age is irrelevant, since someone five

years old can provide good language practice for someone ninety-five years old.

Having made that point, we then relent a bit and explain that indeed many of our

members are single, and if two single language lovers should enter our practice party

separately and leave together, we don’t blow a whistle and pull a citizen’s arrest. In fact,

we have several “language marriages” to our credit and at least one confirmed birth!

All we ask is your sincere interest in language practice. All your other interests will

be tolerated provided they do not result in any infringement of the law!

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发表于 2009-1-1 16:58:55 |只看该作者

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There is a clever way to speed learning. Impose little discipline games on yourself geared

to bringing you back to the language often throughout the day for short periods that can’t

possibly get in your way. Don’t let yourself have the first cup of coffee until you review

ten of the words you learned yesterday. Permit yourself dessert if you can go through ten

whole flash cards without a mistake. Say yes to the extra glass of wine if you can name

any five objects in the room in the foreign language while you hold your breath. Let

yourself take off and go see the movie once you’re able to beat the speaker on the

cassette to the foreign word or phrase for a solid minute. Or, as you advance, two or three

minutes.

Roll your own rules. It’s painless. It’s fun. It’s character building. And it rushes you

forward to quicker results.

Profanity and Vulgarity

Forget it. Whoever uses foul language even in English among people he doesn’t know

well loses standing. When you go out of your way to use bad language in a foreign

language, it’s much worse.

One night in a blockhouse on the Austrian side of the Hungarian border waiting for

refugees to come across, our all male crowd represented three languages: English,

German, and Hungarian. A brisk discussion in comparative obscenity broke out and a

fascinating pattern emerged. Whatever we had three or four dirty words for in English,

German always had sixteen or seventeen and Hungarian never less than thirty-five!

Sure, the other guy’s garbage is fun to know, but it’s tacky, so leave it alone. It’s all

right to get command of their unacceptable terms for defensive purposes only – so you’ll

know what not to say and be able to exercise caution when using words dangerously

similar to the no-no words.

It’s a good idea to follow Maimonides on this one: “What is lofty may be said in

any language. What is mean should be said in none.”

Your Second Foreign Language, Your Third, and So On

It’s said that once you master one foreign language, all others come much more easily.

That’s not a myth. Your first foreign language, in a major way, is the first olive dislodged

from the bottle. The rest flow obligingly forth.

Moreover, your second foreign language need have no connection to your first.

Chinese will be easier if you’ve first mastered Italian. Greek will be easier if you’ve

mastered Japanese. You pick up the principles of how language works with your first

conquest. I once asked a man who commanded easily a dozen languages how he did it.

“I started out studying languages when I was young,” he said, “and I was just too

lazy to quit!

He was kidding, of course, but a lot of true words are spoken through

exaggerations.

The Right Word

Don’t settle for being merely understood. Some of the least intelligent and most

unspectacular people on earth can be understood in languages other than their own. Keep

pressing forward toward perfection. “He think he’s a big shot” gets the notion across, but

that shouldn’t satisfy the learner of English searching for the word “megalomaniac”.

It’s a marvellous feeling of unfolding and growth when you learn more and more

words that take you closer and closer to the bull’s eye of what you want to express.

Saying It Right

One of the most maddening things about language learning – you’ll encounter it time and

time again – is having the face of the native you’re speaking with suddenly go blank.

You’ve used a word he doesn’t understand. He asks you to repeat it. You do. He still

doesn’t understand. You repeat it again. Slower. Louder. Finally, in frustration,

desperation, and humiliation, you write the word down or show it to him in your book.

Then he gets it. “Ahh,” the native speaker says, the black night of your spoken error

suddenly pierced by the flashbulb of print. And then – here’s the payoff – he proceeds to

repeat exactly what you’ve been saying to him a dozen or so times without his

comprehending!

That syndrome is particularly prevalent in Chinese, though you risk it in every

language. Be a sport. Eat crow. And even though you’re far from the mood at that

moment, try to catch something in what he says that’s at least slightly different from what

you’ve been saying. If the next native speaker understands your revised pronunciation

without an argument, then that crow you were forced to eat will retroactively taste like

pheasant!

Every language student has good days and bad days with the language for no

apparent reason. On bad days you can’t seem to unleash a simple greeting without

monumental phumphering. On good days you actually feel supernaturally propelled. A

rising tide lifts all boats. Keep working. The bad days as well as the good days will both

be better.

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