How to Learn Any Language QuicklyEasilyInexpensivelyEnjoyably and On Your Own

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In Finnish, the word for “not” is a verb. (At least it behaves like a verb.) Finnish,fficeffice" />

alone in all the world, has an inflecting negative. In every other language in which verbs

conjugate, the form of the verb changes according to person and number, whether the

verb is positive or negative. Thus, in Spanish the verb meaning “to want” goes yo quiero,

tu quieres, el quiere. If you wish to say “I don’t want”, you keep the verb forms the same

and throw the word for “not”, no, in front of it (yo no quiero, tu no quieres, el no quiere).

In Finnish, and this is pure believe-it-or-not to anyone who’s looked at a lot of

different languages, it’s the word for not that does the changing! Thus, “I want,” “you

want,” “he wants” in Finnish goes, (minä) haluan, (sinä) haluat, (hän) halua. In the

negative, however, the verb for “want” becomes halua in all persons and the word for

“not” changes from person to person. Thus, “I don’t want,” “you don’t want,” “he

doesn’t want” becomes (minä) en halua, (sinä) et halua, (hän) ei halua.

I think my most impossible to top discovery is the fact that in Hindi and Urdu

“tomorrow” and “yesterday” are translated by the same word. Once, a Pakistani cab

driver actually seemed irked that I found that to be at all strange. “We have verb tenses to

tell us which is which” was his testy explanation.

American feminists have mounted crusades to convert sexist terms that have over

the years insinuated themselves deep into the language. We’ve all abandoned chairman,

for example, for the cumbersome but less provocative chairperson, manhole for

maintenance hole, and so on.

It’s strange that the most blazing example of language sexism has gone unreformed,

even though it occurs in some countries with active and successful feminist movements.

Maybe it’s because, unlike manhole, this sexism is more than just a word or a term. It’s

gone through the bone into the marrow, through the words of the language into the

grammar.

You may remember it from Spanish 1. You may have gotten it right on the tests and

not thought of it since. I refer to the Romance language “gender surrender” from

feminine to masculine.

Let’s say two women are having lunch. If you want to refer to them in Spanish, the

word is ellas, the feminine “they” or “them.” If they should be joined by a man, however,

the ellas becomes ellos, masculine for “they” or “them.” And no matter how many more

women show up and crowd around the table, the Spanish language can never put that

humpty dumpty ellas back into play – unless the lone man leaves!

Theoretically, a million women can be rallying in the main square of the capital.

The newspapers will report that ellas rallied, made demands, did thus and so. If, however,

one man wanders into the square to join in, the proper pronoun is ellos! And that same

rule goes for French, Italian, Portugese, Romanian, and a few other languages.

You may never come to love grammar, but work with it. Although sometimes

annoying and thick in disguise, it’s your friend.

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French or Tagalog:fficeffice" />

Choosing a Language

What are your language objectives?

This is not merely one of those abstract questions universities and fitness centres

like to annoy you with before they accept your application.

Are you planning to marry a German and live in Germany? Then the language you

want to learn in German. You should stick to German and learn it well. Do you own a

hardware store in a neighbourhood of a growing American city where your customers

represent eighteen different language groups, including Tagalog and Punjabi? Then you

want to learn greetings, key business expressions like “invoice” and “charge account,”

and the names of as many items in your inventory as you can in eighteen different

languages, including Tagalog and Punjabi.

The way you’re going to spend your language learning hours depends on your

objectives.

We’re going to presume here that whatever language you choose to learn, you want

to learn well. If you merely want to learn a smattering of greetings and phrases in a lot of

languages, great. You’re in for a lot of fun, particularly when you see, if you haven’t

already, how far even a few words can carry you. In that case, the departure from the

method outlined here is obvious. You don’t need mastery of the grammar. Most big

bookstores offer racks of phrase books for travellers in up to twenty-five different

languages. Buy all you want and study your favourite ten or fifteen of the first hundred

phrases in each.

Don’t feel frivolous if you feel you want to learn a language but don’t know which

one. You’re part of a movement to correct a weakness that has bedevilled America since

the founding of our nation. Do you like opera? Try Italian. Diamonds? Try Dutch.

Commercial advantage? German or Japanese. Cutting edge positioning for the world

down the road? Chinese or Arabic. East-West barrier breaking and door opening?

Russian.

French is second only to English as an international language, spoken far beyond

the borders of France itself. Spanish enables Americans to become more complete

citizens of the Western Hemisphere, while a resurgent Spain itself becomes an

increasingly important part of Europe.

If willingness of subject peoples to learn the language of the conqueror is any

indication of the conqueror’s popularity, then the winning conqueror is England and the

loser is Russia. Those forced into Moscow’s postwar empire had an aversion to learning

Russian, but in spite of Communism’s failure, the Russian language remains the most

widely spoken of the Slavic languages. It can be your key to the dozen or so related

languages (Polish, Czech, etc.).

Maybe you want to learn a difficult language, like Finnish; an easy language, like

Indonesian; a useful language, like French; or an obscure language, like Albanian.

My motives for learning various languages have ranged from chance and youthful

energy (Norwegian) to wanting a vital tool for my work (Spanish) to processing refugees

(Hungarian) to getting dates with women whose looks I liked (Swedish) to proving I

wasn’t an idiot for almost flunking Latin (Chinese).

Nobody who sells language learning books and devices will ever frown in

disappointment at your choice of a language. Don’t feel you have to apologise or explain

that you want to learn Czech – or Catalan or Yoruba or Urdu or Kurdish – for no other

reason than you’re tired of walking around a world as exciting as this one speaking only

one language!

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Gathering Your Toolsfficeffice" />

You’ve decided which language you’re going to learn, and you’ve made a deal with the

grammar of that language: you agree to learn it, and in return it agrees not to rush you,

bore you, discourage you, or hurt you.

Now it’s time to go shopping. Find a bookstore that offers a broad selection of

language learning materials. Don’t settle for one where the clerk is not sure but says,

“We might have something in French and Spanish over in ‘Language.’”

BASIC TEXTBOOK

Find a basic book (textbook, workbook) that gives you a good grounding in the grammar

of the language. Never mind if it seems to give you grammar and little else. Never mind

if it reminds you of the books that depressed you back in high school and college. We’ll

find all the excitement – reading and conversation – elsewhere. Grammar is all you need

from this one.

DICTIONARY

Most language dictionaries are two way: English-French (or whatever) and French-

English. Make sure the dictionary you buy at least lives up to that. (I have walked out of

bookstores with dictionaries I assumed were two way that turned out to be only one way,

and the way I wasn’t looking for!)

A lot of dictionaries are infuriatingly inadequate. They don’t even have words like

negotiate and proprietor. Spend a little time making sure you’re getting something

substantial. It’s a good idea to look through a newspaper and make a list of some of the

more complicated words in the news columns. Those are the words you’ll soon be

looking up. Does that dictionary have them? Price, colour, and the neatness with which

the dictionary fits into your pocket, brief case, or handbag are a lot less important than

finding a dictionary that can deliver.

PHRASE BOOK

Buy a phrase book for travellers. Berlitz publishes a series in eighteen languages, and

others keep popping up in bookstores and the racks of airport newsstands. They’re

inexpensive and easy to use. These books, smaller than a piece of toast, offer little or no

grammar, but they bristle with practical words and phrases, listing the English followed

by the foreign language and then a transliteration that guides the rankest beginner to an

understandable, usually a creditable, pronunciation.

Don’t be put off by the naïveté, inexpensiveness, superficiality, and comparative

weightlessness of these travellers’ phrase books when laid alongside your impressive

dictionary and your complex grammar book. Good zoos need hummingbirds as well as

elephants.

NEWSPAPER OR MAGAZINE

Find a newspaper or magazine in your target language. Most big cities have newsstands

where you can buy publications in a dazzling variety of different languages. Otherwise,

call the nearest consulate or embassy of the country whose language you’re out to learn.

Usually they’re proud and pleased to help you. If you have a choice, go for a publication

from that country itself, rather than one published by immigrants from that country in

America. Certainly no foreign language publication printed in America is likely to

contain language more authentic than publications printed in the home country, and it

may very well be less authentic.

A friend of mine who set out to learn French immediately bought a subscription to

Le Monde, a popular Paris daily. That’s overkill. If he were to learn every word in any

one issue of Le Monde, it would be “mission accomplished.” One issue of one

publication in your target language at this point is all you need.

STUDENT READER

It may be difficult, but if possible see if you can locate a schoolbook or some reading

material from the country at about a sixth grade level. Such books are obviously excellent

bridges from the rudiments to the real world. If you can’t find one, never mind. Your

newspaper or magazine will seem elementary to you soon enough.

PORTABLE TAPE PLAYER

The invention of the handy portable cassette tape player catapults language learners from

the ox cart to the supersonic jet. You can now inhale a foreign language through your

ears. “You can’t expect me to do two things at once!” is a bygone complaint. Listening to

foreign language cassettes as you go about your daily deeds is a high form of doing two

things at once.

The Walkman (or any such tape player) is an electronic can opener for whatever

language you’re learning. Formerly we had to chew through the tin.

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CASSETTE COURSESfficeffice" />

There are many cassette courses in many foreign languages. They range from “travel”

cassettes, really simple tourist phrase books set to sound and costing between ten and

twenty dollars, clear up to multicassette study courses that carry the student into

advanced levels and cost between one and two hundred dollars, or more.

Don’t dismiss the least expensive ones as “superficial little travel cassettes.” If you

master every word, every phrase, every pronunciation, and every grammatical point

contained in even the simplest of those cassettes, you can consider yourself advanced.

There are basically four kinds of cassettes for the study of foreign languages. We’ll

call them flat single rep, flat double rep, formatted, and cultural.

The flat single rep cassettes, usually the least expensive, give you the English word

or phrase followed by the foreign equivalent uttered only one time.

The flat double rep cassettes are the same, except the foreign phrase is repeated

twice. (When you begin making your own study cassettes, you’ll repeat the foreign piece

three times.)

The formatted cassette puts theories of instruction into practice and follows systems

that some highly successful language teachers have found effective. For example the

Pimsleur method, named after the late Dr. Paul Pimsleur, takes the student by the ear and

guides him through the language as though it were a Disneyland exhibit. Unfortunately

Dr. Pimsleur died before he could personally develop courses in a large variety of

languages to advanced levels. His techniques, however, are being applied to more

courses in more languages by Dr. Charles A. S. Heinle of the Cassette Learning Centre in

Concord, Massachusetts.

The Pimsleur method provides the best minute by minute “learning through

listening,” thanks to several strokes of Dr. Pimsleur’s innovative genius.

First of all, you become a participant. Pimsleur doesn’t let you merely listen in

hopes your lazy mind will help itself to some of the new words being offered on the

smorgasbord. After five minutes with any Pimsleur course you will always harbour a

certain disdain for all cassette courses that merely give you a voice saying something in

English followed by the equivalent in the target language. Pimsleur pricks your

wandering mind to attention by asking, for example, “Do you remember the Greek word

for ‘wine’?”

Theoretically, that little trick shouldn’t make a spectacular difference. After all, you

bought the course. You want to learn the language. Why should the teacher on cassette

have to find ways to constantly recover your attention? The unfortunate truth is that the

average mind plays hooky whenever possible. The difference between Pimsleur asking,

“Do you remember the Greek word for ‘wine’?” and a voice simply saying “wine” is, as

Mark Twain once put it, “the difference between lightning and the lightning bug!”

Nor does Pimsleur always settle for the simple verbal prompt. A typical Pimsleur

tactic is to demand, “You accidentally bump into a man getting on the bus. What do you

say?” That ingrains the foreign phrases for “excuse me” far more than a rote recitation of

the words themselves.

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Pimsleur’s “graduated interval recall” achieves what I call the “pinball effect.”fficeffice" />

When the steel ball in the pinball machine nears the bottom, you can manipulate the

flippers to catch the ball and send it all the way back to the top again. Likewise, at the

very instant when your mind is about to let a new word or phrase “fall to the bottom”,

Pimsleur zings it in again, sending it back to the top of your awareness. This time it

doesn’t sink so fast. When it does, Pimsleur hits it again.

Pimsleur gives you a pause on the cassette after each question he asks you. In the

early going there’s a temptation to stop the machine while you flounder for the answer.

Don’t! Learn to try to come up with the answer during the pause provided. That will

more than teach you the word. It will train you to have that word ready for action at all

times. It’s marvellous to feel your growth as you relisten to your Pimsleur lessons,

succeeding more and more each time at delivering the required word before the teacher’s

voice rolls over you with the next question.

Berlitz is the most famous name in language instruction, and except for the Berlitz

Travel Cassettes, which are flat single rep, all their cassette courses are formatted. The

Berlitz Basic Courses, available in French, Spanish, German, and Italian, feature

ingenious conversations between teacher and students, and their top of the line Berlitz

Comprehensive Courses are really dazzling soap opera-like sagas filled with romance,

treachery, suspense, and drama. Both the basic and the comprehensive courses sneak

massive payloads of grammar and vocabulary into the student’s repertoire.

Cultural cassettes aren’t really language learning cassettes at all, but many people

suppose they are and buy and sell them as such. Songs, plays, readings, stories, and

poems in foreign languages are indeed helpful, but shouldn’t be mistaken for the “high

protein” intake needed to build command of a foreign language. They’re great relaxers,

tests of how far you’ve come, adjunctive exercises, and ways of letting the foreigner

know that you view his language as more than just a briar patch of irregular verbs.

The cultural cassettes are the condiments. The others are the entrées.

BLANK CASSETTES

We have do it yourself gasoline pumps. We do not have do it yourself eye surgery. It may

seem strange to some (and wildly objectionable to others) to recommend do it yourself

language cassettes starring you in the language you are trying to learn. Orthodox

language teachers are likely to consider that something akin to doing your own eye

surgery.

I’ve found it extremely helpful. At some point you will have gotten the hang of

pronunciation sufficiently to push the record button of your cassette player and recite

your own words and phrases onto a blank cassette. Your pronunciation will not be good.

It may be bad. But the value of being able to listen to a cassette with the words you need

and want at the moment – rather than a cassette prepared by somebody with no

knowledge of you, your desires, or your needs – much more than outweighs the

disadvantage of your imperfections.

So, get blank cassettes – the shortest possible – so you can start building a cassette

library of the words and phrases you want to know to supplement those the educators

who produced all the standard cassettes decided to teach you first.

It’s better to know the word – its meaning, its spelling, its use in sentences – even if

you have to listen to it in your unskilled accent, than not to know the word at all.

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FLASH CARDSfficeffice" />

Printed flash cards are available in the major languages. They’re about the size of

business cards and usually provide a vocabulary of a thousand words. Flash cards are the

most underrated language learning tool of all. They’ve been around for decades and go

widely unused, even by those who own them.

Flash cards commonly list the English word (plus related words) on one side of the

card and their foreign equivalents on the other. Some sets of flash cards give you a little

grammar at no extra cost, adding to the word itself the forms of that word a student of the

language should know.

The language student should reach for a fresh stack of flash cards before he leaves

home in the morning as instinctively as a policeman reaches for his badge. The flash

cards, more than any other tool, can help the student take advantage of the day’s “hidden

moments,” the secret weapon upon which the promise and the premise of this method is

based.

Learn how to keep your flash cards handy. Whip them out and flash test yourself

the instant you find yourself with the time. (The person you’re walking with stops to look

at a shop window. You’ve read the menu, finished the newspaper, and the waiter hasn’t

come yet. The clerk has to validate your credit card. There’s a line at the bank or at the

ticket counter. The elevator seems to be stopping at all floors.) Learn how to draw those

cards out and start flashing even if all you’ll have is five seconds. If the person you’re

telephoning doesn’t answer until the fifth ring, he’s given you time to go through two or

three entries. Learn to be quick. I’ve learned how to master a whole new Chinese

character between the time I dial the last digit and the time my party says hello.

BLANK FLASH CARDS

Whether you can locate prepared flash cards in your target language or not, go to your

nearest stationery store and get a hefty supply of blanks. As you travel through the

language you’ll constantly come across new words, modern slang, special phrases you’d

like to know, cute sayings a native speaker teaches you at a party, and the like. Capture

them immediately on your blank flash cards and carry a stack with you at all times. In

later chapters when we learn how all these tools interrelate, you’ll realise the importance

of your own homemade flash cards. Purists may quarrel about recording your own

foreign language vocabulary building cassettes. Nobody can quarrel with you preparing

your own flash cards.

STURDIKLEERS

Sturdikleers are the handy celluloid or plastic packets that protect passports, driver’s

licenses, etc. Find the size that best accommodates a stack of flash cards and pick up as

many as you need, or more.

FELT HIGHLIGHTER PEN

You’ll need a felt pen to mark all the words in your newspaper or magazine that you

don’t know. Choose a colour that highlights but doesn’t obscure the word when you mark

it.

Those are the tools. Now let’s go do the job!

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Getting Startedfficeffice" />

Open your grammar to the first lesson. Do you understand the first paragraph? If so,

proceed to paragraph two. If not, reread paragraph one. Can you determine precisely

what it is that’s blocking you from comprehension? If so, take a pencil (not pen) and

underline the word or words that are tripping you up. Run a wavy pencil line down the

left hand margin of whatever confuses you. That paragraph will never change. The

grammatical point that the confusing paragraph seeks to make will remain as immutable

as Gibraltar until your mind decides to open up to it. Comprehension frequently clicks on

like a light switch. No rush.

Try to summarise what you don’t understand. Pretend you’re writing a letter to your

aunt complaining about this ridiculous new language you’re trying to learn and, using as

few words as possible, encapsulate your confusion in writing. Take that note and put it in

a Sturdikleer holder and carry it with you in your pocket or bag. Get into the habit of

writing down everything that confuses with you and carrying it with you. You will try to

find informants or mentors – either native speakers or others who’ve learned your target

language well enough to answer your questions. Befriend the Korean grocer, the Italian

waiter, the Albanian at the pizzaria, your dentist’s Romanian secretary. You don’t need

such people, but they’re extremely helpful and easier to locate than you might think, and

getting easier all the time as America becomes an international mixture of peoples. Your

informants will usually love being asked to help you learn their language.

Let’s suppose you’ve stubbed your venturesome toe on paragraph one or two or

three or whichever, and no comprehension clicks on. At this point you must consciously

overturn the rules of misdirected American language teaching and do something radical.

You must wave goodbye to your unsolved puzzle and keep moving ahead.

If you don’t understand it, skip it for the time being. Chances are excellent your

confusion will clear itself up as you progress through more and more concepts that you

do understand. You will have the pleasure of looking back on earlier lesssons in the

grammar, seeing your wavy pencil lines beside a now clear paragraph, and saying to

yourself, “How could I have ever been derailed by this?” It’s fun erasing those wavy

lines!

Continue through five lessons of the grammar before you so much as glance at any

of your other tools. Leave the cassettes wrapped in their packaging. Don’t be tempted to

look at the newspaper or magazine in your target language. The more of a language lover

you are, the tougher it will be. Plodding through grammar while friendly cassettes and

real life newspapers await will make you feel like a child who has to finish his homework

before he runs out and plays baseball. And that’s exactly the point. You are a child in

that new language, and like all children, you have to learn to put first things first.

Grammar comes first. Build a little character by slogging through five chapters of it. You

will build up a head of steam that will send you charging headlong into more pleasant

terrain.

Cassettes, newspapers, flash cards, and phrase books will cut the boredom out of

waiting for buses and replace it with growth in another language; these will be your

reward after you make an honest beginning in the grammar. Sustain your spirit during the

grammar study by reminding yourself how soon you’re going to be allowed to go out and

“play.”

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Into the Real Worldfficeffice" />

When you’ve served out your sentence of five lessons of grammar, spread out all your

other tools (you should regard them as “toys”) and prepare to use them all

simultaneously.

Take the newspaper or magazine. Go to the upper left hand corner of page one. (In

languages like Arabic and Hebrew, that will be the upper right hand corner of the “back”

page, which is their front.) That article is your assignment. It will easily be the toughest

newspaper article you’ve ever read. And it will just as certainly do you more good than

any other.

Take your highlighter and highlight all the words you don’t know in the first

paragraph. You may very well end up with a coloured line through every single word in

that paragraph. After all, this is no schoolhouse text that dips to your beginner’s level.

This is as real life and real world as an exercise can get. And all you’ve had so far is five

lessons of elementary grammar. Never mind. Play the game and dutifully mark through

every word you don’t know, even if it be every last word in that first paragraph!

Then reach for your dictionary and your blank flash cards. Go to the first word and

look it up. One of four things will happen: (1) You’ll find the word exactly as it appears

in the newspaper. (2) You’ll find a word that starts out the same but seems to go haywire

halfway through or at the end. (3) The word will not be in your dictionary (even though

you gave that dictionary a “sophistication” test before you bought it.) (4) You will think

that word is not in the dictionary because the word has done crazy things with itself. It’s

altogether possible, owing to rules of that language you haven’t learned yet, that the role

of the word as it appears in the newspaper demands it be written differently from the base

form, which is the one listed in the dictionary. (The word vaya in Spanish, for example,

won’t be in the dictionary. It’s the singular imperative form of the verb ir meaning “to

go.”)

In case 1, the word is in the dictionary spelled exactly the way it is in your

newspaper (from now on we’ll say “text” – it could be a magazine or even a book). Take

a blank flash card and write the English on one side; then flip it over and write the

foreign word on the other. Write in block letters so your flash cards will always be easy

to read. I hesitate to labour the procedure for making your own flash cards. There is a

preferred procedure, however, and I herewith present it in case you don’t already know it.

Single words and entire phrases are best handled differently. When you write

individual words on your flash card, you only need a “short runway,” so treat the card in

its “tall” (vertical) form rather than its “fat” (horizontal) form and enter your words one

under the other down the length of the card. Write the English word across the

“forehead” of the card, then flip it, not sideways, but head over heels, and write the

foreign word across the opposite forehead.

Then turn the card back over to the English side and write your next word directly

underneath, turn it over and write in the foreign word, and keep repeating until the card is

filled. That head over heels lengthwise flip makes the card easier to manipulate in a

crowded bus or elevator and less likely to fall out of your hand.

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When you graduate to writing entire phrases on your blank flash cards, it’sfficeffice" />

obviously better to treat the card in its fat form. Continue to flip head over heels.

Now, case 2: You find a word in the dictionary that seems as though it’s trying to

be the word in your text but it falls off track: the ending changes spelling. You’ve

probably found your base word, all right, but the word in the text, for reasons you don’t

yet comprehend, has taken another form. Is it a verb? Then the dictionary will give you

the infinitive form (to be, to do, etc.), whereas the form in your text could be one of many

variations, depending on person, number, tense, or, in some languages, aspect.

If that riff of grammatical terms makes you feel like I felt on my fifth day of Latin

class, fear not. Language teachers would prefer to assume that such grammatical jargon is

familiar to every graduate of an American high school English class. Alas, that

assumption is grossly misguided. But help is here. The “Back to Basics” chapter later in

this book will explain all necessary grammatical terms in friendly, nonthreatening

language that requires no prior understanding of grammar.

Write the base form – the dictionary form, that is – on your flash card and try to

decipher the meaning of the text with that base form as a clue.

If the meaning is clear, don’t worry yet about why the word in the text differs from

the base form. Part of the fun of this process is having that knowledge surrender itself to

you as you proceed through your grammar book. If the meaning is not clear, make a

“question card,” spelling the confusing word the way it appears in the text. Keep your

Sturdikleer with question cards with you at all times. When you meet your informant, or

anybody who can explain your confusion away, pull out the question card and your

miasma of confusion will become windshield wiper clear.

List no more than six unknown words per flash card. Don’t clutter the card. It’s a

good idea to draw a line under both the English and the foreign word, giving each entry

its own “cubicle” on the card. Also, check carefully to make sure you don’t omit either

the English or the foreign word, giving you a situation in which English word number

three on the card fails to correspond to foreign word number three. (I once went around

for almost a year thinking the Russian word for “prince” meant “raspberry jam”!)

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.

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And you’ll have what seems like a ton of flash cards loaded with words in varyingfficeffice" />

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!”

And right they’d be, if that were all you were doing. But you are now accumulating

flash cards with vocabulary and moving through lesson seven or eight of the grammar, so

don’t feel you have to apologise for learning how to parrot a few handy phrases.

Your ability to bandy some useful phrases is a motivator. There you are, speaking

the language! Isn’t that what you started all this for? Admittedly you’re not debating the

economic consequences of his government’s latest reversal on tariff agreements, but you

are asking someone if he’s too cold and telling him you hope to meet him again.

More magic happens when you’re at that peak motivation. You find yourself

acquiring more material, more conversational gems gleaned from his end of the

conversation. Remember, you’re a confessed beginner. When you don’t understand

something, you’re excused for asking him to repeat it, spell it, write it down on one of

your blank flash cards. (Always carry some.)

It’s gratifying, in fact, enthralling, to enter your next conversation with your powers

to converse enhanced by the previous encounter.

A note of caution, however. Eventually you may find yourself about to small talk so

fluently you’ll mistake that ability for having arrived. Back to the newspaper and the

grammar with you before such thoughts corrupt!