How to Learn Any Language QuicklyEasilyInexpensivelyEnjoyably and On Your Own

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The Plungefficeffice" />

Talk!

Americans feel, with justification, that we’re handicapped when it come to learning other

languages. Smaller countries with lots of borders and lots of strange languages on the

other side offer more opportunities to absorb other languages than a gigantic United

States bounded by the world’s two largest oceans and only two land neighbours, the

larger one speaking, for the most part, the same language we do.

Admittedly, it’s hard to find a Dutchman who doesn’t speak four or five languages,

a Swiss who doesn’t speak at least three, or a Finn, a Belgian, or a Hong Kong Chinese

who doesn’t speak at least two. Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes subject us to the

humiliation of speaking fluent English ot each other just to be polite when Americans are

present.

Those peoples are not kissed by tongues of flame that render them more intelligent

than Americans. They’re simply positioned better by geography and history when it

comes to acquiring more than one language.

Americans, however, hold one high card that too frequently goes unplayed. We’re

gregarious. We’re extroverts. Some say it contemptuously. Some say it admiringly. But

those who know us best agree that we Americans are the only people in the world who

enjoy speaking another language badly!

The typical European would sooner invite you to inspect his bedroom fifty seconds

after waking up than speak a language he doesn’t speak well. Most people in the world

are shy, embarrassed, even paralysed when it comes to letting themselves be heard in

languages they speak less than fluently. An American may master a foreign language to

the point where he considers himself fluent. A European, however, who speaks a

language equally well and no better will often deny he speaks it at all!

Give an American a word in another language and he’s in action. Give him a phrase

and he’s in deeper action. Give him five phrases and he’s dangerous. Take that American

trait and exemplify it.

Talk. Go ahead and talk!

Head into your target language like a moth to the flame, like a politician to the vote.

Is the gentleman you’ve just been introduced to from France? And is French the language

you happen to be studying? Then attack.

Don’t you dare offer a lame chuckle as you explain in English that you’re trying to

learn French but you’re sorry, you’re not very good at it yet. That’s like giggling and

telling the mugger who ambushes you in an alley that you’re learning karate but sorry,

you’re not very good at it yet.

It’s okay to tell him you’re just a beginner, but tell him in French. Learn enough

utility phrases in whatever language you’re studying to profit from every encounter.

Comb through your phrase book (the Berlitz For Travellers series is excellent) and make

it your priority to learn phrases such as “I don’t speak your language well,” “Do you

understand me?”, “Please speak more slowly,” “Please repeat,” “How do you say that in

your language?”, “Sorry, I don’t understand,” and others that together can serve as your

cornerstone and launching pad.

Most phrase books offer too few of these “crutch” phrases. When you meet your

first encounter, pull out pen and pad and fatten your crutch collection. Learn how to say

things such as, “I’m only a beginner in your language but I’m determined to become

fluent,” “Do you have enough patience to talk with a foreigner who’s trying to learn your

language?” “I wonder if I’ll ever be as fluent in your language as you are in English,” “I

wish your language were as easy as your people are polite,” and “Where in your country

do you think your language is spoken the best?” Roll your own alternatives. You’ll soon

find yourself developing what comedians call a “routine,” a pattern of conversation that

actually gives you a feeling of fluency along with the inspiration to nurture that feeling

into fruition.

Hauling off and speaking the language you’re studying versus merely sitting there

knowing it makes the difference between being a business administration professor and a

multimillionaire entrepreneur.

It’s time to apply the parable of the Parrot.

A man looking for an anniversary present for his wife after fourteen years of

marriage found himself in front of a pet shop. In the window was a parrot, not

particularly distinguished in size or plumage, but the price tag on that parrot was a

whopping seven thousand dollars because that parrot spoke, unbelieveably, fourteen

different languages.

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That was more than the man intended to spend but he figured, “Fourteen years,fficeffice" />

fourteen languages!” So he bought it.

He went home, mounted the parrot’s perch in the kitchen, and then realised he’d

forgotten the birdseed. He ran back to the pet shop, bought the birdseed, and then ran

back home, hoping to have everything in readiness before his wife got home.

Alas, she’d already returned, and when he appeared she flung herself upon him in

sizzling affection, shouting, “Darling! What a marvellous anniversary present! You

remembered how much I love pheasant. I’ve got him plucked. I’ve got him slit. I’ve got

him stuffed. He’s in the oven and he’ll be ready in about fifty minutes.”

“You’ve got him what?” cried he. “You’ve got him where? That was no pheasant,”

stormed the husband. “That was a parrot, and that parrot cost seven thousand dollars

because that parrot spoke fourteen languages!”

“So,” replied his wife, “why didn’t he say something?”

And indeed, why don’t you?

Put it in Writing

We don’t know if a peacock is impressed when he sees himself in full display in a mirror.

We do know that you and I are impressed with ourselves when we behold something

we’ve written in a foreign language.

Try it. If you do nothing more than copy an exercise from your grammar book onto

a piece of paper in your own handwriting, you’ll enjoy looking at it. You become like a

kindergarten child so enraptured with his paint smearings that he can’t wait to take them

home to Mommy and Daddy.

That’s strange, childish, egotistic – and supremely helpful when you’re learning

another language. Go ahead and write. If you can write letters and cards to someone who

speaks that language, so much the better. If you can write your dinner preferences for the

waiter in an ethnic restaurant, do so. As soon as you feel sufficiently advanced, write a

note to the editor of the foreign publication you’re learning to read and tell him how

helpful it is. Write a letter to the ambassador of a country that speaks your target

language and congratulate him on representing a culture sufficiently appealing to make

you want to learn his language.

Carry a special little notebook with you at all times so you can jot down your new

verbal acquisitions if you happen to meet native speakers of your target language.

As a student of Chinese I used to experience a high energy lift by writing the

Chinese characters I’d learned on a blank piece of paper, preferably in red ink. I still get a

kick doodling Chinese characters, randomly or in coherent sentences, on the margins of

the newspaper I’m carrying or in the blank spaces on the display ads.

Write! Conquer and consolidate by writing. The ability to understand a word when

it’s spoken or written, to use that word correctly with good pronunciation, and to write it

correctly makes you the battlefield commander of that word.

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Knowingfficeffice" />

Jack Benny was one comic who remained beloved, even by his peers, despite his well

known inability to come up with original material.

Once at a Hollywood roast when another comic laced into him with a devastating

salvo that demanded a retort in kind, Benny won the moment by pausing and then saying,

“You’d never get away with that if my writers were here.”

Cute for Jack Benny at a roast, but not really anything we can borrow. When you’re

in language action and you stumble and lapse into uhs and ahs while the native speaker is

patiently hoping you’ll come through, it doesn’t do to say, “I’d never be in this fix if I

had my dictionary and phrase book with me.”

Everybody who’s ever tried to master a foreign language knows the frustration of

needing the right word or phrase, knowing that you know it, but being utterly unable to

come up with it at the moment. Just as golfers sometimes break their clubs in frustration,

at some point you’ll want to smash your cassette player and throw your books into a

shredder. You’ve mastered a neat set of phrases; they flow glibly off your tongue; you

sing them in the shower, repeat them as you dress, review them as you put on your coat –

and suddenly all recollection vanishes in a poof when you run into a friend five minutes

later who happens to be with a native speaker of the language you’re learning and you try

to remember how to say “Pleased to meet you.”

Having the revolver is one thing. Drawing it quickly is quite another. To take set

piece knowledge you’ve acquired and have it pop up automatically as instinct under real

game conditions calls for a whole separate discipline.

Coaches stage scrimmages that simulate real game conditions as closely as possible.

Pilots can now train in complex simulators that use some elements of computer games to

achieve the effect of genuine flight. You, the language learner, can play little discipline

games that will make your knowledge more readily retrievable in live language action.

First of all, why wait for the real life foreign language encounter to spring into

retrieval practice? As you go through the motions of daily life, ask yourself, “What

would I be saying here in the language I’m studying?” How would you greet the person

headed toward you? What would you say to the friend she introduces you to? How would

you thank her? How would you tell her “You’re welcome” or not to bother or would she

please hand you the fork? It’s fun and helpful to dub everyday situations in the language

you’re learning.

If you come up short in your practice with words and phrases you’ve already

learned, jot them down on a pad and look them up when you get back to your books.

As you review your cassettes, try to come up with the foreign word during the

pause before the next piece of English. Put artificial pressure on yourself: “Can I come up

with the expression before I hear the next word on the cassette?” Or if you’re listening as

you’re walking, “Can I come up with it before I get to that sign, that lamppost, the

corner, the curb?” Victory is being able to take an entire cassette of what were recently

nonsense syllables to you and throw back the foreign equivalents without hesitation.

You’ll be glad you didn’t smash your tools when your friend approaches you by

surprise to introduce you to her friend from a country that speaks the language you’re

learning and you respond with a crisp, correct “Pleased to meet you” in that language!

Commit Language Larceny

There are interesting lessons coiled up inside ordinary greetings in different languages.

The Estonian greeting Kuidas (käsi käib) literally means “How does your hand

walk?” An old Chinese greeting is Chr bao le, mei lo? which means, “Have you had food

yet?” – no small achievement in the China of some periods. A charming greeting in

Yiddish is “Zug mir a shtikel Toireh,” which means “Teach me a piece of Torah,” the

Torah being the five books of Moses and the holiest document in the Jewish religion.

Language learners can use the spirit of that last one to good advantage.

When you encounter a native speaker of your target language, and when you start a

conversation in that language, three things are certain. You will be stuck for words you

need but don’t know. He will use words you don’t understand. And you will make

mistakes. Get into the habit of exploiting those moments to the hilt!

When you don’t know a word, ask him for it. When you don’t understand a word he

uses, ask him what it means. Ask him to do you the favour of correcting your mistakes.

You may not have much luck with that latter request; he may be too polite or too

impressed that you’re making an effort in his language to criticise you. If you feel he’s

letting your mistakes slide by, pick a fairly long sentence and ask him to help you

hammer out your mistakes in just that one sentence. Write that sentence down on one of

your blank flash cards. Ask him to check it again. Milk the moment. As the Latin goes,

Carpe diem!

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Don’t ever enter into anything as precious as a conversation in your target languagefficeffice" />

with a native speaker and leave knowing no more than when you started. You’ve got a

repertoire in that language. He has a larger one. Reach in and help yourself.

At No Extra Cost

You may think you have a good idea precisely how your life will improve once you’ve

mastered your target language. You’re wrong. It will be much better than you think.

Unexpected good things happen to you when you learn even a little of the other

guy’s language. A chapter detailing some of those things may seem like preaching to the

choir, when you consider that anybody likely to be reading this has already decided he

wants to learn. So what? Who more than the members of the choir deserve the

inspiration?

All the case histories that follow were culled and corroborated by members of the

Language Club who were asked to be alert to all the nice little extras that come your way

when you speak another language. Many of them happened to me personally and

continue to happen almost daily.

In New York and some other major cities a huge percentage of the cab drivers are

from Haiti. Try this, just to get a taste of the power of another language. If your driver is

Haitian, lean forward and say (phonetically), “Sa (rhymes with “ma”) pass (“pasta”

without the “ta”) SAY (as in the English “say”), pa-PA (“papa,” but accented on the last

syllable). Sort those sounds out and try it. “Sa paSAY paPA?” It means something like the

French Comment ça va? (“How are you?”), but it’s not French. It’s his native Haitian

Creole slang and he may never before have heard that utterance from the lips of a non-

Haitian.

That one line is guaranteed to get you reactions ranging from a long, slow smile to a

cheery “Where did you learn that?” to loud and joyous laughter to the exclamation, “You

must know Haiti well!”

Don’t get the idea that Haitians are the only ones susceptible to the charm of

hearing a few words of their language. They just may be more demonstrative than most

in showing it. Romanian cab drivers have turned off the metre and given me a free ride in

return for my “Good morning” in Romanian. A Soviet Georgian cab driver refused to

take my money and invited me to Sunday dinner at his home, one of the tastiest treats and

most interesting evenings I’ve ever enjoyed. An Indonesian cab driver screamed – that’s

all, just screamed – upon hearing “Thank you” in his language.

I’ve long suspected there’s a memo posted in the kitchen of every Chinese

restaurant in America instructing all personnel not to let any American who exhibits any

knowledge of Chinese go unrewarded. Try this experience, just to taste the power.

The Chinese term for “chopsticks” is kwai dze. The first word is pronounced like

the Asian river the American war prisoners built the bridge over. The second word

sounds like the ds in “suds.”

The next time you’re in a Chinese restaurant, smile at the waiter and say “Kwai

dze.” When he brings the chopsticks, smile again and say, “Shieh, shieh” (“Thank

you”). Pronounce that as you should “she expects,” making sure you never get as far as

the x and accentuating the “she”. The immediate payoffs on this one can range from a

free plum brandy cocktail at the end of the meal clear over to a stubborn refusal to let you

pay. The more subtle, and satisfying, payoff is that they will assume you know not only

the rest of the Chinese language but the Chinese cuisine as well, and they’ll probably

give you no less than the absolute finest the house can produce every time they see you

come in.

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Your rewards for knowing even a paltry few words of a language vary in inversefficeffice" />

proportion to the likelihood that you’ll know any at all. A German baker isn’t likely to

endorse his whole day’s profit on strudel over to your favourite charity merely because

you enter his shop with a big “Guten Tag” (“Good day”), but an Albanian baker might if

you enter with “Tungjatjeta.” You won’t knock French socks off with a “Comment

allez-vous?” (“How are you?”), but you may set winter gloves flying in Helsinki with a

correctly pronounced “(Hyvää Päivää)” (“Good morning”).

Don’t overdo it. I’ve known cab drivers from obscure countries almost drive off the

road when they’re surprised with a burst of their native tongue from an American

passenger, and once I had a Chinese waitress in a Jewish delicatessen (honest!) get so

rattled when I ordered for our party in Chinese that she messed up our order beyond

redemption.

I have many times ignited what looked like spontaneous street festivals by hailing

groups of people on the sidewalk in the language I heard them speaking. They frequently

stop, return the greeting, and then start hobnobbing with the people in my group, leading

to laughs, the exchange of addresses, dates for later on, and, I suspect, even more! I’ve

never understood the joy of bagging a bird or a deer and watching it fall to the ground.

My joy is bagging strangers from other countries with the right greeting in the right

language and watching them come to a halt and become old friends at once.

The material payoffs of learning foreign languages are many and predictable,

though perhaps a bit surprising in their scope. In early ffice:smarttags" />1990 a friend told me he was

looking to fill a job paying $650,000 a year; qualifications: attorney, knowledge of

Russian, and willingness to relocate to Moscow. I prefer the psychological payoffs of

studying foreign languages – pleasures so keep you could almost call them spiritual.

They joy of a true mathematician escalates as he moves from algebra to

trigonometry to calculus. Likewise, the joy of the true language lover escalates as he

advances from what I call “Foreign 1” to “Foreign 2.” Foreign 1 is interpreting or

translating (interpreters speak, translators write) from your native language to a foreign

one. Foreign 2 is doing it from one language that’s foreign to you to another one that’s

foreign to you.

You are permitted to feel like Superman when you pull off such a feat. You are not

permitted to act like Superman, nor are you permitted to let on that you feel like

Superman. You mien should approximate that of a bored New York commuter telling a

stranger how many stops there are between Grand Central Station and New Rochelle.

The best Foreign 2 feeling I ever had was interpreting for Finns trying to

communicate with Hungarians. Finnish and Hungarian are widely hailed as the most

difficult languages in the world. They’re related to each other, but not in any way that’s

helpful or even apparent. There aren’t five words remotely similar in the two languages,

and a Hungarian and a Finn can no more understand each other than can a Japanese and a

Pole.

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I long nurtured a dream of house lights coming up in the theatre. The theatrefficeffice" />

manager comes to centre stage and says, “Is there a Finnish-Hungarian interpreter in the

house?” I wait until he repeats his request louder so that everyone in the theatre will get a

load of those qualifications. I then, in the fantasy, grudgingly make my presence and, by

implication, my suitability for the assignment known. I rise and approach whatever

emergency it is that requires my linguistic talents, while those hundreds of theatre goers

gasp at their relative inadequacies.

Something like that actually did light up my life for an evening and then some. I

was invited by a well known woman broadcaster to join another couple who had invited

her and a guest to a Madison Square Garden horse show. I’d never dated her before. I felt

outclassed in the glamour department, and I was uncomfortable as we four wound our

way through that upper crust crowd looking for our places.

Suddenly I was spotted by Anna Sosenko, lyricist, writer, theatre producer, and

dealer in the memorabilia of show business worldwide and down through the ages. Anna

wrote, among other biggies, the song “Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup.”

“Hey, Barry,” Anna yelled out over the crowd from about twenty rows away. “Can

you come by my studio next week? I need you to translate some Ibsen!”

Remember what that sudden spinach infusion did for Popeye’s biceps in the

animated cartoons? That’s exactly what happened to my standing in the foursome after

Anna’s outcry. My date and her friends turned to me. “Ibsen? You translate Ibsen?

Where did you learn to translate Ibsen?”

They may very well not have known what language Henrik Ibsen wrote in. Never

mind! You don’t have to be absolutely sure which country a prince is a prince of in order

to show respect, as long as you’re sure he’s a real prince. Likewise, with Anna Sosenko

doing the yelling, everybody was convinced I could bring Ibsen to life in English.

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Motivationsfficeffice" />

The ads for self study language courses stress the business, travel, cultural, and literary

advantages of acquiring another language. But what about meeting girls? Or women? Or

boys? Or men? Why let an old fashioned propriety quash that thoroughly proper, in fact

praiseworthy, reason to learn another language, namely to enlarge your range of social

opportunities, to meet people?

Learning another language to enlarge your opportunity for making new connections

is fun and rewarding. Financial and professional success have helped people live their

dreams. So has learning another language!

There are blonde languages, by the way, and brunette languages. Why be bashful?

Those partial to blondes are advised to learn Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish,

German, Dutch, and Hungarian. A good brunette list would include Spanish, French,

Portuguese, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, and Arabic.

This advice is not offered flippantly. I find the social motive to learn other

languages as valid as the commercial, the cultural, or any other. If your motives for

learning another language are social, I would steer you to the language of a people you

find maximally attractive with every bit as straight a face as I’d advise those interested in

importing from Asia to learn Japanese and opera lovers to learn Italian. I would steer you

to the language of a people you find maximally attractive with every bit as straight a face

as I’d advise those interested in importing from Asia to learn Japanese and opera lovers

to learn Italian.

You are not guaranteed love forevermore, but you are guaranteed novelty status.

You’ll attract attention in your target community as “the one who went to the trouble of

learning our language.” You’ll be invited, introduced around, and questioned thoroughly

as to your reasons for studying their particular language. The less popular the language,

the greater a celebrity you’ll be among its speakers. French is very popular, so you won’t

have Paris at your feet, we’ve already agreed, even after your best rendered “Comment

allez-vous?”, but Norwegians will want to burn arctic moss at your altar when after a

meal you say “Takk for maten.” That means “Thanks for the food,” which non-

Norwegians not only generally don’t know how to say, but also don’t realise it’s

traditionally said as you leave the table of your host in Norway.

Native English speakers have more to gain from studying other languages than

anybody else. Honour, love, cooperation, respect, advantage – they all shower down

upon people in inverse proportion to their need to learn a language.

English is the most prominent language in the world. The Dutch, as one example,

all seem to know four or five languages well upon graduation from high school, but (I am

not trying to diminish their achievement) they have to learn other languages, beginning

with English, to make their way in the commercial world. You can’t play that game with

Dutch alone. Languages find their fair rate of exchange as currencies do. We who speak

English get a lot more credit from the Dutch if we learn Dutch than they get from us just

because they learned English. And so on around the world.

Learn that other language now, while there’s still time to enjoy the honours due

those who don’t have to learn the other guy’s language but choose to do so anyhow. That

time is rapidly running out. For the very first time in our history Americans are learning

other languages not out of courtesy but out of necessity. That fact of life is so new that

it’s not yet apparent to America or the world, so we still have a little more time to bask in

the admiration of those who had to learn our language and who still believe we simply

chose to learn theirs.

Something ennobling happens when you learn to communicate in more than one

language. And it’s fun to watch the magic flash as you touch your word wand to the ears

of those who’d never suspect you speak their language. It’s one more way of making

friends. In big cities you’ll have many chances to find people who speak foreign

languages.

But you can’t sally in and ambush strangers in their language even if their accent

and appearance make it a sure bet. They’re probably proud of their accent free (or nearly

accent free) English. The best way to avoid insulting them – so they can concentrate on

loving you when you speak their language – is to say, before you venture one word of

their language, “Your accent is beautiful. Are you from England?”

They will then proudly say, “No, I’m from Poland” (or wherever), and they will

thereupon welcome your overtures.

Get to Know the Family

Languages have their own happy surprises. For example, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian

overlap. Learn either one, and at no extra cost you get seventy percent of the other. You

may want to select a language to learn according to how much bounce it has beyond its

borders. Languages come in families, and it pays to know which relations might work for

you.

Let’s pursue the Serbo-Croatian-Bulgarian connection. They’re related in

diminishing degrees to all the Slavic languages, which include Russian, Byelorussian,

Polish, Ukranian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Macedonian, and Ruthenian. They’re not all

seventy percent overlapping, but so what? What if they’re only forty, thirty, twenty

percent overlapping? That’s still like having the shopkeeper hand you extra cloth on a

second bolt when you thought you’d only bought one bolt of cloth.

You learn so much Italian when you learn Spanish that it’s a shame not to switch

over and pursue Italian once your Spanish is adequate. Portugese isn’t far behind, and

even French, the Romance language least like any of the others, has enough similar

grammatical features and vocabulary to help you conquer all of the other Romance

languages.

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Hindi and Urdu, the principal languages of India and Pakistan, are virtually thefficeffice" />

same spoken language.

Dutch is far more than the language of a tiny nation between Germany and the

English Channel. It’s almost identical to Flemish, which along with French is one of the

two principal languages of Belgium. Dutch is the foundation of Afrikaans, which along

with English is a major language of South Africa. And you’ll have no trouble finding

Dutch speakers all over Indonesia, the old “Spice Islands” ruled by Holland for four

hundred years.

Get to know the family of the language you’re learning – where it fits in, what other

languages it will make easier for you to learn later. What doors in what industries will it

open (for example, Flemish and Yiddish for diamonds, Arabic for oil, Swedish for

crystal, Italian for fashion)? Over how wide an area is your target language spoken (more

Chinese speak Chinese outside China than Frenchmen speak French in France)?

Knowing where your language fits into the world mosaic will offer you countless

advantages and rewards, and almost certainly the motivation to learn more.

Language Power

to the People

The many who crave language knowledge in America have risen in rebellion against the

many who have failed (we could even say refused) to give it.

Language teaching used to be in the control of “the faculty,” a Prussian guard of

grammarians who taught that after all the conjugations, declensions, irregularities, and

exceptions were mastered, surely fluency would follow. What followed instead was a

parade of hapless Americans who, after eight years of good grades, could not go to the

desk clerk at a hotel in a country whose language they’d studied and ask if they had any

messages!

“The faculty” taught rigidly by the book, the grammar book, and all our desire to

learn to say useful things and converse were dashed.

Today foreign languages are no longer “electives.” Those suddenly faced with their

first need to command another language are besieging Berlitz and other commercial

language schools and buying the Pimsleur cassettes and other self study courses. We, the

laymen, are picking up our tools – language workbooks, cassette courses, phrase books,

flash cards – to try to make up for our failure to learn, while all those incredible

Europeans were learning English in their public schools!

Two, four, six, eight years of high school and college study in a foreign language,

and still our American graduates can’t tell whether the man on the radio speaking the

language they “learned” is declaring war or recommending a restaurant!

Has one single American graduate ever stepped into a job that called for a foreign

language with nothing more than the language he learned in high school or college? It’s

not a cruel question. Most Americans can get by on the reading they learned in school.

And the math. And the history. Why is that when it come to foreign languages our

graduates have to rush into expensive private instruction to start all over again?

One hero of language learning in the United States is Dr. Henry Urbanski, professor

of Russian, former chairman of the department of Foreign Languages of the State

University of New York at New Paltz, and now director of the Language Immersion

Institute. Once upon a time Dr. Urbanski’s “immersion” heresy would probably have

resulted in his getting banned from university life. Today Urbanski is showered with

praise and honour.

His immersion programme defies the language teaching tradition of rote

regimentation and grammar worship. There are no charts to learn, no homework, no

drudgery, and no tests. It’s all fun, it emphasises real conversation between teacher and

students, and it all takes place over a weekend. If Henry Urbanski could have thought of

any more rules to break, he would have.

Urbanski’s immersion programme is open to everybody. Those with no educational

background in languages whatever join with people with graduate degrees in languages

and men and women of all levels of qualification in between. The programme begins at

seven P.M. on a Friday for an hour of introduction and orientation. The students then

break up into small groups in separate rooms and jump into the foreign language under

the command of dynamic, enthusiastic instructors who keep a high energy Ping-Pong of

basic conversation going back and forth with all students participating. At ten P.M. Friday

the classes break and the wise ones go straight to bed without food, wine, or small talk,

knowing that the routine resumes early Saturday morning.

Even when classes break for lunch Saturday afternoon there’s no break in the

language. The groups have lunch together in the language they’re learning. Then they

return to class and keep on going.

On Saturday at dusk some of the students begin to report phenomena resembling

out of body experiences. Urbanski jokes, “Only when this constant bombardment

collapses your resistance can the new language come surging in like an angry sea through

a broken dike.”

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Even the students who were suggesting wine and talk the night before hasten to bedfficeffice" />

in order to meet the dawn on Sunday, the final day. Sessions continue clear up to a late

lunch, after which there’s a “graduation” exercise, whereupon everybody vows to return

at the next opportunity for immersion in the next highest level of their language.

Dr. Urbanski wants his immersion students to have fun. Walk down the corridors

during teaching hours (or follow a group on a “language hike” through the mountains

around New Paltz) and you’ll hear laughter, clapping, singing, and what sound like pep

rallies in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, and the other languages of the

weekend.

“Why make students suffer unnecessarily?” Urbanski asks. “Learning a language

doesn’t have to bring pain and suffering. We believe in providing a nonthreatening

environment in which students are rewarded for their progress but not punished for their

errors.” An immersion graduate added, “The festival spirit wakes us up, keeps us sharp,

lubricates the flow of new words, and anesthetises us against the pain of grammar.”

Urbanski never promises you can go straight from a weekend of foreign language

immersion to a booth at the United Nations and simultaneously interpret a foreign

minister’s address. What immersion promises is a more than elementary introduction to

the language, a good grounding in its words and melodies, the ability to “defend”

yourself in that language without help, and a solid base from which you can grow, either

through self study or more courses. No claim is made that students will be fluent by the

end of one immersion weekend. “We teach linguistic survival,” says Urbanski. “After a

few immersion weekends our students can manage in the language.”

The New Paltz Language Immersion Institute has grown from immersion weekends

on campus to weekends at the nearby Mohonk Mountain House resort and in Manhattan.

A programme is now under way in Washington, D.C. Anyone desiring information – no

qualifications necessary – may call the New Paltz Language Immersion Institute at 1-

800-LANGUAGE.

Tuition for the weekend ranges from $175 to $250, depending on location. The two

week summer programme at the New Paltz campus costs $400.

In the words of one satisfied institute graduate, “I learned enough to continue to

learn more!”

Back to Basics

“Send the manager to this table immediately,” demanded the diner in the restaurant.

When the manager appeared, the diner railed, “This is the worst vanilla ice cream I’ve

ever had.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the manager. “That’s not vanilla ice cream. That’s butter

pecan.”

“Oh,” said the customer, suddenly placated. “For butter pecan, it’s okay.”

This chapter on the basics of grammar should be read in that spirit.

“French verb changes are inaudible through the singular of the present tense.”

“The Spanish auxiliary verb ‘to have’ is completely different from the verb ‘to

have’ implying possession.”

“The Scandinavian languages, Romanian, and Albanian are among the languages

that place the definitive article after the noun.”

“Chinese has no case endings or verb inflections, and adjectives do not have to

agree with nouns.”

Do you understand all of the above, or most of it? If so, you don’t need this chapter,

though some of it may come as a welcome refresher. This chapter is offered as catch-up

for all of you who didn’t pay attention in English class. Now you want to learn another

language and you realise suddenly that your teacher was right, you were wrong, and here

you are unable to understand the English you need to take command of another language.

I, like you, sat smugly through grade school English convinced that ignorance of all

those silly terms that went zipping by me would never interfere with any of my future

endeavours. Nothing reforms the student who’s apathetic towards English like a sudden

desire to learn other languages. I could have learned foreign languages more easily from

the outset had I sat down to learn just these bare bones I serve you now.

What follows is a rundown of some of the terms you’ll need to know to advance

easily through another language. The synopsis may be misprioritised and incomplete, but

on the other hand it is friendly, nonjudgmental, brief, blunt, and, I hope, helpful.

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A noun is a person, place, or thing – either a tangible thing, like a block of ice or a head

of cattle or your mother in law, or an intangible thing, like a concept or an emotion.

PRONOUN

The dictionary tells us that pronouns are words that serve as substitutes for nouns. If

that’s confusing, ignore it and let’s get right down to the pronouns. In English they are I,

you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, them, my, mine, your, yours, his, hers, its, our,

ours, their and theirs.

In addition, we have INTERROGATIVE pronouns (who, what, which) for asking

questions.

We also have RELATIVE pronouns (who, whose, which, that) for explaining and

describing the nouns we use.

In the sentence “Who owns that house?” the pronoun who is used in interrogative

form. It’s asking a question. In the sentence “The man who owns that house is nice,” the

pronoun who is used in its relative sense. You’re not asking anybody a question, you’re

identifying the man. “The man whose house…,” “The house, which I visited…,” and

“The house that I visited…” all demonstrate the use of relative pronouns.

VERB

A verb is an action word – to do, to go, to want, to think. Chances are that any word that

sounds right after the word to (provided the to doesn’t mean “toward” or “in the direction

of”) is a verb. English verbs are so consistent (unchanging), it’s easy for the English

speaker to get overwhelmed when tackling a language whose verbs INFLECT (change

forms), as all the Romance, the Slavic, and many other languages’ verbs do. When we

follow a verb through all its forms (I go, you go, he goes, we go, they go, in the present

tense, past tense, future tense, etc.) we are CONJUGATING that verb. You’ll feel less

bewildered if you stop to realise that our own English verbs inflect just enough to give

you the idea of changing forms. The present tense, third person singular form of the

English verb (the he form) usually adds an s (I give, you give, but he gives).

INFINITIVE

An infinitive is a verb in neutral gear. In English the infinitive is the form we talked

about above – to go, to do, etc. The infinitive form of the verb go is therefore to go. That

doesn’t tell you who’s going or when he’s going or, in case he’s already gone, when he

went. The infinitive is just hanging there, ready to express any and all of the above

possibilities when the proper INFLECTIONS, changes, are applied.

The gears that neutral infinitives can shift into involve PERSON, NUMBER, and TENSE.

We’ll tackle them in that order.

PERSON

I am FIRST PERSON. You are SECOND PERSON. He, she, or it is THIRD PERSON. The fussbudget

grammarian wants to blow the whistle right here and remind us that we, you, and they are

also first, second, and third person. Don’t rush me. We’re getting to it.

NUMBER

Number, in English and most other languages, is either SINGULAR or PLURAL. (In Russian

and other Slavic languages there’s a third one. They have singular, plural, and really

plural. Be grateful!) I, the first person, am only one individual. Therefore I am first

person singular. You, by yourself, are second person singular. He, she, and it are third

person singular.

We are more than one person; therefore we are first person plural. You, meaning two

or more of you, are second person plural. Second person singular and second person

plural in English happen to look and sound identical. That’s not so in all languages. They

are third person plural. The one English word they covers as many he’s, she’s and it’s as

anybody can possibly throw at you. Again, not all languages are so obliging!

TENSES

Even those who didn’t pay much attention in school shouldn’t have difficulty with tenses.

I am is PRESENT tense. (To give it its full name and rank we’d have to say I am is the

present tense, first person singular of the verb to be.)

You were is PAST tense, or, more fully, the past tense, second person singular (in this

case it could be plural too) of the verb to be.

He will be is FUTURE tense, or the future tense, third person singular of the verb to

be.

The PERFECT tense is another form of the past tense that expresses not I was but

rather I have been. (Perfect here just means “finished.”) This tense is more important in

English than in many other languages, and more important in French than in English.

The PAST PERFECT (also called PLUPERFECT) tense is I had been. It takes place before

the “regular” past.

The IMPERFECT (“unfinished”) tense is I was being, I was walking, I was going,

doing, etc.

The CONDITIONAL tense is I would be.

There are more tenses, and they may vary from language to language, but that’s

enough to give you the hang of what tenses are.

AUXILIARIES

As the name suggests, auxiliaries are words that help you accomplish something. In

English, the verb to have serves as the auxiliary that helps us form the perfect tenses (I

have been, I had been). The verb to be serves as the auxiliary that helps us form the

imperfect tense (I was going).