I’m rubbish at learning languages. So for a language method to work, it has to be truly idiot-proof.
Here are the best two ways I’ve found of learning a new language – one obvious and therefore my idea, and the other so cunning I’d never have thought of it. (Thanks, Ian).
Both of them will ruin your home life and push you to the fringes of polite society.
But hey, you’ll know a new language at the end of it. Swings and roundabouts, eh?
1. Fake It
The first thing to realise about a foreign language is that it’s not English with different words. Deconstruct your chosen language to get a sense of how formidably different it is. Different words, yes, but also different thinking. That’s what language is: your country, turned into sounds. It’s culture in action. So if you learn the language, you make a massive step towards understanding the people who speak it.
This is why I hated Mariliyn vos Savant’s playful suggestion in one of her books that since learning other languages is a stretch, and since English dominates “global culture”, don’t bother with anything else. Wait until everything’s translated into English*.
Don’t do this. Not only is it thinly-veiled xenophobia, it’s wrong. Translations always leak meaning. Bad translations leak like colanders. They’ve lost their subtleties, their contexts, their rhythm and flow and beauty. They become crappy remakes.
Since languages are keys to unlock different ways of thinking, the best way to understand these new rules (hidden between the lines) are to live them. Move to another country, in other words. Desirable, fun…rarely practical.
So the next best thing?
Swap out parts of your life for their equivalent in another language.
Say it’s French. So – read French newspapers. Pick up books by French authors, in French. Have French radio on, playing French music interrupted by French news bulletins. Cook French food out of a French cookbook. Watch films and TV shows in French, undubbed. Stream French radio and podcasts over the internet. Read lots of French wine labels (thus forcing you to drink lots of French wine). Hang out with a French penpal, either via snail-mail or virtually. Have any French-speaking friends? Insist they do so, all the time.
In short – act French.
It’s like cultural roleplay – except you’re not an adult, you’re a child again. You’ll have to relearn the simplest things. Most of the time, you are simply not going to understand. At first, you’re lucky if you get the gist. It’ll be frustrating. Humiliating. You’ll feel like an idiot. But what you’re doing is getting the sounds and the rhythms and the feel of the language at work, deep into your head.
But of course it’ll all remain a meaningless babble without the equivalent of early schooling. (I recommend Pimsleur, myself). However, beware of the danger of quarantining your learning inside your head, turning it into a mental reference book you plan to dip into occasionally. You don’t want that. You want it to be part of the way you think – instinctual, like your first language. And you’d never get that from going to school. It can’t be taught – only lived.
So live it.
2. Label It
Wouldn’t it be great if we were fitted with a kind of head-up display that translates the world into another language? You select “French mode”, look at a lampshade and the word abat-jour hovers above it, like a Terminator’s eye view (daft on machines, but great on humans). That would be seriously useful.
Well, here’s the low-tech equivalent.
Grab a few pads of PostIts and wander round your house with a Sharpie in one hand and a translation dictonary in the other. And label everything. Light switches. Windows. Furniture. Letterboxes. Junk mail. Packaged food. Garden tools. Pets. Family members. (Or even better, get your loved ones to wear jumpsuits with the parts of their bodies clearly labelled in another language. Tell them that they’d do it if they truly love you – that always works).
Weird? Sure. You’re a freak. However, you’re a freak with an unstoppable vocabulary in the language of your choice. Maybe you could live with that.
So I’m really sorry, current housemates. Your life is about to be swamped with Greek radio, Greek music, Greek newspapers, Greek food and Greek-labelled squares of yellow paper stuck to everything including, if I can get away with it, you. I’d apologize properly, except I’m too busy learning a new language.
Συγγνώμη, guys.
* Note: to her credit, vos Savant suggested this as a throwaway challenge-your-assumptions exercise in getting your priorities right. It’s not her official line on languages. But it’s stuck with me, mainly because I’ve met people who genuinely believe that English is the ultimate repository of all meaning. They’re idiots.
Images: Cristiano Betta, Let Ideas Compete and Woodleywonderworks.
Hi, Mike – good suggestions, especially the cultural immersion.
Mariliyn vos Savant’s suggestion is disgusting, even in jest. I loathe the misconception – usually by native English-speakers – that English rules the world. Yes, it’s becoming more and more pervasive, but that’s not to suggest that every citizen on the planet does – and must – speak it. And just how many native English speakers (Americans?) are more than monolingual? So few, that ask one how many languages they speak, and they’ll consider the few sentences they’ve retained from high school Spanish to count as “a little Spanish,” or even “Spanish.”
I lived in Japan for two years, and like many of my fellow expats, dove head first into learning Japanese. But we were – and are – still such a minority that many Japanese have the idea that foreigners are too stupid or too lazy to learn Japanese. Cue them freaking out when we’d wander into a restaurant (eeeeeeh?? Gaijin? We can’t speak to them!), or cue being applauded for speaking even the tiniest bit of basic Japanese – as though we were toddlers who had mastered using the potty by themselves for the first time.
I even notice that here in Italy – once they realize I’m American – the Italians are surprised that I speak Italian. “You’re American? Do you speak Italian?” Yes. Remember the last five minutes when we were talking? Right.
In contrast, you find that a lot of native English speakers (perhaps mostly Americans) expect English to be spoken everywhere, as though locals are just cute little ethnic restaurant employees wearing costumes. Lumbering around speaking English to anyone they find, then scratching their heads – “I know! We’ll just talk louder!” – and then, finally, “Honey, why doesn’t anyone speak English? And what do you mean there’s no super size?”
Ten to one they’re the same people who bitch: “Foreigners should learn English!”
Global language. As though that justifies ignorance. Feh.
*end Liv’s fevered muttering. Return to regularly scheduled programming*
Same page, reading, us.
That’s what infuriates me. Not the way English has become some kind of “agreed-upon” (yeah, right) global language…but the way some people look at that and conclude it’s because English is better. Therefore, everything else is worse. Put it in English so the educated world can read it, dude. And so on.
It’s linguistic imperialism. Which is awful politically and socially – but culturally, academically, it’s far worse. It’s a back door into stomping on “lesser” cultures, where the frontal assault is regarded as intolerable in an international sense. That’s the dark side behind the seeming superficial idiocy of it all. That’s what worries.
From what I’ve read of Japan (eg. Will Ferguson’s “Hokkaido Highway Blues”) there’s a tendency for gai-jins to remain the ‘ooh, funny foreigner speaking in our language, wow, it’s like a talking horse!’. But surely some of that has to be a function of the amount of Westerners who don’t try speaking Japanese, (one of the most formidably alien-sounding, unexpectedly-constructed languages we can encounter)….
As someone who was learning Japanese during your time there, did attitudes and reactions change as your fluency progressed? Did speaking Japanese help break down the walls between Native and Foreigner?
Learning Japanese did nothing to help break down the walls between native and foreigner, unfortunately – very little can do that. But it absolutely helped me get around and understand the culture. I’d like to think it also earned me a little respect. Like a smarter talking horse.
Some of my friends back in the day – men more cynical than I – said that you know your Japanese is actually getting good when people stop applauding you. Like they’re almost scared; intimidated that their ideals are being tested. I’m at the level now where I can say what I want to say – but I’m not graceful and I make mistakes. A friend of mine who has lived in Osaka for over ten years speaks brilliantly. He was interviewed on Japanese TV a few months ago by producers who were clearly hoping to have some fun with foreigners. When he began speaking in fluent Japanese, gasps could be heard in the background. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
My progression in Japanese was a huge topic of my blog while I was living there. Here’s something I wrote on the topic a few months before I left:
http://ieatmypigeon.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/buon-giorno/
With a language degree and always a new language on the back burner I always subscribe to variations on your first approach. Listening to the radio in the language for quite a while before I even start to learn anything. Singing in the language – ditto. It gets you used to making the sounds of the language before worrying about any comprehension.
Re the second, my family still come across various objects with faded Russian words stuck to them, more than 15 years after my brother married his Russian wife. So make sure the labels aren’t too sticky !
Singing! I hadn’t thought of that. Nice.
Thanks, Rhiannon.
In my case, it’s a shame a lot of modern Greek music seems to be overproduced melodramatic guff….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhJ6qhwqu0Y&feature=related
Yes, that’s the joy of PostIt notes. eg. Masking tape covered in indelible marker pen ink…not so popularity-inducing with the rest of the household. So you knew of that technique being used 15 years ago? Nice to know it’s not a new idea…
just stay home and play online games. no language above ffs/lol etc required, and yet it spans countries/cultures effortlessly……..
job done
Nice try, Lord of Unnecessary Stuff.
But I think the phrase you’re looking for is “Job Avoided”.
I agree that culture and character can only be understood with the correct language. I watch English language movies dubbed in Italian and I wince. My friends explain what they have understood of my culture (or lack thereof) from their translated POVs and I shrink. I heard La Boheme sung in English and fell asleep.
Techniques do vary, but I recall my daughter having Russian labels on everything in her apartment for 2 years and she still doesn’t speak Russian. I think that has to be a booster, like flashcards.
Any attempt is worthy of respect, however, and I’m cheering on all learners, especially if they have no reason except their curiosity.
I remember seeing an English film dubbed in Italian and then subtitled back into English (don’t ask me why, or what the film was, I just remember the dubbing and subtitling), and particularly clear is the memory that “Are you trying to seduce me?” was translated back into English as “Want to f***?”.
What kinds of howlers have you suffered watching / listening to?